[yedava]

A good rule of thumb for shopping an Amazon - avoid anything that you can ingest, apply on your skin, and anything electrical.

These are better to buy in a brick and mortar store where a human verifies that the product has indeed come from supplier who is verified in some way. Of course this doesn't make brick and mortar products automatically safe, but they are far better than Amazon where quality control is offloaded onto the customers.

[pknomad]

This is a good rule of thumb. I'd even go further and say use Amazon as a last resort merchandiser maybe except for few areas like comixology. I remember seeing threads here about how Amazon mixes SKUs of different origins so it feels like they're complicit with the fraudulent sellers.

[znpy]

I've also stopped buying usb stick drives as well as micro-sd cards: the chance of getting a counterfeit piece of junk is just too high, and has happened to me more than once.

On the other hand, my local brick and mortar store (Esselunga) has high quality Kioxia usb devices for a fairly good price. And Kioxia is high-end stuff anyways, so worth spending a few more euros.

[neilv]

I used to say those same rules for Dollar Tree.

I'm not that strict about Amazon, but I decided that I don't trust buying OTC pharmaceuticals from Amazon. Even though I hate dealing with the current vendor, since they're bizarrely incompetent a dozen different ways, I suspect they are at least much better about supply chain integrity.

[pknomad]

May I ask which vendor you use for pharmaceutical needs now? I used to use Amazon Pharmacy but then have since gone back to CVS.

[neilv]

For actual pharmacy needs (not over-the-counter), I don't have routine needs, only rare occasional random injury.

So I just use a brick&mortar pharmacy nearby, where the pharmacists/techs almost always vary from good to conspicuously excellent.

I think the profession is generally good and conscientious.