I wanted to get printer photo paper for my printer, a Canon. I went to Walmart, They had nothing. Went to Target, they had one pack of photo paper and it was crazy expensive, so I went to micro center. That one was just as expensive. So finally I went back to Amazon, which I was trying to avoid, and saw the price 25 to 40% lower than anywhere I had been. Literally everything that I was looking for, I could find within seconds. Not even Best buy has even close to the amount of inventory or variety, even when you’re shopping online…
Therefore, I think Amazon has a literal monopoly in the tech industry right now, you’re literally forced to buy from them, because unless you have the money and financial fortitude to protest with your wallet, you’re going to be buying from them. There’s no other choice. They have so aggressively and dominantly taken over the supply chain market that no other tech company can currently compete with them in any aspect at all. You will be paying 40 to 50% more on everything by cutting out Amazon, and no one has the money for that anymore unless you’re upper middle class or above
You were looking for office supplies: did you check an office supply store?
Definitely would have been my first choice to look also, but do you think that staples or office max is going to have something cheaper than amazon?
It depends on the paper based on some quick searching, but I can pickup the paper from staples faster than Amazon will deliver it.
This would be a great point if we were discussing how fast you can get the item and not the cost of the item.
I’m thinking op isn’t the brightest tool on the short bus. Walmart has a far better market place/e-commerce platform than shitass Amazon. Same delivery windows of 1-3 says. Can order groceries that aren’t fuckin wierd marketplace seller with a garage packed with dented pallets of Nutella, wild rice and 5hr energy drinks lol. The groceries actually come from the store or the next nearest one. They basically already had the warehouse infrastructure. The dumped billions with a fuckin B last year just on developing and expanding on drone deliveries. Plus when your order gets fucked up from Walmart… YOU TALK TO A FUCKIN PERSON WHO ISNT HALF WAY ACCROSS THE PLANET WITH 3 PRELOADED REPLIES TO FIX EVERY PROBLEM. Fuuuuuuuuuck Amazon customer service. But also unless op was looking for the holy grail of printers I will bet my annual salary that Walmart’s online store had the exact printer they were looking for or one that is an exact copy but another brand. So dramatic to write this whole post up for such a dumb reason lol.
Edit: Also no person or brand selling on Amazon is exclusively selling on Amazon. If the printer wasn’t available anywhere it’s prolly a discontinued model or a fuck up by the mfg. Such a dumb post.
So you are arguing its a duopoly?
How did Walmart become the good guy in all this shit? What the ever living fuck is going on with capitalism?
I gave up on Amazon a while ago except for very niche things, and Walmart if great. Orde groceries, they tell me to come get them, dude loads them up in my car and tells me have a good day. It’s amazing. No extra charge, nothing. Don’t have to deal with any of the people of Walmart.
Here in Germany there are still plenty of independent online retailers and they’re competitive with Amazon. I always try to avoid buying from Amazon and for tech products that’s usually no problem.
Please name an actual good store that can compete with Amazon. Now, I’m lucky my local book store has a digital front where I can order but when it has to be something more general, Amazon remains the only address where the majority of orders didn’t range between faulty and actual horror stories so far.
Same in Spain. I don’t even have an Amazon account, btw.
I’m also in Spain, and only use Amazon for things i genuinely cannot find elsewhere, which happens to be like once a year
Here in Italy practically no one is as quick as Amazon tho
So? What’s the deal in waiting a couple of days?
Exactly. I convinced my wife that we really don’t need everything to arrive in 0-2 days, it’s totally fine if things take 3-5 days. So I cancelled our Prime sub, and it’s been absolutely fine. In fact, we spend a bit less due to that minimum order size. We still usually get things in 2-3 days if we go w/ Amazon (we’re right next to a hub), but we’ve been buying from more retailers now that we plan for longer delivery times.
Sometimes I need stuff faster.
And usually it’s more than a couple of days. For example I always order PC parts from other stores, and some of them take over two weeks to deliver. Of course that’s not an urgent purchase… Usually.
Let me guess, the EU actually put laws in place to ”remediate that problem” like a ”functioning government”.
Netherlands here and as well we have so many local shops that outbeat Amazon that it isn’t even fair. There is a very small chance I buy something of Amazon, think the only time I did was for a replacement item for a Dyson.
I think “beat out” may have been what you meant. And in this example I would probably just say they “beat” Amazon.
