[account42]

To bad that the actual buying experience (once you have selected what to buy) is still so much better with Amazon.

* One cart for everything you need to order

* Fairly predictable shipping and tracking, especially for FBA stuff vs. the random shipping companies vs random shippers you have never heard about or weird shipping options selected by the seller (i.e. ID checks required where that makes no sense at all, preventing the carrier from just dropping the package at the door when you're not home)

* Global shipping with tariffs/fees included in the checkout price - brand stores often don't even ship at all outside their operational area

* The ability to get your money back with high confidence when there are problems vs. smaller sellers that just ghost you.

Amazon has been doing their best to reduce these advantages by making it harder to report problems with orders and also having more sellers that do their own unpredictable shipping.

[Henchman21]

I also direct order from brands I trust and this hasn't been my experience AT ALL. In fact using Apple Pay with an AMEX card means the experience is essentially amazing -- fingerprint checkout and the ability to reverse the charge with Amex is all I really need.

Of course, I'm still using Apple Pay, so that may not work for everyone.

[port11]

I’m done with Amazon, but unless something changed in the past year, buying through them is actually inconvenient.

The return experience is great, because it has to be. You buy so much crap because of drop-shippers and their search is atrocious due to paid placement.

If you know what you want (a Thermoscan was one of my last purchases), it can be cheaper to go elsewhere, you don’t deal with their search “engine”, and you don’t help Bezos buy the next election. My context is European, but I really don’t agree that Amazon is that great anymore.

There’s plenty of stuff I find cheaper in other places, plus I’ll know it’s authentic and not a drop-shipped counterfeit. Amazon was tremendous once, but that’s gone.