This is basically it. The day that Amazon decided they needed to be a "marketplace" instead of a trusted, authoritative, price-competitive retailer is when they

This is basically it. The day that Amazon decided they needed to be a "marketplace" instead of a trusted, authoritative, price-competitive retailer is when they started their slide, to me. If I wanted to hunt, compare (deceptive) pricing, read fine print, make sure shipping is reasonable, worry about needing a refund, I would have just searched on Google and gone through all the rando e-commerce sites that popped up. I used to go to Amazon because I knew that, while they might not have the thing I wanted, if I found it, it was the right thing, the price was reasonable, and I'd be able to get it in a reasonable amount of time. These days I barely see a difference between shopping on Amazon and Ebay. The only possible exception might be books.