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The hierarchy of buying: - Brick-and-mortar retail store: basic necessities. Cheaper for easy-to-find items. Relatively small selection. - Amazon: Books and o
by snazz 8y ago
The hierarchy of buying:
- Brick-and-mortar retail store: basic necessities. Cheaper for easy-to-find items. Relatively small selection.
- Amazon: Books and other items where selection trumps price, to an extent. I can get all sorts of books on Amazon that I couldn’t at a bookstore. I wouldn’t buy a perishable good on Amazon and they likely don’t have more niche items.
- eBay: Rare or used items. Compared with Amazon, used items are a lot cheaper (compare ‘ThinkPad X220’ on both Amazon and eBay). The largest selection comes from eBay, but it is also the most variable in quality.
I noticed the following trend: 98% of my shopping is done at brick-and-mortar stores (mostly groceries). 1.5% comes from Amazon. The remaining .5% from eBay is usually just what I can’t find from Amazon.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoThat sounds pretty good. Mine diverges a bit. Because of the hours I work and the fact that I don't have a car, Amazon is more convenient even for a lot of small items. So for us Amazon us probably closer to 20%. eBay is maybe 0.0005%. I'm fortunate there's a reasonably priced local dealer for used/refurb computers. One who even has been dealing in Macs for ~15 years! Come to think of it—most of our shopping at all comes from groceries. I can't bring myself to use any of those delivery services or pre-set meal services. I like to select my vegetables and meat myself as I grew up learning how to do.