[bartread]

For the most part I do not buy anything other than media from Amazon any more - books, Kindle, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, games, and of course streaming. One notable exception is the Amazon Basics range of cables where I tend to go a little nuts. Again, for the most part, these are the things they were originally good for in the 90s and early noughties; these are the things they're still good for now. Everything else is Russian roulette.

In the late noughties/early onesies I went through this period where I realised I could just buy anything I wanted that wasn't food from Amazon, and it was briefly great. However, they have had a huge problem with counterfeit, poor quality, seconds, and reconditioned goods for a number of years now. If you need thing X you're much better buying it from a specialist retailer, direct from the manufacturer or - depending on what it is - even from eBay, Gumtree (or its US equivalent Craigslist), particularly for used items.

Avoid Amazon like the plague for non-media items.

[dan-robertson]

Honestly I’m not even sure Amazon is a particularly good place to get books anymore. Amazon made it possible for publishers to make out-of-print works widely “available” but when you order such a book you might get one from the original run (printed with offset printing to a generally high standard), or you might get a “print on demand” book with terrible quality with vague, feathered letter shapes and plates which look like they came out of an inkjet printer running low on ink.

Apparently Amazon’s own print on demand service produces high quality books but it is impossible to know what sort of book you are getting until it arrives.

[wlesieutre]

Amazon is no longer capable of packing books. They just toss them in a box with some of that crumpled paper and by the time it gets to you all the corners are smashed in from sloshing around in shipping.

[lstamour]

You could complain about the packaging, but it’s not quite as easy as using their app to take a photo. I’ll note last time I ordered a book from Amazon.com for international shipping to Canada, it arrived in the pressure-tight cardboard packaging I expected.

I ordered an audio CD set from Amazon.jp and it arrived faster than it would by US ground and the packaging was flawless, with Apple-esque plastic attached to the easy-open cardboard to keep every corner perfectly sharp.

So... it varies by region?

Or I’ve gotten lucky, n=1 ;-)

(Aside: that’s the annoying part about Amazon, 9 times out of 10 it’s exactly what you expected but then there’s that one time, maybe you buy something you wouldn’t normally, or the box is mostly empty, or the item’s serial number is invalid, and... you really don’t know what you’re going to get sometimes. And Amazon doesn’t make it easy to report it, it’s simply not something they visibly care about...)

[ghostpepper]

Is there another good place to get out-of-print books? Or are you saying that for current books, a brick-and-mortar store is best, and for out-of-print, rolling the dice with Amazon is better than nothing?

[xzel]

I'd recommend abebooks.com. Everything I've received has been in great shape and since it is media mail shipping is free or at most a dollar (for normal sized books that it, I haven't bought text books).

[timsneath]

I don't know if you realize, but abebooks are a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon: https://www.abebooks.com/about -- so this is like protesting Facebook by setting up an Instagram account.

[sneeze-slayer]

Wow thanks for that! I didn't know and was happily using them for some time now.

[AareyBaba]

Try Powells https://www.powells.com/

[wrp]

Use www.bookfinder4u.com and evaluate sellers case-by-case.

[pkaye]

I have used addall.com in the past. Its a meta search of all the major online book stores.

[nelaboras]

There are even stories of amazon selling fake books... Their way of acquiring themselves and of course intermingling goods makes the whole of amazon hard to trust.

In Europe a number of companies (most notably shoe company Birkenstock) are refusing to sell on amazon due to them mixing fake and real products and the producer gets the losses AND takes the commercial and reputational hit when things go wrong.

[volkl48]

You are probably already aware, but if you want cheap, dependable cables, that's basically Monoprice's primary business.

[bartread]

I probably would use them if I weren't based in the UK.

[c22]

I bought a couple DVDs from Amazon last year and they'd clearly been used before. One was so scratched up I couldn't get it to play.