How dare you expose my mobile typing and/or my not-native language speaker! /s
Do you have some good examples? I recently moved there, and want to avoid Amazon, when possible
In more general terms, you can look up the item at e.g. Idealo.de or other product comparison sites and then decide where to buy. Amazon is most often not the cheapest, even including additional delivery cost
I like to order tech stuff from mindfactory.de
Just don’t let them assemble anything. I am serious. Whatever they can mess up and break, they will. It’s honestly astonishing how careless they handle sinfully expensive high end parts. And sure you can generally send it back and wait another week or two, but only after making several calls with their customer service. So yeah you better prepare to build your machine yourself. This is not really optional.
My last post being unclear. Amazon has about as much a strangle hold on the tech sector as Walmart has on retail. They don’t. You get the product you paid for. AWS is no different.
But the Walmart difference are brands and reduced quality in brand names. There are weird brands on Amazon but I’m not aware of any quality reductions when paying for known brands.
Amazon has so many false brands and knock off shit it’s ridiculous. Hardly any of it works yet it has a 4.8 review. It’s like Temuat this point for so much of it.
Walmart might have their “Walmart specials”, but I don’t have to worry about their stuff catching fire of giving me lead poisoning.
If you stick to brand you recognize on Amazon, this isn’t an issue. I’m not defending Amazon I’m just saying these points aren’t as valid as they sound.
I was thinking about this recently after a frustrating trip to a brick and mortar store that was missing the specific item I wanted to purchase which should have been easily available.
Has it always been this bad and we just accepted it until Amazon came around and carried most everything, or have stores significantly reduced the inventory they carry to the point where they have become practically useless except as a showroom? It extends to things I only want to purchase in store. Why do clothing and shoe stores never have my size in stock of the item I want? Clothing has become so poor in quality (even expensive stuff) and I’m hard enough to fit that unless it is an item I already have and need to replace I only want to buy stuff I can try on first.
As much as I’d like to avoid Amazon, the lack of inventory at other retailers really pushes me towards them. Why would I pay more for slow shipping from the East coast because the local store doesn’t carry anything when Amazon delivers in 1-2 days for free?
I’ve also been really struggling recently when trying to buy items that are less than $15. Amazon often charges double what it should cost for the items, but at the same time, local stores don’t carry what I’m looking for. I can find it for the right price online, but then the shipping cost makes it more expensive than Amazon.
The American consumers worship of convenience/price above all else is precisely what got us here. Just like how everyone discusses how toxic twitter is… On Twitter.
In regards to twitter - Of course it’s where everyone is, nobody will leave.
In regards to Amazon - Of course everyone else is struggling, nobody will pay $3 more to buy it from them instead of Amazon.
I’m not saying there aren’t times it does end up having to be amazon or that you can’t be lazy and use amazon occasionally. I have prime myself and do use it on occasion (probably wouldn’t if I didn’t split it with my ex though.) I AM saying nothing will ever change so long as people REFUSE to even consider their habits for a second.
the shipping cost makes it more expensive than Amazon.
There is a lesson there folks
That lesson/related lesson:
We cannot accept capitalism’s conception of economic relations as “free and private,” because contracts are not made among economic equals and because they give rise to social structures which undemocratically confer power upon some over others. Such relationships are undemocratic in that the citizens involved have not freely deliberated upon the structure of those institutions and how social roles should be distributed within them (e.g., the relationship between capital and labor in the workplace or men and women in child rearing).
It’s a mix of both. When Amazon came around, stores got less traffic and had to get rid of niche products, and because shelf space was so important, there could only be so many products carried by a store.
Wait, your Canon printer needs a specific type of photo paper, not just generic photo paper that’s been around for inkjet printers for a very long time now? Have printers really become that enshittified?
Canon printers specifically are designed to take Canon specific photo paper. Even the drivers on your Windows PC are programmed to understand what those photo papers are, and you have to match up to them. If you use some generic paper, the prints will never come out right.
Canon printers specifically are designed to take Canon specific photo paper.
OP, this is what you should be complaining about.
I believe they are sublimation printers, which require specific inks and papers. I seem to remeber that they produce very long lasting prints, which ordinary inkjets (even pigment) can’t achieve.
Here in Canada, I find the prices pretty neck and neck. Small items tend to be a bit cheaper at the stores, since there is very little overhead for them to carry small items compared to Amazon’s picking and delivery logistics. Big items tend to be a bit cheaper on Amazon. For tech specifically, Best Buy price matches items, so it’s not that bad… Memory express and CC sometimes have lower prices than Amazon too (see PCPartPicker).
The main reason to use Amazon is you can easily find some really obscure stuff. Then again, you can buy direct from manufacturer, like Vevor, for often cheaper.
Walmart online is eating Amazon they don’t have a monopoly
Only in the US unfortunately
Walmart online is pretty good for most things. Not everything. But if I can get it on Walmart I do… Walmart plus is pretty good. It currently comes with Paramount Plus, which doesn’t show ads with my pi-hole (so far, Roku), and compared with Amazon Prime showing ads…
Anyway fuck Amazon.
