7 ms·

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend fo

These days I avoid Amazon where possible since so often it's just cheap Chinese knockoffs or obviously returned products sold as new. B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Crutchfield/Headphones.com has been great for speaker and audio gear. West Elm has a consistently premium quality for kitchen, home, and furniture items (though furniture is a story of its own, with even better vendors.) Walmart/Target/BestBuy have been good for everything else. If you're too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality, Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of. And for simply next-level quality, nothing beats DIY. Personalize the final product exactly to your specifications, choosing the highest quality or even custom-machined parts with zero cost cutting. Requires time and passion, however.

z0xz0xz0x 5y ago
Headphones.com is great!
- xvector 5y ago
  1-year return policy, fast customer support, and no tax! I love them.
airhead969 5y ago
Free returns. The sellers eat that. It's dumb and lazy buyers buying junk and not holding them accountable for the
- xvector 5y ago
  To be fair, all the vendors I listed do free returns.
- smabie 5y ago
  I'm lazy and dumb it's true, but I like ordering off of Amazon for most things. I just don't really care about the 99% of things I am forced to buy in order to live a somewhat comfortable existence. The most important thing I optimize for is own time, and for that, Amazon is great. That said, if you care about quality/stuff you buy a lot more than I do, Amazon is a pretty terrible place to shop most of the time. I've encountered this when I want to buy nice stuff, for example a nice and expensive wooden desk. Seems like that's pretty impossible to do on Amazon, as cheap garbage seems to be the name of the game.
hatsunearu 5y ago
> B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Wait, explain this for me?
- xvector 5y ago
  The B&H PayBoo card gives you a discount on their store equivalent to your state's tax. It's saved me thousands.
jamestnz 5y ago
I stumbled upon an unusual policy when trying to order from B&H the first time. They are not open for business on Shabbat (NYC local time), and this includes their online checkout! I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.
- xvector 5y ago
  True. B&H is sort of unusual in this regards, but from what I hear their employees are treated well, and the lack of tax is well worth it!
  - cfqycwz 5y ago
    Fwiw there has been some history of B&H workers being treated fairly not-well. I encourage reading past the first few paragraphs of this article as it's not all "union stuff"--there are lawsuits, DOL complaints, and OSHA fines as well: https://gothamist.com/news/bh-photo-workers-strike-on-may-day-to-protest-their-jobs-moving-to-new-jersey https://gothamist.com/news/bh-photo-workers-strike-on-may-da...
    - xvector 5y ago
      Interesting, thank you!
    - ixtli 5y ago
      Thank you for pointing this out. I live in the area and showed up for the pickets when they fired all of their warehouse employees for complaining about unsafe working conditions. If possible use Adorama or some competitor.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Note that B&H has been sued for discriminating against its non-Jewish employees: https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/new-lawsuit-claims-b-and-h-discriminates-against-non-jewish-employees-571983/amp https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/new-lawsuit-claims-b-and-h-disc...
DenverCode 5y ago
Regarding headphones.com, I just ordered a pair of HD6xx headphones off drop.com and it was an amazing experience as well.
spyspy 5y ago
If you’re shopping for furniture I’ve found Room & Board to be head and shoulders above the rest, in both quality and customer care. No questions asked free returns are a godsend.
- xvector 5y ago
  Indeed! Design Within Reach and AllModern are also quite good for that mid-century modern aesthetic.
- fmajid 5y ago
  Nope. All my Room & Board furniture bought 10 years ago turned out to be duds, as I reviewed on Yelp 3 years ago: Don't be fooled by the glitzy showrooms and "made in America" promises of quality, this chain sells essentially disposable furniture. When we were expecting our first child 7 years ago, we moved from an apartment to a single-family home. We wanted to also upgrade from IKEA and equivalent to proper furniture. I bought some heirloom pieces from Thos. Moser (a dining table, two end-chairs, a coffee table, a rocking chair and two foot stools) but they are quite expensive, and we got many other pieces from Room and Board: a queen bed, nightstands, two dressers, six Thatcher dining chairs, Pisa leaning bookshelves, side tables and a coffee table with rounded angles). Unfortunately after 7 years the furniture turned out to be much less durable than I expected. The finish on the coffee table is worn and ugly, the bed required extensive work even though we only use a mattress, no boxsprings, and the spokes on the Thatcher chairs are coming unglued. A proper Windsor chair like the Thatcher should have "through-holed and wedged" construction that ensures the spokes don't move. The Moser chairs have that, of course, and in retrospect I deeply regret cheaping out. I could have bought 2 buy-it-for-life Moser chairs for the price of the 6 Thatcher chairs that are now essentially kindling. To add insult to injury, Room and Board refuses to stand by their product and are refusing to repair them. In the Bay Area, we've had good luck with Hoot Judkins furniture, which are better quality for the price (not all though, they have a wide range that goes from meh to Amish-grade).
  - stephencanon 5y ago
    Yeah, Thos. Moser is lovely and rock-solid stuff, but $$$$ and a very specific aesthetic, which you either like or you don’t (we have some Moser stuff in our bedroom, but not in the rest of the house because it’s not a great fit style-wise). We have Carl Hansen & Son dining table and chairs, which is a considerably more modern look but still very solid (noticeably more so than most DWR stuff), but again, $$$$ and a special order from Europe that took ~16 weeks.
tomnipotent 5y ago
> B&H has been a godsend for tech Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. Shopping on Amazon feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you.
- zmix 5y ago
  > [...] feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you. Has that become any better?
