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You act like price and selection aren't that important. They really are. Electronic components? How can you even buy those locally? Radio Shack is dead, and

You act like price and selection aren't that important. They really are. Electronic components? How can you even buy those locally? Radio Shack is dead, and never was that great anyway; if you want components, digikey.com and mouser.com is where you go. Computer parts you can get far cheaper on newegg.com and various other sites, and that isn't something you should worry about failing either (same with electronic components). Auto parts too are something you can get far cheaper online. 1/3 the price of Autozone is worth it even if there's a chance it might go bad early for many people, and for new high-reliability things like spark plugs and filters and brake pads, it's silly to pay high local prices. (But no one can beat Walmart for oil.) There's definitely some things that do work out pretty well to buy online: clothing and shoes are the biggest ones. Kitchenwares are also no cheaper online, according to my recent experiences. I think the big factor is how much volume do people buy locally. Pots and pans are things that just about everyone buys, so local works out there. However, how many people need brake pads for a 1993 Volvo 840 in your local area? Online shopping's biggest strength has long been getting obscure parts that just aren't profitable for local stores to keep in stock. It's not profitable for your local Autozone to carry weird parts for decades' worth of dozens of manufacturers' cars, and for the Autozone 10 miles away to have all the same stuff, but it is easily profitable for one business with a warehouse somewhere to stock this stuff and be ready to ship it anywhere in the country on-demand. No, local stores do not win on delivery time when they have to special-order stuff for you and you have to make another trip to go pick it up instead of just having Fedex drop it at your doorstep.

problems 9y ago
Local stores (Active Electronics, Canada Computers) have comparable prices to online and often even beat Newegg prices - even without shipping. And even when they're a bit more, I'll pay an extra $20 to have that graphics card today and know I can return it if it's DoA without a hassle. Of course there are exceptions and extreme price differences where it's worth it to go online, but if it's within 10% or 15%, or sufficiently cheap in general, I'll probably take a store. Shipping often involves going out of my way to pick something up because no one is at my house during the day and even the local post service decides to drop things off in the next town over. Often I have to wait an extra day just for it to show up there and go through a huge hassle to pick something up. Of course with more obscure stuff or a large price difference, you'll choose online, but in my experience that's surprisingly rare - I shop everything major I buy around and with smaller stuff it just makes more sense to go local. I order IEMs and some electronic components, things I can predict needing in advance direct from China for price and that's about it. I've never placed an amazon order in my life, their prices and selection just aren't competitive in my experience - but I suspect mostly that's because Amazon Canada is a lot worse than Amazon US.
- Arizhel 9y ago
  You must have a really unique situation, or maybe things are really weird in Canada. Where I am, I live in a small town about an hour from a major metro area. The only shopping where I am is a super-Walmart. If I want to buy anything that Walmart doesn't sell, it's a minimum 30-minute drive to the nearest commercial district, and that's over a bridge that I have to pay $4.50 to go back home on. In the other direction (no bridge, no tolls), it's a minimum 40 minutes to that town, and the traffic there is terrible so it's a minimum 50 minutes to the shopping district. Both these districts just have the basic retail chain stores that every such place in the US has (except for hh Gregg which was in both locations, but just went out of business). So, for me to get anything "locally" means a minimum of 1.5 hours in driving and running around. You seem to have some weird problems with shipping. For me, I order stuff and if I'm not home, they leave it on my doorstep. There's no theft here that I've ever heard of. As for your "huge hassle", it sounds like you have some really serious problems with your postal service there. Over here, the USPS works great, and Fedex/UPS work fine too for the most part. The only time I've heard of people having to go to some other town to pick something up is when they live in an extremely rural area where there's no residential delivery. Now, for an alternate view, I also have a girlfriend who lives in the metro area, about 1 hour away from me. She lives in a big high-rise condo, and is less than 2 miles from a quaint "old town" area with local shops, plus lots of typical big-box shops in other directions. This is one of the largest metro areas in the US (I'm guessing #5-7 by population), so there's certainly no shortage of shopping. Shipping is easy for her too: the staff at the front desk takes packages for the building residents. But they take a LOT of packages (many are frequently piled up in the front lobby when I visit; I even saw a mattress there one day); people in that building buy a LOT of stuff online. Why? Simple: time. Even though she's in the city, driving to some random place, even on that side of the metro area, is still a good 20 minutes in my experience, if not more, because of traffic and having to stop at so many red lights. You're not going to be able to get anything without spending at least an hour of your time driving there, dealing with parking, picking it out (assuming they even have it), and driving back. Why waste all that time when you can just get it with a few clicks and pick it up in a couple days when you come home?
  - problems 9y ago