It’s pretty amazing to me that a company hasanagednto become so reviled that Walmart is the better and more ethical option.
It’s like Elon Musk has managed to make Mark Zuckerberg seem like a good person by comparison. Or Trump was so awful that Democrats look back and think “huh, GWB was a decent president”
I canceled prime a year ago as I can no longer support the monopoly and destruction to everyone else
the money and time you spent traveling to three different stores outweighs the couple bucks more you would have spent at walmart. protip: next time try staples or office depot. also, taking a moral position means sacrifice, and often times that’s financial.
Microcenter price matches amazon, you could’ve bought it for the same price at microcenter. Also, you can try ebay, I’ve been buying more stuff from ebay and the experience is pretty good.
I’ll say one problem is that for a number of items, there’s a technicality in the supply chain that exempts stuff from the price match. I don’t know about Microcenter, but have seen it in other contexts.
For example “Oh, Amazon is selling a 120 pack, but we only carry 125 packs, so it’s not equivalent”. Or in the most egregious, “You have the price for model number 762LAZ, but we stock 762LWM”, and you search and find out those two model numbers are absolutely identical, but “AZ” models come in a box with an Amazon logo printed on it.
1/2 the time on eBay (for new stuff) it’s someone sending a gift package from Amazon and pocketing the difference.
Micro center does that? Because I asked them about that and they said they will only do it for certain items. That’s really strange honestly. I would also feel a little bit bad about it, because Amazon is clearly trying a loss leader strategy to mark down the product prices to ridiculous levels, I’m sure that would not help local small businesses if I can’t afford it, so I wouldn’t want to exploit that
Ive had different stores & managers give me different policies. One told me the items needed to be shipped and sold from Amazon. Another told me it was only for items that weren’t on sale. Another told me I couldn’t price match a part that was in a bundle purchase. But yes, they respect price match to almost every major competitor.
Best Buy does some price matching as well.
Same with most brick and mortar retailers. When in doubt, ask, and they’ll probably say yes, they just need to confirm the price on their own device (so you’re not manipulating images or whatever on your phone).
Do you mean you went to walmart and target physically, and then directly to amazons website, and no other online shop? There are a ton of competing online stores with similar or better prices than Amazon, often stores specializing in the product you’re buying. Instead of looking up amazon specifically, look up the item youre looking for
Exactly. For tech stuff, B&H Photo and Newegg are generally pretty good, and there are still niche sites within that depending on what you’re looking for (e.g. keyboards and mice have multiple high quality vendors). At the very least, it’s worth using the “shopping” feature on your search engine (I use DuckDuckGo and check their “shopping” tab to get a feel for which vendors sell a given thing).
I’ve been buying a ton of stuff recently on eBay because I usually don’t mind buying used if it’s something more expensive (i.e. cell phone, console games, etc), just be aware that they have different standards than other retailers (e.g. if it’s a refurb phone, you could get an aftermarket screen). But as long as you read the listing carefully, it’s usually all spelled out.
Can’t trust NewEgg anymore. They got bought by a chinese company and their support and experience have gone completely to trash.
That’s fair. However, I’ve never had to interact with their support, or Amazon’s for that matter, so it honestly isn’t something I care strongly about.
That’s fine. Before I knew about the buyout, I wounder up with several broken or defective items, and finally had to reverse charges on a laptop power supply, because they were so bad to deal with.
Newegg has started selling shit products since last couple years.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8xNAti0AnfyrhbiKreMAL30MLGfTMqrN
Right. I remember their interview w/ Newegg, and it seemed like they handled it really well, and the utter lack of new negative videos by GN seems to indicate that they’ve made some positive changes (or maybe GN forgot to follow up?).
That said, I haven’t bought anything from them for 2-3 years, so I don’t have any recent experience. I hope they’ve improved, because they used to be my go-to electronics retailer.
Remember that time like 10 years ago, when some local news station was doing a story about Amazon having all the best tech deals, and then the one co-host butts in and says “You know why they have a monopoly, right? RIGHT??? SHE KNOWS WHAT I’M TALKIN ABOUT!!!”
And everybody was giving blank looks, like “Uh…no? What ARE you talking about?”
And he’s like “Because they sell all the sex toys, and deliver it right to your house! Ladies? Right??? IT’S CONVIENENT!!!”
And everybody just had their mouth open in shock like “WTF ARE YOU DOING???”
and then he goes on and on about dildos, as his cohost continually tries to move on, but he keeps talking about dildos. And she’s looking like she wants to strangle him.