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    I made a recent purchase for some networking equipment, but the seller had 1k+ positive ratings in the last year. Honestly, I ran across a lot of the same sellers on eBay as I did Amazon (since eBay now sells a lot of new stuff).
- techrat 5y ago
  > Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. I'm already hearing complaints about how B&H "isn't what they used to be" because they're selling much more than their original scope of audio visual equipment.
awslattery 5y ago
+1 for Crutchfield, a great price match/protection policy, and support that is responsive yet not overbearingly so. I would also add rtings.com; they do a great job of documenting their process and the results themselves from their reviews with incredible detail.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
Exactly right. Watching Ebay and Amazon converge on being "Aliexpress" has really made me sad. I understand the folks who are measuring themselves by how effectively they promise quality and deliver crap to their customers. I understand their goal is maximum profit as their best score. And I understand that enough of the market doesn't care that it is crap that they prefer this over a quality good. Back when Walmart started and everyone was all about "wow, their prices are great!" and nary a mention of their quality. I realized that Walmart was going to do the same thing to groceries. Without re-invigorating the UCC with stronger consumer protections so that the "costs" are born not individually by consumers but by the market maker who pushes an inferior product, I don't see it getting much better.
- at-fates-hands 5y ago
  >> Aliexpress I used to buy a lot of cheap things on there, then something interesting started happening. Every time I made a purchase on there, literally a few weeks later, I would start getting fraudulent charges on my card. Thank god, my bank would call and ask, "Are you in Paris France right now? Someone just tried to purchase 3,000 euros worth of clothing on your card." I haven't bought anything on there for about 5 years now and remarkably as soon as I stopped buying stuff off of their site, I have yet to have my cc number end up on some carders market and deal with getting a new credit card. I also did some research and found out many, many, many people have had the same issues with bad charges showing up on their card after making purchases on that site.
  - Animats 5y ago
    Yes. I was annoyed when Bank of America discontinued the feature that allowed me to create a single-used credit card number and fund it with a limited amount of money. That was a good solution to the bogus charges problem. But it was so hidden on the BofA site that few used it. I'd like to have that service back.
    - xvector 5y ago
      Privacy.com has been awesome for this and integrates with 1Password.
ElViajero 5y ago
> If you're too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality Amazon is a gambling company. People buys things with the hope that, this time, they are getting a bargain. And, as any gambling company, the customers will lose in the long term. But, people gets addicted to gambling. Maybe next item, maybe I will do a smart purchase. The more randomized the experience the more irrational the consumer. I prefer traditional business that follow regulations and are subjects to my country laws. I used Amazon when it started, because they had a great recommendation engine for books. Even that is now a shitshow that offers you what Amazon wants to sell regardless of what you look for. Amazon works as intended, and that is terrifying. p.d.: People is not lazy. It is just that most people are not experts on the products that they purchase, and they are already spending a lot of their time working hard and taking care of their families to add another ten hours of investigation to purchase a pair of shoes.
at-fates-hands 5y ago
I've been doing the same thing for a few years now and for the same reasons. I have accepted the fact in most cases I will pay more, but at least for that extra cost, I can trust the sites and the companies I'm buying from. I also try and find something locally first, before heading to larger chain stores. Perfect example is how I don't buy anything Apple on Ebay anymore. WAY too many fakes, stolen or misrepresented stuff on there now. Hard to get away from all the Chinese resellers there either. I just buy directly from Apple. Yeap, its going to cost a little extra, but I can take comfort knowing its not going to be a fake or get something that was completely misleading in the listing.
aikinai 5y ago
I know most people here are in the US, but for anyone in Japan, check out Yodobashi as an Amazon alternative. They have more curated products and deliver most items the same day in the Tokyo area for free with no subscription. It’s incredible you can have one tiny part delivered within hours for free. I feel bad doing that though, so I always try to cluster my orders just to be nice to their delivery people and the environment.
- NavinF 5y ago
  Google Shopping Express used to do that in San Jose. I once ordered a toy spring for $3 with free shipping and had it delivered in 2 hours so I could use it as a heater coil. Good times Within a couple of months they changed the policy to $75 minimum for free shipping. There are also fewer delivery slots today relative to demand
tomaskafka 5y ago
> Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of. Oh no, they absolutely don't. Wirecutter performs some subjective testing, but they get paid for a choice of a products to test and promote. If you watch any category for a while, you can witness a top product (or multiple top products of a same brand) disappear overnight to be be replaced without a trace by another 'reviewer's favourite'. What did change overnight? Did Anker stop making the best budget chargers? No, their business deal with Wirecutter just expired and another brand took their place in paying for 'independent review'.
- larrybud 5y ago
  That’s a pretty strong accusation to make. Do you have evidence? Wirecutter says “our writers and editors are never made aware of or influenced by which companies have affiliate relationships with our business team.” And elsewhere on the site: “The reputation of Wirecutter and its parent company, The New York Times, rests on our vigorous reporting, editorial integrity, and avoidance of actual or even perceived conflicts of interest.” Are you saying this is a lie / outright deception? And, fwiw, they indeed still review & recommend Anker changers; see this review where the #1 choice is currently an Anker model: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-multiport-usb-wall-charger/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-multiport-us...