problems 9y ago

Local stores (Active Electronics, Canada Computers) have comparable prices to online and often even beat Newegg prices - even without shipping. And even when they're a bit more, I'll pay an extra $20 to have that graphics card today and know I can return it if it's DoA without a hassle. Of course there are exceptions and extreme price differences where it's worth it to go online, but if it's within 10% or 15%, or sufficiently cheap in general, I'll probably take a store. Shipping often involves going out of my way to pick something up because no one is at my house during the day and even the local post service decides to drop things off in the next town over. Often I have to wait an extra day just for it to show up there and go through a huge hassle to pick something up. Of course with more obscure stuff or a large price difference, you'll choose online, but in my experience that's surprisingly rare - I shop everything major I buy around and with smaller stuff it just makes more sense to go local. I order IEMs and some electronic components, things I can predict needing in advance direct from China for price and that's about it. I've never placed an amazon order in my life, their prices and selection just aren't competitive in my experience - but I suspect mostly that's because Amazon Canada is a lot worse than Amazon US.

Arizhel 9y ago
You must have a really unique situation, or maybe things are really weird in Canada. Where I am, I live in a small town about an hour from a major metro area. The only shopping where I am is a super-Walmart. If I want to buy anything that Walmart doesn't sell, it's a minimum 30-minute drive to the nearest commercial district, and that's over a bridge that I have to pay $4.50 to go back home on. In the other direction (no bridge, no tolls), it's a minimum 40 minutes to that town, and the traffic there is terrible so it's a minimum 50 minutes to the shopping district. Both these districts just have the basic retail chain stores that every such place in the US has (except for hh Gregg which was in both locations, but just went out of business). So, for me to get anything "locally" means a minimum of 1.5 hours in driving and running around. You seem to have some weird problems with shipping. For me, I order stuff and if I'm not home, they leave it on my doorstep. There's no theft here that I've ever heard of. As for your "huge hassle", it sounds like you have some really serious problems with your postal service there. Over here, the USPS works great, and Fedex/UPS work fine too for the most part. The only time I've heard of people having to go to some other town to pick something up is when they live in an extremely rural area where there's no residential delivery. Now, for an alternate view, I also have a girlfriend who lives in the metro area, about 1 hour away from me. She lives in a big high-rise condo, and is less than 2 miles from a quaint "old town" area with local shops, plus lots of typical big-box shops in other directions. This is one of the largest metro areas in the US (I'm guessing #5-7 by population), so there's certainly no shortage of shopping. Shipping is easy for her too: the staff at the front desk takes packages for the building residents. But they take a LOT of packages (many are frequently piled up in the front lobby when I visit; I even saw a mattress there one day); people in that building buy a LOT of stuff online. Why? Simple: time. Even though she's in the city, driving to some random place, even on that side of the metro area, is still a good 20 minutes in my experience, if not more, because of traffic and having to stop at so many red lights. You're not going to be able to get anything without spending at least an hour of your time driving there, dealing with parking, picking it out (assuming they even have it), and driving back. Why waste all that time when you can just get it with a few clicks and pick it up in a couple days when you come home?
- problems 9y ago