I do remember that. It’s not often you get to witness workplace sexual harassment broadcast live on air.
No, but I enjoyed your retelling.
You should watch news bloopers on youtube. There’s so many classics.
“…I so pale…” *You’re on!" Immediately goes into news reporter mode as her cohost giggles
Also, a woman talking to the weatherman: “How bout that 69, huh? I know you’re excited about the no rain, but how bout that 69???” Rest of the news crew stonewalls.
Or the woman doing an on-location report about a guy who grills hamburgers for his resteraunt.
“Now, can I try one of these?”
"Absolutely. I would LOVE to see my meat in your mouth!
“NOT THE FIRST TIME I’VE HEARD THAT!!!”
There was the cohost who was in a grape smashing competition to make wine, and she yelled “WAIT!!!” and then started stomping extra fast herself. Basically cheating. And then she slipped and fell face first off an 8 foot drop right onto her face. And she starts groaning in pain.
And he was right!
Lolllll found it. https://youtu.be/cZ0qpPTH1ow?si=b17mHt0cXsDWK1O_
Wow… a morning broadcast, apparently? Imagine seeing that with your kids before school. “Dad, what’s a ‘sex toy’?”
That look on her face is priceless.
Not as bad as promised. I mean he has a point.
Never saw that but that is hilarious.
It would help if you went to the right stores first. Try Office Max, Staples, Office Depot, etc.
The only things I buy off Amazon are the niche items from stores that only exist in the top largest cities in the USA. It’s difficult to find fountain pen stuff elsewhere, and most of the stores have a front on Amazon.
I don’t know why people buy everyday stuff on Amazon. It’s usually more expensive and you have to wait for it.
My old roommate bought a single roll of aluminum foil from amazon one time and I still think about it.
Hell even Costco probably has photo paper
There are plenty of things to complain about with Amazon but, in my opinion, this ain’t it.
I went back to Amazon, which I was trying to avoid, and saw the price 25 to 40% lower than anywhere
Amazon typically has prices the same as any other retail store. Your experience is an exception. You can’t make a huge accusation like that based on a single product.
Not even Best buy has even close to the amount of inventory or variety, even when you’re shopping online…
You can’t compare a local brick and mortar store to Amazon. A vast array of hundreds of giant warehouses is never going to have the same variety of products as a handful of retail stores.
In addition, they leverage their warehouses to decrease shipping costs and local emissions. Which do you think costs more and causes more carbon emissions, a hundred people in old giant SUV beaters driving to and from a B&M location to shop for a single product or a single (often electric) delivery vehicle delivering a vast array of products to a hundred locations and are probably going to drive right by your house whether you order something or not?
Also Walgreens carries lots of different printing services and supplies and are pretty ubiquitous in large cities, so maybe give them a try.
I want to show some love to B&H Photo. They’re one of my go to’s specifically for tech stuff.
I feel like people give up on in store if they can’t find it at a big box store and go to the online equivalent of a big box store (Amazon).
Anybody who puts in a little effort should be able to find a specialty store either in person or online.
I got beat up on here for stating that Amazon delivery was greener for the exact reasons you said. Plus, some of my Amazon comes via USPS, which is driving by my house every day.
I wish they actually committed to that and had drop boxes. It really bothers me how much packaging is used everywhere in every business when it can be avoided.
Reliable and fast delivery services also means less space devoted to parking lots and can generally be a really good way to transition communities away from car centric infrastructure. People just hate because cynicism is way easier than thinking critically.
Agreed as to Walgreens. Walgreens has surprised me with their photo and printing options. They are also located in the burbs, so that is nice.
You tried three in person places and then went straight to Amazon? Why not trying to buy directly from the manufacturer? You clearly didn’t try at all. Ignoring the fact that there are still plenty of other retail stores, you didn’t even try the online shops of any of your retail stores.
I frequently buy stuff online from Target because they also do free shipping, it usually arrives in 2-3 days, and they have somewhat frequent deals. So I’ll get a similar or lower price vs Amazon and still get it relatively quickly. Oh, and I can check inventory of my local stores if I really need something same-day. That way I don’t have to drive around all that much, I’ll just order for same-day pickup and grab whatever it is on the way home from work (and I pass like 3 Targets on the way home).
So I almost never need to buy regular things from Amazon. Between Costco, Costco.com, Target, Home Depot, and eBay, most of my bases are covered. For the rest, I search a bit before going back to Amazon.
I used to spend several thousand dollars at Amazon every year, and now it’s a few hundred. I’m not “boycotting” them or anything, I just prefer other retailers because I don’t those alternatives to disappear.
