Alternatives to Amazon Shopping - Comments Page 2

I like Amazon; however, I shop around & if the item is available at a lower price, the brick and mortar vendor usually will honor it I use my debit card maybe once or twice a year, just to keep it active in case I need it. I like the idea of getting disposable "credit card" but I'm too lazy to do it. Maybe next time.

I read reviews on Amazon but often find cheaper prices on Ebay. Am considering not renewing Prime membership. I have purchased a few things on Jet and Walmart but overall not too impressed with those sites.

I've become a heavy (but not exclusive) Amazon (Prime) customer, and a very satisfied one. The 2-day delivery is great, especially since it often includes Sundays, and sometimes even arrives in one day to beat their guarantee. The reviews are enormously helpful for filtering out bad products and locating good ones, as well as getting excellenty advice on subtle issues when using them (and, when applicable, assembling them).

Brick and mortar stores often have a price-matching policy. There have been occasions, for example, when I've purchased an item from Lowe's after showing them a printout from Amazon of the identical product and having Lowe's match the lower price.

Also, I use H&R Block's At-Home tax software to prepare my taxes. If you end up expecting a refund from the IRS, it gives you the option of converting some or all of that refund (in $100 increments) into an Amazon gift card, and then getting a 10% bonus added in. Normally I would arrange my tax withholding so as to not get a refund (i.e., not give the government the interest-free use of my money), while still not underpaying too much so as to avoid a penalty. But this year I deliberately arranged to over-withhold, generating a refund of $1,670. $1,600 went into the Amazon gift card, which produced a $160 bonus, for a total of $1,760. And yes, based on recent history, I expect to spend at least that much at Amazon this coming year. That's a better ROI than I can get from any savings account. So it's something for people to consider for next year.

I used to regularly buy CD's from Amazon and never had any problems however they stopped providing track samples to listen to and because I couldn't hear what the artists sounded like I stopped buying from them.
Alibaba is my favorite online shopping site. (except food, music or movies)

I have made several purchases through Amazon.ca and a few through Amazon.com, which costs more but sometimes has the items at a better price even with the exchange and duty charges.
Recently I have had problems with a couple of sellers on Amazon.ca. I returned an SD Card under warranty. The seller sent an email mid Feb. 2017 saying that the replacement was being shipped and I should receive it withing 5 to 15 days. After several emails through Amazon.ca and apologies from the seller, as of Apr 11, I have not rec'd the replacement SD Card yet. I had requested that a refund be issued. The seller emailed and told me to return the SD Card when I rec'd it and a refund would be issued. I can't return what I haven't rec'd yet.
Another seller I placed an order with through Amazon.ca supposedly shipped the item mid Feb. 2017 and a date of Apr 7 as the delivery date. I haven't rec'd that item yet.
Combined, these two orders cost me over $100 and were charged to my Credit Card.
So, I am thinking that any savings I garnered by purchasing on Amazon have been lost due to these two sellers not fulfilling their obligations.
Better to buy at a local retailer and pay more for the items than to lose hundreds of dollars with no recourse to get it back.

I don't buy from Walmart as I know that all their employees are on welfare because it pays such crappy wages. Sometime, just for fun, go into your browser and enter "walmart lawsuits"-- they are a truly sleezy company. You can get free shipping from Amazon with an order of over $35 if you wait just a few days longer to get your purchase. Lately, I been getting purchases much faster than a few years ago & they often come in boxes marked "prime" And returning items is a snap with never a hitch. And as to Amazons recent decision to start charging sales taxes so that makes your purchase more expensive than other sources, you do know that you have to report those sales taxes you didn't pay on your income tax form, don't you?

I've used Tmart.com a while ago. They had good prices but the stuff came from China. They now have warehouses in the states for a lot of their items. They have just about everything except food. I used to get a kick reading reviews and their comments to the reviews were written by people with just a basic understanding of English. Haven't been there in a while so don't know if that has changed.

By using Amazon's credit card, I get 5% back on purchases on their site, which beats the 2.9% you got from jet.com. And to echo another commenter, refuse to buy from Walmart because of the shabby way they treat their employees.

If you collect frequent flyer miles consider shopping through your airline of choice's shopping portal. For every $1 spent you can get an additional 1 to 20+ miles. http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/blog/3801194/preserve-expiring-frequent-flyer-miles-with-online-shopping-and-get-bonus-miles-to-boot/

At one time I was a huge Amazon fan. I still use the site too much but there are several things that have changed about Amazon.

First the two day free shipping which at one time really was two day free shipping has devolved to where today it is often 3 or 4 or more days and yet is still called 2 day free. It used to be calculated from when you ordered an item now it is from when they ship it. Not at all the same thing.

Second, Amazon now uses individualized pricing algorithms to determine the pricing you see and those algorithms take into account the fact that you are a Prime Member and the price you see will often today be higher than the price that a non-prime member will see on the same item. This for me is a real deal killer with Amazon and is an abuse of their customers and the massive amount of data they have collected on everyone who does business with them.

There are many other Amazon Prime features that are nice to haves but as the price has risen for the Amazon Prime service, the fact Amazon now abuses this service through their pricing scheme makes it a doubly bad deal in many ways.

I have bought quite a few things through Jet.com and for selected items they offer very attractive prices and their free shipping of even bulky or heavy items is a very good policy. But like all shopping sites you really have to compare prices, coupons and offers. Like Bob,, I am completely puzzled by Buy.com and the changes there, where they went from a premier place to buy electronics, cd's, dvd's and games to an unreliable eBay wannabe with a terrible name.

I am a bit sad about Amazon, but it is not unexpected that as they grew and became dominant that they would go from a growth driven price slasher to a company that now is much more focused on their bottom line and not nearly so focused on customer service and great pricing. I personally find it very disturbing that they now use what they know about us and complex pricing models to gouge every last penny they can extract from us.