|
I don't use it a lot except for things I can't get elsewhere, but due to geographic reasons, shipping costs and price gouging I'm likely an outlier. Of course, it's likely people in similar locations, lifestyles and situations will use or not use it for similar reasons.
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 14:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 08:09 |
|
|
Yeah, I wasn't posting that as a judgment or anything, it's just legitimately unusual nowadays. All the way back in 2016, 43% of US adults were shopping online several times per month or more. 79% were shopping online at least some of the time. In 2017, 45% of US adults did most of their holiday shopping online. It's probably going to be a majority or close to it this year. It's worth pointing out from that second link that the percentage of people shopping at locally owned stores is actually declining more rapidly than the number of people shopping at big box, outlet, or department stores.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 14:47
|
|
|
Probably declining with the locally owned stores full stop.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 14:49
|
|
|
Cheesus posted:My wife has the same attitude but i had to ask: Is it really better to not pay Amazon and instead pay Walmart or Target or any other major corporation? In my area, Amazon is at least contributing locally by paying the USPS for deliveries. If I were actually saving money by using Amazon Prime (and other people certainly do), then maybe it would make sense to take the money saved and give it to charity. But given the fact that in our situation the cost is the same, I can choose to direct that expense to sustaining my hometown instead of "maximizing efficiency".
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 14:59
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:Yeah, I wasn't posting that as a judgment or anything, it's just legitimately unusual nowadays. All the way back in 2016, 43% of US adults were shopping online several times per month or more. 79% were shopping online at least some of the time. In 2017, 45% of US adults did most of their holiday shopping online. It's probably going to be a majority or close to it this year. im not talking about how unusual it is or not, i just think the guy saying the only reason to not shop amazon is being anti-capitalist or poor is an idiot
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 15:09
|
|
|
mandatory lesbian posted:im not talking about how unusual it is or not, i just think the guy saying the only reason to not shop amazon is being anti-capitalist or poor is an idiot
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 15:14
|
|
|
Neon Noodle posted:We had prime for a while but then did the math and found out it was a wash. Now if we need stuff from Amazon we just wait and build up larger orders for free shipping. But also we’re getting more conscientious about buying locally from independent stores. I live in Boston so that is more possible than it is for a lot of people. I would rather give that $100 per year to the stores in my area by paying a slight price premium. Better they get the $ than Bezos. Everytime I try to buy from a store, they inevitably end up not having what I want and I have to go on Amazon anyway. Like, I was trying to get some soccer cleats. I went to a *soccer store*, and they barely had any cleats in my size at all. Went a giant mall, same thing. Ended up going on Amazon and just getting it there. I tried man, I loving tried. This also happens to me with pants. I went to a 2 or 3 stores looking for a slacks that would go with a suit. They carried literally every combination of size and length but 34x36. I'm in this weird area where I don't fit in the normal range of sizes but I'm also not fat. Again, I ended up ordering through Amazon anyway and would have saved time and gas if I didn't even bother with the store. I also wanted some catnip seeds so I can attract the little bastards to my yard  . A hardware store and the pet store next door both didn't have it. It's like c'mon man. Seems like unless you want something super common, you're ordering it online and that's it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 16:55
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:I feel like you've posted something along these lines in this thread before (or maybe it was someone else), but this is really, really unusual. I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, but it's not common at all to largely abstain from online shopping at this point and I honestly don't know anyone who does it. Not coworkers, not friends, not parents, not my parent's friends. If no one in your social circle routinely shops online in 2018 then your social circle is an outlier. it's really a function of how much poo poo you're buying if the poo poo you buy can't be had in a local store, then you're going to get it online pretty much none of the poo poo i buy isn't carried in a store near me. i live in a very metro area but also i dont buy a lot of poo poo, so
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 17:02
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:I feel like you've posted something along these lines in this thread before (or maybe it was someone else), but this is really, really unusual. I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, but it's not common at all to largely abstain from online shopping at this point and I honestly don't know anyone who does it. Not coworkers, not friends, not parents, not my parent's friends. If no one in your social circle routinely shops online in 2018 then your social circle is an outlier. Seriously. I'm actually a late adopter of this stuff. I knew about Ebay and Amazon and the rest of them in the late 90's and I didn't actually start buying anything online until around 08. The floodgates really didn't open until 2014. It is odd if it hasn't been integrated into your buying habits at this point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 18:33
|
|
|
.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 18:40
|
|
|
I've started buying less and less stuff from Amazon lately. I've been comparing prices often and Amazon is not the cheapest anymore, most local retailers or smaller, specialty online shops have what I need cheaper. And I live a mile from an Amazon DC and get my stuff same day or next. I've probably bought more from BestBuy and Walmart in the last 2 years than I have in the decade before.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 18:50
|
|
|
boner confessor posted:it's really a function of how much poo poo you're buying
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 19:37
|
|
|
