Posted on 07/15/2018 1:56:06 PM PDT by Kevin in California
Amazon may be America’s most powerful company. Its first-quarter 2018 revenues totaled over $50 billion and it has huge market share in enormous markets such as children’s toys, books, and grocery stores.
you can often find items less expensive on the internet compared to how they are priced at Amazon..
multiple times i just cut and paste the name of an item on my wish list at Amazon into an internet search engine and have found another merchant is selling it significantly cheaper...
I have friends who sell on Ebay, Walmart partners etc, Jet et al. One of them quit selling on Amazon because of the abusive returns policy for AMZ sellers, and in 2018 Sellers cannot say no to returns. On Ebay, you could still retain your Power Seller status even if Ebay nudges you to accept free returns, but Amazon wont do it.
I do the same thing. I also buy some things on ebay with free shipping.
it would be good if walmart or some other bohemoth would compete head to head with amazon, so we could buy all we want from one site. I buy a ton of supplements and can only find them all on amazon, otherwise, I’m buying from 5+ different sites.
I thought Amazon was a site for 6’ tall Hot Blondes
What you say is true but the speed of Amazon’s delivery through Amazon Prime drives its popularity along with vendor ratings and related sections.
What can compete with Amazon are brick and mortar centers that deliver and also allow customers to look and feel before purchasing. But those things are done somewhat now but need to be raised several notches in performance to compete with Amazon.
I ordered something from Overstock.com thru eBay. I’d ordered the wrong thing....completely my fault.
I called the 800 number thru the Ebay “Contact Seller” page, a human answered almost immediately, quickly found my order, said there would be a charge of $12 to return the $110 item but that included the return shipping, sent me a mailing label via email, I boxed up the item and dropped it off at UPS the next day.
I was very impressed. I screwed up but they allowed me to return it. It was specified in the initial sale that return shipping was paid by purchaser as long as it wasn’t their fault or it was a faulty item...then they covered shipping.
The initial sale was free shipping.
Plus many retailers will match or beat an Amazon price. Now that you have to pay the sales tax, why not take the item home right then and there
Biggest problem is if you live in Alaska, Hawaii, PR, Guam, etc and get killed on shipping charges by most of those Amazon alternatives. Many times I get a shipping quote twice what an item cost.
“Biggest problem is if you live in ......... Guam”
Preach to that choir much do you? :>}
Of course on Guam at least even with the huge shipping cost it may still be cheaper than the store
I have had very good experiences with Walmart.com, NewEgg and even BestBuy.com. I still use Amazon for some things when I cannot find an alternative, but have minimized its use.
When the greedy Leftist, Bezos, raised the price on Amazon Prime shipping 20%, we put the pencil to it and found that we would be spending more on Prime membership than if we just paid for regular shipping.
We were surprised to find that without Prime, we are ordering less often...another savings. If more people get wise to this, Amazon may lose revenue in the coming quarter, so be wary of buying stock at the current astronomical price.
I use them for price comparison. Someone always beats them. Wouldnt buy from them anyway. I refuse to pay for the rope they want to hang me with.
By abusive return policy you mean the pro consumer return policy. You obviously prefer the policy of, if you bought it you are stuck with it. No matter if the website description is inaccurate, the product fails to do what is promised or the product fails shortly after purchase.
Very few people return products unnecessarily. Only fly by night dirtbags refuse to accept returns of their products.
Just dont expect hardly any warranty coverage from anything you buy on ebay. Most manufacturers issue warranties only to the original buyer and they consider buyers on ebay to be second buyers.
The few times I have checked Overstock.com, their pricing was significantly higher than regular retail stores (online and brick&mortar).
You can still donate to the NRA through the Amazon Smile program. They haven’t completely gone over the edge.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.