alt Hacker NewsAre you in the US?
I'm just always a little surprised to read things like "i couldn't live without Amazon," and i wonder if there are no other alternatives for two day shipping on other countries or what it is that keeps people stuck on Amazon instead of using other next-day deliveries
Replies
It's convenience. Two day shipping is irrelevant to me but there are no alternatives here even approaching the breadth of stock. So instead of dealing with one devil I know I would have to deal with several devils, some of which will be worse than Amazon.
I live between central London and a smaller European city, the competition is generally much much worse.
Sure, for every individual item there might be a better better local option. I'd have to spend time finding that, then go through the terrible order process and hope their delivery service isn't utter shit. Oh, and yeah, half the time they'll probably block my order because I'm using a non-european card.
Just being able to use Amazon for almost everything starting from bottled water and toilet paper saves me immense amounts of time. I can generally trust that the stuff I order reliably arrives at the concierge, which isn't a given.
And FWIW, most of the time I've shopped around, Amazon has been cheaper or essentially the same price. Doesn't really matter to me, but it is a plus. I'd happily pay more for a more convenient service, but in this case it seems I'm usually paying less.
It's not that Amazon is irreplaceable, but sometimes it's the best option by far depending on where you live and what you're looking for.
I'm in Austria (not Australia) and local retail prices are infamous for being 25% to 100% higher than in neighboring Germany for the same stuff because of cartel behavior of local retail industry.
Buying from amazon Germany means I can get the same prices as Germans (with +1% extra for higher Austrian VAT) for the same goods.
I'd love to give up Amazon in favor of local stores but local cartels are just as bad or even worse.
So to fix the Amazon problem you need to fix the competition problem first, which is caused by players other than Amazon too.
People in my circles in the US (in an area with tons of alternative options) look at me like I have two heads when I say we don’t have Prime and never shop on Amazon. For many, I think, Amazon has simply been the default option to buy anything for long enough now that it’s ingrained muscle memory.