FCKGW posted:I've started buying less and less stuff from Amazon lately. I've been comparing prices often and Amazon is not the cheapest anymore, most local retailers or smaller, specialty online shops have what I need cheaper. And I live a mile from an Amazon DC and get my stuff same day or next. I'm mostly the same, unless it is really esoteric stuff I buy stuff in store these days. Even when Amazon is slightly cheaper I tend to go for the brick and mortar since I trust it more. I've gotten some dodgy items from Amazon and I don't trust their reviews since they aggregate it for product (sometimes across a wide range of models too) and their shipping practices are atrocious.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 22:50
|
|
|
boner confessor posted:it's really a function of how much poo poo you're buying Maybe. That first study I linked to found that the primary driver for online shoppers was price. Even heavy online shoppers were more likely to purchase something in store if they could find it cheaper. This seems to track with big box stores being the most popular place to buy things by a large margin after online shopping. People are just buying their poo poo wherever they can get it the cheapest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 23:03
|
|
|
Cicero posted:Are you poor, or do you hang out with a really anti-capitalist crowd? I dropped it a long while back when 2 day delivery became 3-5 day. Not worth paying for at that point. Then Amazon got absurdly bad about being a clearinghouse for knockoff product, and I quit shopping there entirely.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 23:03
|
|
|
I'm really surprised at how many of you guys are saying that Amazon Prime takes longer than two days. I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon and I can't remember ever having something take longer than two days to reach me. Most of the time I get my order next day. I wonder if there are particular regions that are especially bad for some reason?
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 23:06
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:I'm really surprised at how many of you guys are saying that Amazon Prime takes longer than two days. I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon and I can't remember ever having something take longer than two days to reach me. Most of the time I get my order next day. I wonder if there are particular regions that are especially bad for some reason? I live in LA. Once in a while I would get things next day even on 2 day shipping, but I guess they figured it out and make drat sure it's 2 days, no more and no less.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 23:13
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:I'm really surprised at how many of you guys are saying that Amazon Prime takes longer than two days. I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon and I can't remember ever having something take longer than two days to reach me. Most of the time I get my order next day. I wonder if there are particular regions that are especially bad for some reason? Probably depends on how far a fulfillment center is. Once Amazon built one in the Minneapolis area the majority of my packages get to me next day.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 00:47
|
|
|
It is shocking how I rely on a 2 day delivery time and my purchases are made with that expectation in mind. Like I broke a mic stand last week so I ordered a new one on Tuesday because I have practice tonight. I got home from work and it wasn’t there but 10 minutes after that someone rolled up in a minivan and delivered it. If you come to expect reliable delivery windows amazon becomes a crutch because of how easy the ordering process is. That said, I had to read dozens of reviews and search through a bunch of “related products” to wind up at a mic stand that wasn’t clearly absolute poo poo. Basically if you know exactly the brand and mode you’re looking for amazon is fine but if you search “microphone stand” they know they’ve hooked a complete rube that they can swindle for a lovely product. E: ok the ordering process sucks rear end when you consider my last point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 00:58
|
|
|
I live on a remote backwater island so anything shipping related is slow and over priced. We used to have a postal distribution centre on the island but they closed it down, so now if you want to mail something to someone down the street it ends up going all the way to the mainland by ferry or plane, then all the way back. I've run into a ton of shipping problems when online shopping where there will be huge sticker-shock customs fees or random unexpected semi-illegal COD charges. Had a small package sail over the sea like 6 times because I didn't want to pay their outrageous fee, got them to waive it, but the package got stuck in a loop in their system. When it came to local delivery it was flagged as "refused COD, return to hub" but at the hub centre on the mainland it was flagged that the COD has been overridden and deliver it anyways so they kept playing ping pong with my package and no one I called knew how to fix it. USA/Canada shipping is a god drat nightmare. Meanwhile I can order tons of stuff from anywhere else in the world and it often comes faster, cheaper, and never with surprise fees.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 01:57
|
|
|
There are waaay too many poo poo alibaba-rebranded products on amazon with pumped up fake 4 star reviews. I would compare it to the google play store in regards to levels of garbage. I shouldn’t have to plug every item I’m considering into a site like fakespot to see if it’s the real deal or not.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 02:39
|
|
|
Spring Heeled Jack posted:There are waaay too many poo poo alibaba-rebranded products on amazon with pumped up fake 4 star reviews. I would compare it to the google play store in regards to levels of garbage. At least you can filter down to just 1 star reviews with Amazon unlike Google Play. The Google Play store reviews are completely unusable because they make it impossible to usefully sort them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 02:52
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:USA/Canada shipping is a god drat nightmare. Meanwhile I can order tons of stuff from anywhere else in the world and it often comes faster, cheaper, and never with surprise fees. I'll second that emotion. I'm a Canadian-born Brit who lives in the Great Lakes region of the US now, and everything I order from Europe always comes noticeably faster than anything from Canada... despite the intervening ocean and the thousands of extra kilometres it has to travel. I once ordered a book from Germany and another from Montréal, both via Amazon on the same day; I did not have tracking information for either so I could not follow them or know when they were actually sent from the seller. The book from Germany arrived 6 calendar days later; the one from Canada took 17.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 03:03
