I stopped shopping at Amazon about a year ago. Too much overhead figuring out the good products, vs the scam products, vs the mediocre but pushed products.
Been using Newegg/BestBuy for electronics, Costco/Target/Walmart for home goods, local grocery stores for food, and Barnes and Noble for books. I used to be good at picking out the gems from the cruft on Amazon, but either it's gotten more difficult or I've lost my edge.
Also kinda nice having to wait again until I have a sizeable order to get free shipping. Much less junk.
Now that they tend to price match Amazon and vice-versa there really is no reason to buy from Amazon. If it's in my local stores BB gets it to me faster too.
I'm so horrifically disappointed every time I go in there. Their monitor selection is all super low-end trash, as is most of their electronics they sell (TVs, stereos, computers etc). You're lucky if they have an actual PC component in the store, there are bare shelves everywhere. They don't even offer a good selection of phones, accessories or memory cards. It's starting to feel like Fry's right before they went out of business. Overall, it feels like a store for people who need to buy an electronic item without knowing why or what they're gonna do with it.
> It's starting to feel like Fry's right before they went out of business.
It'd take a lot for it to get that bad. Towards the end, Fry's was filling entire aisles with random cheap junk unrelated to electronics like hand sanitizer, light bulbs, pepper spray, etc - and even with that, they were still having to wall off large sections of the store that they couldn't fill.
Best Buy's web site still carries some quality. It also has some random items you might not expect. I found a sling bag on their site in a size that had been sold out on the brand's site for months. These days BB and BHPhoto tend to be where I start my searches for electronic items when I know what I want.
If you order from Walmart and limit it to what is in their actual store then you know at least some human vetted it as safe for sale in the US. Walmart also lets 3rd party sellers on their website and yes most of that is drop shipped junk just like amazon.
Been using Newegg/BestBuy for electronics, Costco/Target/Walmart for home goods, local grocery stores for food, and Barnes and Noble for books. I used to be good at picking out the gems from the cruft on Amazon, but either it's gotten more difficult or I've lost my edge.
Also kinda nice having to wait again until I have a sizeable order to get free shipping. Much less junk.