z0xz0xz0x 5y ago

Headphones.com is great!

xvector 5y ago
1-year return policy, fast customer support, and no tax! I love them.

airhead969 5y ago

Free returns. The sellers eat that. It's dumb and lazy buyers buying junk and not holding them accountable for the

xvector 5y ago
To be fair, all the vendors I listed do free returns.
smabie 5y ago
I'm lazy and dumb it's true, but I like ordering off of Amazon for most things. I just don't really care about the 99% of things I am forced to buy in order to live a somewhat comfortable existence. The most important thing I optimize for is own time, and for that, Amazon is great. That said, if you care about quality/stuff you buy a lot more than I do, Amazon is a pretty terrible place to shop most of the time. I've encountered this when I want to buy nice stuff, for example a nice and expensive wooden desk. Seems like that's pretty impossible to do on Amazon, as cheap garbage seems to be the name of the game.

hatsunearu 5y ago

> B&H has been a godsend for tech, especially since there's no tax with their card. Wait, explain this for me?

xvector 5y ago
The B&H PayBoo card gives you a discount on their store equivalent to your state's tax. It's saved me thousands.

jamestnz 5y ago

I stumbled upon an unusual policy when trying to order from B&H the first time. They are not open for business on Shabbat (NYC local time), and this includes their online checkout! I could fill up my cart, but had to come back later to do my purchase.

xvector 5y ago
True. B&H is sort of unusual in this regards, but from what I hear their employees are treated well, and the lack of tax is well worth it!
- cfqycwz 5y ago
  Fwiw there has been some history of B&H workers being treated fairly not-well. I encourage reading past the first few paragraphs of this article as it's not all "union stuff"--there are lawsuits, DOL complaints, and OSHA fines as well: https://gothamist.com/news/bh-photo-workers-strike-on-may-day-to-protest-their-jobs-moving-to-new-jersey https://gothamist.com/news/bh-photo-workers-strike-on-may-da...
  - xvector 5y ago
    Interesting, thank you!
  - ixtli 5y ago
    Thank you for pointing this out. I live in the area and showed up for the pickets when they fired all of their warehouse employees for complaining about unsafe working conditions. If possible use Adorama or some competitor.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Note that B&H has been sued for discriminating against its non-Jewish employees: https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/new-lawsuit-claims-b-and-h-discriminates-against-non-jewish-employees-571983/amp https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/new-lawsuit-claims-b-and-h-disc...

