Anything else. I live in Switzerland and prefer to use galaxus, Migros, inter discount, mueller, foletti, or buy second hand. Absolutely anything I can to not buy from Amazon even if the alternative is 10–15% more expensive.
Can you give us some evidence that Galaxus warehouse workers are somehow less "exploited" than Amazon's Swiss warehouse workers?
Or is this a deal like complaining about Apple supposedly using slave labor, while blithely ignoring the fact that every other computer and cell phone comes out of essentially the same Chinese factories? If anything, the people who crank out low-end Android phones probably get paid less than Apple's workers. I'm nearly 100% certain they don't get paid more.
I'm skeptical that Galaxus warehouses are worker's paradises, because I did a few stints at warehouse work as a youngster.
You know what? Warehouse work sucks, and it sucked long before Amazon came along.
There are no Amazon warehouses in Switzerland. There is actually no Amazon Switzerland. It’s all drop shipped from elsewhere in Europe because the conditions are more favorable to Amazon there I suppose.
I never said galaxus was a workers paradise. It’s still work. But work at regular conditions, not the exploitative ones Amazon is famous for.
Did you seriously never hear about the amount of workplace accidents rate at Amazon vs other companies? The people who died in the warehouse collapsing a few months ago because there was a hurricane and employees were not allowed to go shelter? The workers peeing in bottles to avoid bathroom breaks and keeping their grueling per hour quotas? The union squashing efforts by Amazon? The notoriously bad working conditions at Amazon (warehouse but also software)?
I’ve never heard that about other Swiss companies I purchase from. It’s probably not paradise. It’s still not Amazon level of hell and exploitation.
On a practical level, Amazon quality is shit, you get damaged or used returns sold as new, returning stuff means sending it to Slovakia out of pocket and waiting weeks for it to be processed (or returned to you because Amazon never accepted delivery), then fighting to be refunded, sometimes stuff gets stolen in your return parcels by the mail service… I really can’t see a point to undergo all this BS and feed Amazon to save 10–20% on the odd thing I buy and can also find from domestic retailers.
The packaging is a very small part of it. I’m talking about the logistics, destroying/incinerating returns, shipping whatever commingled crap and then having insane return rates (which are then destroyed)… not to mention the societal issues like systemically crushing workers rights, hiding accidents to cheat on workplace safety, etc. It’s so bad that Amazon was in the news a few months ago for churning through too many people and running out of suckers willing to be abused by them who haven’t been already and quit.