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I have to wonder if there's an viable alternative to Amazon? It sucks to ask because there's plenty of third party sellers on Amazon that are better than Amazon

I have to wonder if there's an viable alternative to Amazon? It sucks to ask because there's plenty of third party sellers on Amazon that are better than Amazon. It just seems like the baby and bath water situation for me.

snovv_crash 10y ago
I've actually had really good luck with Ebay recently. Also Ebay seems to stock some much more obscure stuff which Amazon wouldn't touch, and even when both have it Ebay has exactly the same thing for cheaper.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  eBay all the way. eBay bucks and shopping portal cashback are icing on the cake.[1] eBay Daily Deals are often good. Sometimes for electronics refurbs and last model items are on the Daily Deals but often new current model stuff too. Got a great deal on my current model phone from an eBay Daily Deal. I buy several 10% off gas cards too when they come up. (New) hard drives are usually cheapest on eBay. Lots of traditional retailers have eBay stores as well. I've bought from Newegg's eBay store more times than I can count, for example. Manufacturers also have eBay stores. There's a lot of room for niche products but it seems a lot less overwhelming than Amazon is with all their private label stuff and poor search results. Lots of good selection of used stuff as well. Do I really need a new Chromecast? Nope, used is half the price and works just as well and is better for the environment. I also hear it's a good place to get uncommon sized bras. eBay has its flaws too though, avoid Chinese megasellers like the plague. Its usually a lot easier to spot a fake or shoddy product on eBay than on Amazon. I've found eBay's customer support to be good when you have a problem and an unreasonable seller. [1] The good thing about eBay cashback portals is they rarely have restrictions other than giftcard restrictions. Target.com may have 2% cash back but excludes Apple products and Bose products. I've never seen brand exclusions on eBay's cash back through shopping portals. There's usually a 1-2% cash back portal for eBay and eBay bucks are a minimum 2% eBay gift card as long as you have over $5.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >eBay has its flaws too though, avoid Chinese megasellers like the plague. This is a flaw with Amazon, not Ebay. Ebay makes the Chinese sellers very, very easy to avoid: you just look at the selection list on the left side, and click "US Sellers only" or "North American sellers only". Voila! No Chinese sellers in the search results. Amazon makes this completely impossible: it's very hard to tell where a product is being shipped from on Amazon, and usually you have to go through checkout to see the shipping times and infer from that.
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  Except that ebay has issues with the same fake products that Amazon does. A good chunk of the cables, memory products, silver ingots, etc are fake on ebay. The one difference with Amazon is that if you buy from a specific seller you trust, you know you're getting it from that seller since ebay doesn't have the co-mingling of merchandise issue that Amazon does.
dec0dedab0de 10y ago
Once you know, you Newegg
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  Not sure if that applies anymore. Recent HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711353 Go follow the link to techpowerup and you will see 89 comments. Most of them quite negative about the current state of Newegg. The complaints seem to date to before Newegg was purchased by a Chinese company. Ironically, many of the complaints there say that Amazon is better. Ha. It seems like they all suck now!
vlozko 10y ago
For me, my biggest pain point with dealing with different vendors is the checkout process,having to create a new account and constantly provide credit card information (I avoid storing my info, if possible). I'm really looking forward to Apple Pay for the web being more widespread. A few weeks ago I was looking for a vacuum part and found it cheapest at newegg.com. Got to checkout, and to my pleasant surprise, there was an option to pay with Apple Pay. It was such a stupidly easy process that newegg got a far more loyal customer out of me.

snovv_crash 10y ago

I've actually had really good luck with Ebay recently. Also Ebay seems to stock some much more obscure stuff which Amazon wouldn't touch, and even when both have it Ebay has exactly the same thing for cheaper.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
eBay all the way. eBay bucks and shopping portal cashback are icing on the cake.[1] eBay Daily Deals are often good. Sometimes for electronics refurbs and last model items are on the Daily Deals but often new current model stuff too. Got a great deal on my current model phone from an eBay Daily Deal. I buy several 10% off gas cards too when they come up. (New) hard drives are usually cheapest on eBay. Lots of traditional retailers have eBay stores as well. I've bought from Newegg's eBay store more times than I can count, for example. Manufacturers also have eBay stores. There's a lot of room for niche products but it seems a lot less overwhelming than Amazon is with all their private label stuff and poor search results. Lots of good selection of used stuff as well. Do I really need a new Chromecast? Nope, used is half the price and works just as well and is better for the environment. I also hear it's a good place to get uncommon sized bras. eBay has its flaws too though, avoid Chinese megasellers like the plague. Its usually a lot easier to spot a fake or shoddy product on eBay than on Amazon. I've found eBay's customer support to be good when you have a problem and an unreasonable seller. [1] The good thing about eBay cashback portals is they rarely have restrictions other than giftcard restrictions. Target.com may have 2% cash back but excludes Apple products and Bose products. I've never seen brand exclusions on eBay's cash back through shopping portals. There's usually a 1-2% cash back portal for eBay and eBay bucks are a minimum 2% eBay gift card as long as you have over $5.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >eBay has its flaws too though, avoid Chinese megasellers like the plague. This is a flaw with Amazon, not Ebay. Ebay makes the Chinese sellers very, very easy to avoid: you just look at the selection list on the left side, and click "US Sellers only" or "North American sellers only". Voila! No Chinese sellers in the search results. Amazon makes this completely impossible: it's very hard to tell where a product is being shipped from on Amazon, and usually you have to go through checkout to see the shipping times and infer from that.
JohnTHaller 10y ago
Except that ebay has issues with the same fake products that Amazon does. A good chunk of the cables, memory products, silver ingots, etc are fake on ebay. The one difference with Amazon is that if you buy from a specific seller you trust, you know you're getting it from that seller since ebay doesn't have the co-mingling of merchandise issue that Amazon does.

dec0dedab0de 10y ago

Once you know, you Newegg

PhantomGremlin 10y ago
Not sure if that applies anymore. Recent HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711353 Go follow the link to techpowerup and you will see 89 comments. Most of them quite negative about the current state of Newegg. The complaints seem to date to before Newegg was purchased by a Chinese company. Ironically, many of the complaints there say that Amazon is better. Ha. It seems like they all suck now!

vlozko 10y ago

For me, my biggest pain point with dealing with different vendors is the checkout process,having to create a new account and constantly provide credit card information (I avoid storing my info, if possible). I'm really looking forward to Apple Pay for the web being more widespread. A few weeks ago I was looking for a vacuum part and found it cheapest at newegg.com. Got to checkout, and to my pleasant surprise, there was an option to pay with Apple Pay. It was such a stupidly easy process that newegg got a far more loyal customer out of me.