DenverCode 5y ago

Regarding headphones.com, I just ordered a pair of HD6xx headphones off drop.com and it was an amazing experience as well.

spyspy 5y ago

If you’re shopping for furniture I’ve found Room & Board to be head and shoulders above the rest, in both quality and customer care. No questions asked free returns are a godsend.

xvector 5y ago
Indeed! Design Within Reach and AllModern are also quite good for that mid-century modern aesthetic.
fmajid 5y ago
Nope. All my Room & Board furniture bought 10 years ago turned out to be duds, as I reviewed on Yelp 3 years ago: Don't be fooled by the glitzy showrooms and "made in America" promises of quality, this chain sells essentially disposable furniture. When we were expecting our first child 7 years ago, we moved from an apartment to a single-family home. We wanted to also upgrade from IKEA and equivalent to proper furniture. I bought some heirloom pieces from Thos. Moser (a dining table, two end-chairs, a coffee table, a rocking chair and two foot stools) but they are quite expensive, and we got many other pieces from Room and Board: a queen bed, nightstands, two dressers, six Thatcher dining chairs, Pisa leaning bookshelves, side tables and a coffee table with rounded angles). Unfortunately after 7 years the furniture turned out to be much less durable than I expected. The finish on the coffee table is worn and ugly, the bed required extensive work even though we only use a mattress, no boxsprings, and the spokes on the Thatcher chairs are coming unglued. A proper Windsor chair like the Thatcher should have "through-holed and wedged" construction that ensures the spokes don't move. The Moser chairs have that, of course, and in retrospect I deeply regret cheaping out. I could have bought 2 buy-it-for-life Moser chairs for the price of the 6 Thatcher chairs that are now essentially kindling. To add insult to injury, Room and Board refuses to stand by their product and are refusing to repair them. In the Bay Area, we've had good luck with Hoot Judkins furniture, which are better quality for the price (not all though, they have a wide range that goes from meh to Amish-grade).
- stephencanon 5y ago
  Yeah, Thos. Moser is lovely and rock-solid stuff, but $$$$ and a very specific aesthetic, which you either like or you don’t (we have some Moser stuff in our bedroom, but not in the rest of the house because it’s not a great fit style-wise). We have Carl Hansen & Son dining table and chairs, which is a considerably more modern look but still very solid (noticeably more so than most DWR stuff), but again, $$$$ and a special order from Europe that took ~16 weeks.

tomnipotent 5y ago

> B&H has been a godsend for tech Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. Shopping on Amazon feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you.

zmix 5y ago
> [...] feels like late 90s eBay, guessing whether or not the seller is going to screw you. Has that become any better?
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  I made a recent purchase for some networking equipment, but the seller had 1k+ positive ratings in the last year. Honestly, I ran across a lot of the same sellers on eBay as I did Amazon (since eBay now sells a lot of new stuff).
techrat 5y ago
> Let's hope they don't go the marketplace route while chasing growth. I'm already hearing complaints about how B&H "isn't what they used to be" because they're selling much more than their original scope of audio visual equipment.

awslattery 5y ago

+1 for Crutchfield, a great price match/protection policy, and support that is responsive yet not overbearingly so. I would also add rtings.com; they do a great job of documenting their process and the results themselves from their reviews with incredible detail.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

Exactly right. Watching Ebay and Amazon converge on being "Aliexpress" has really made me sad. I understand the folks who are measuring themselves by how effectively they promise quality and deliver crap to their customers. I understand their goal is maximum profit as their best score. And I understand that enough of the market doesn't care that it is crap that they prefer this over a quality good. Back when Walmart started and everyone was all about "wow, their prices are great!" and nary a mention of their quality. I realized that Walmart was going to do the same thing to groceries. Without re-invigorating the UCC with stronger consumer protections so that the "costs" are born not individually by consumers but by the market maker who pushes an inferior product, I don't see it getting much better.