|
|
|
I buy clothes irl but just about everything else on Amazon these days. Running errands just takes too long in the city traffic and adding more stores to the route would mean I spend all my time at work, at a store, or in traffic. And prime video is p sweet
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 04:20
|
|
|
You know what I like about shopping on Amazon? I don't have to be clothed or sober. I can shop drunk at 4 a.m. in my underwear and nobody will care. Then they'll deliver it right to my door! It's incredible.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 04:28
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:You know what I like about shopping on Amazon? I don't have to be clothed or sober. I can shop drunk at 4 a.m. in my underwear and nobody will care. They actually do care.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 04:45
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:You know what I like about shopping on Amazon? I don't have to be clothed or sober. I can shop drunk at 4 a.m. in my underwear and nobody will care. Bah, I can do that at the all-night Kroger. I don't have an Amazon account, much less prime, and have maybe 2-3 times asked a friend to get me something I couldn't find anywhere else through theirs. I avoid it mostly for ethical reasons, but the lovely search function makes it a lot easier. It makes for kind of a fun holier-than-thou thing to bring up in the smugger affluent liberal gatherings.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 05:04
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:I feel like you've posted something along these lines in this thread before (or maybe it was someone else), but this is really, really unusual. I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, but it's not common at all to largely abstain from online shopping at this point and I honestly don't know anyone who does it. Not coworkers, not friends, not parents, not my parent's friends. If no one in your social circle routinely shops online in 2018 then your social circle is an outlier. I'd have to actively buy tons of crap I neither need nor want to make Prime worth it for me. As it stands I buy maybe one or two things from them a month, and don't see the point in paying extra for 2-day shipping when stuff gets here in less than a week anyway. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 05:44
|
|
|
Haifisch posted:You don't have to abstain from online shopping to order little enough that Prime is a bad deal. That goes double if you check prices on places that aren't Amazon, or want stuff that's hard to sift through on Amazon(aka 'basically everything that resists their super-basic categorization options' and 'any product type that has a ton of dodgy sellers on Amazon'). Just like how some retail shoppers got fooled into thinking Walmart's always the cheapest, lots of people don't seem to realize that Amazon isn't always the cheapest or best place to shop online. loving Best Buy managed to beat Amazon's price on something for me recently, as an example. Only by a couple dollars, but still.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 05:57
|
|
|
That's especially bad. You do not want to become too dependent on any one company's ecosystem.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 06:09
|
|
|
Prime video is pretty lame as far as included with prime for free content goes
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 06:20
|
|
|
NaanViolence posted:That's especially bad. You do not want to become too dependent on any one company's ecosystem. What's this bullshit. There's rarely any advantage to intentionally shattering your service usage. And besides a lot of things Amazon has now weren't Amazon's when Prime first started (and incidentally cost a good grip less).
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 06:26
|
|
|
Yeah Prime Video sucks. But Twitch Turbo was $99/year and is now included in Prime so that's $99 less each year just on that service. There's also the Washington Post which is $120/year for a digital subscription, now $24/year for Prime members.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 06:34
|
|
|
When I lived in England I used Amazon to buy nearly everything except food. If I wanted to buy something specific from a brick-and-mortar store it meant a 20-minute drive, paying to park, then walking to the store (5-10 minutes), and usually finding that the stores didn't carry whatever I was looking for because they're naturally space-constricted and have limited stock. Countless times I would attempt to support local business and end up going home empty-handed to buy poo poo off Amazon instead. Whereas out here in the American Midwest if I want something I can rock up to one of these massive warehouse sized department stores and they often have what I'm looking for because they're loving huge. Except for books because B&N's selection is terrible.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 10:18
|
|
|
Pay for twitch? Isn't it a thing to watch other people play video games?
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 19:01
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Pay for twitch? Isn't it a thing to watch other people play video games? Yes, and you can pay money to the streamers you watch all day if you want
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 19:04
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 19:10
|
|
|
Raldikuk posted:Prime video is pretty lame as far as included with prime for free content goes It'll lose it soon but they've had all of HBO sans GoT and a few other recent series for the last few years. And some of their originals are are really good. Plus random good movies/TV. As part of the combined Prime value bundle it's a great deal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 05:46
|
|
|
Zachack posted:And some of their originals are are really good The Marveolus mrs. Maisel owns
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 06:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 08:09 |
|
|
Fame Douglas posted:
On which end, for the merchant or the consumer? It isn't hard to get around credit card fees if you know what you are doing, hell my mom min/maxes credit card rewards in order to get the most out of the benefits without paying a penny in fees or interest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2018 14:09
|
|
