Depends on what you are looking for. I've never had any problems with BH Photo Video for technology products. Everything else I mostly get directly from the manufacturer website.
To me, the distinguishing feature of Amazon, is that it's an online "everything store" with a yearly subscription that makes delivery of most products free. Any alternatives that try to "be Amazon" in this sense, while 1. only carrying first-party listings, and 2. not commingling stock? Or, in other words: any stores that attempt to be the Amazon of ~2010, rather than the Amazon of 2022?
> a yearly subscription that makes delivery of most products free
Which is great marketing trick, because you are of course paying for delivery through inflated unit prices. A lot of things on Amazon are a few Euros more expensive than in other stores because they just hide the delivery fee in the unit price. There is no such thing as "free delivery", you are paying for it one way or another.
The prices on Amazon might be "a few euros more", but where I live, the delivery fee for getting e.g. a 65" TV delivered from Best Buy or Costco, would be more like an extra $30-$50. (And I don't own a car, so I can't just go pick it up from the store, either.)
I was talking about cheap stuff, with pricier things the price difference is often a lot more.
What I'm trying to say is that often stores that don't offer free shipping are cheaper than Amazon and you should compare the total prices instead of just ordering from Amazon assuming that they are the cheapest. In my experience they sometimes are the cheapest, but in most cases they are not.
There are frequently items on sale though. Like Prime Day, or some items just seem to be low stock and they want to get rid of inventory. In Australia you can also get 1 month of Prime for less than the cost of normal delivery.
So you get a discount on the item you want, free shipping and Prime for a month for less than the normal cost of normal shipping, and it comes the next day. Free shipping without Prime only has a threshold of $39AUD too. It's pretty easy to game things in your favour to get a cheaper item and still get next day delivery.
A lot of stores online ship free now in order to compete with Amazon. Also if you're ordering more than $25 you get free, but slightly slower shipping. I see no reason to have Prime.
I don't think I've ever received free shipping from a web store. (I live in Canada.)
In fact, for some of the things my partner orders (e.g. books from Taiwanese book shops) not only is there a shipping cost, but there are often surprise $20-$50 COD import duties on top of that cost, doubling the final cost of the order. That, for some reason, they can't just build into the order invoice. And because of the duties, the logistics provider (usually FedEx) usually refuses to actually do the last-mile delivery of the thing until they're paid; so we have to go down to their depot to pay the duties, effectively forcing us to do the last-mile part ourselves.
Also, even if a store were to offer free shipping at some price threshold (I think maybe some stores do for $100 here), I find that because most online other than Amazon aren't an "everything store", it's pretty unlikely that I'll be ordering more than a single item from them; and so I'd never qualify for the free shipping anyway. If I find a nice t-shirt, and it's $20... ain't getting free shipping from that.
Hmm, I’m Canadian who’s currently living in the states. I can think of a bunch in Canada that offer free shipping off by memory: Amazon, Indigo/Chapters, EB Games, Footlocker, Walmart, etc.
The anecdote you mentioned would also apply in the States. Duty paid for purchases from abroad, like Taiwan. Also, much like Canada, you’d usually pay shipping for small mom-and-pop shop or boutique web stores too.
> The anecdote you mentioned would also apply in the States. Duty paid for purchases from abroad, like Taiwan.
Import duties are set by the government of the importing country; Canada’s are pretty high compared to most countries, making a lot of online shopping with international shipping less worth it here than elsewhere.
Also, a fun fact: the US negotiated a sweetheart deal with the International Postal Union, such that sending parcels to the US from most countries is subsidized by the sending country’s government. So every country other than the US pays more than the US does to order from e.g. AliExpress.
Yeah that's completely fair. For me, I looked around online for my needs and found that I actually didn't need Amazon as much as I thought. Your mileage may vary.
Every item arriving 1 day early is worth $140/yr for most people. I've paid a lot more for a lot less (looks at Digi-Key order history)
Also Amazon Fresh (free 6 hour shipping in my location) is extremely convenient. A lot of sites charge $60 per order for the same service (overnight delivery)
Sadly, there’s no Amazon Fresh in Canada. Even though, oddly, we do have Whole Foods here (where most Amazon Fresh products ship from)… but our Whole Foods don’t do delivery either. Whole Foods products don’t show up on Amazon.ca for sale; nor even does Whole Foods in Canada even have a website that you can online shop for pickup on. It’s weirdly backward given that it’s exactly the same store.