at-fates-hands 5y ago
>> Aliexpress I used to buy a lot of cheap things on there, then something interesting started happening. Every time I made a purchase on there, literally a few weeks later, I would start getting fraudulent charges on my card. Thank god, my bank would call and ask, "Are you in Paris France right now? Someone just tried to purchase 3,000 euros worth of clothing on your card." I haven't bought anything on there for about 5 years now and remarkably as soon as I stopped buying stuff off of their site, I have yet to have my cc number end up on some carders market and deal with getting a new credit card. I also did some research and found out many, many, many people have had the same issues with bad charges showing up on their card after making purchases on that site.
- Animats 5y ago
  Yes. I was annoyed when Bank of America discontinued the feature that allowed me to create a single-used credit card number and fund it with a limited amount of money. That was a good solution to the bogus charges problem. But it was so hidden on the BofA site that few used it. I'd like to have that service back.
  - xvector 5y ago
    Privacy.com has been awesome for this and integrates with 1Password.

ElViajero 5y ago

> If you're too lazy to figure out yourself which products are quality Amazon is a gambling company. People buys things with the hope that, this time, they are getting a bargain. And, as any gambling company, the customers will lose in the long term. But, people gets addicted to gambling. Maybe next item, maybe I will do a smart purchase. The more randomized the experience the more irrational the consumer. I prefer traditional business that follow regulations and are subjects to my country laws. I used Amazon when it started, because they had a great recommendation engine for books. Even that is now a shitshow that offers you what Amazon wants to sell regardless of what you look for. Amazon works as intended, and that is terrifying. p.d.: People is not lazy. It is just that most people are not experts on the products that they purchase, and they are already spending a lot of their time working hard and taking care of their families to add another ten hours of investigation to purchase a pair of shoes.

at-fates-hands 5y ago

I've been doing the same thing for a few years now and for the same reasons. I have accepted the fact in most cases I will pay more, but at least for that extra cost, I can trust the sites and the companies I'm buying from. I also try and find something locally first, before heading to larger chain stores. Perfect example is how I don't buy anything Apple on Ebay anymore. WAY too many fakes, stolen or misrepresented stuff on there now. Hard to get away from all the Chinese resellers there either. I just buy directly from Apple. Yeap, its going to cost a little extra, but I can take comfort knowing its not going to be a fake or get something that was completely misleading in the listing.

aikinai 5y ago

I know most people here are in the US, but for anyone in Japan, check out Yodobashi as an Amazon alternative. They have more curated products and deliver most items the same day in the Tokyo area for free with no subscription. It’s incredible you can have one tiny part delivered within hours for free. I feel bad doing that though, so I always try to cluster my orders just to be nice to their delivery people and the environment.

NavinF 5y ago
Google Shopping Express used to do that in San Jose. I once ordered a toy spring for $3 with free shipping and had it delivered in 2 hours so I could use it as a heater coil. Good times Within a couple of months they changed the policy to $75 minimum for free shipping. There are also fewer delivery slots today relative to demand

tomaskafka 5y ago

> Wirecutter, NyMag, and Consumer Reports all perform unbiased testing of multiple products in almost every product segment I can think of. Oh no, they absolutely don't. Wirecutter performs some subjective testing, but they get paid for a choice of a products to test and promote. If you watch any category for a while, you can witness a top product (or multiple top products of a same brand) disappear overnight to be be replaced without a trace by another 'reviewer's favourite'. What did change overnight? Did Anker stop making the best budget chargers? No, their business deal with Wirecutter just expired and another brand took their place in paying for 'independent review'.

larrybud 5y ago
That’s a pretty strong accusation to make. Do you have evidence? Wirecutter says “our writers and editors are never made aware of or influenced by which companies have affiliate relationships with our business team.” And elsewhere on the site: “The reputation of Wirecutter and its parent company, The New York Times, rests on our vigorous reporting, editorial integrity, and avoidance of actual or even perceived conflicts of interest.” Are you saying this is a lie / outright deception? And, fwiw, they indeed still review & recommend Anker changers; see this review where the #1 choice is currently an Anker model: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-multiport-usb-wall-charger/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-multiport-us...