I can’t judge you for that. I’m just tired of obscenely wealthy people treating everyone else like shit without any repercussions. Bezos has enough money to single-handedly solve so many problems and still be very rich, but instead he blows it on his giant flying dildos while his employees piss in bottles because they can’t afford bathroom breaks.
I tend to use price aggregators more than individual websites because we’ve reached a point with Internet transactions that you can’t really get away with being a dodgy ecommerce website. People can just file paypal issues or complain to their credit card company for help, so just go with the cheapest option and see how it goes most of the time.
The ones I use are pricerunner and pricespy. I’m EU, but I know pricespy has a NZ version, so I assume it’s global.
I usually order form Amazon for convenience, but sometimes use shopping.google.com. I look up every site before ordering though. Some of the sites that show up in the results are sketchy or deceptive. I also sometimes use Ebay if I’m ok with buying something used, or something very cheap of questionable quality (from people who I’m guessing are just resellers of Alibaba crap).
It depends on what you’re trying to buy. For CDs and Vinyl I go with Discogs, usually. There’s also Mllusicstack, though I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet.
I usually just use walmarts website, you can type in your zip code and find the physical walmart where you live and then filter items there are actually in the store, it tells you the price obviously but also the exact isle its in, so once you find what you need it you can just go get it in like 10-20 minutes based on distance
I like B&H too but hate their holiday schedules. They take more holidays than anyone else on the planet so I’ve gone to my local stores half of the time when I need some photo or video gear.
Fuck! I hate when big companies do that! Buy out a competitor and then let you think you’re supporting a small business. I just brought some books from them, too.
A combination of Micro Center, FS.com, and eBay for computer parts. Anything worth researching I’ll try and buy direct from the manufacturer.
Dumb cheap stuff still goes to Amazon because if I need a $2 female USB-B to male USB-C adaptor or something like that I’m not willing to go through more than about 5 mins of searching and I know there’s some random blob of letters company on the Amazon marketplace that will give me something that functions. I definitely wait until I have something critical or reach $30+ before actually placing the order though.
This isn’t really an answer to the question, but I just saw a Mastodon post about an online store that’s opening this October called Artisans.coop
It seems to be a cooperatively owned Etsy alternative, (and I can only assume it’s a response to whatever shenanigans went on between Etsy and Silicon Valley Bank.)
I might check that out. I have a small Etsy shop that used to generate a bit of side income for me, mainly just enough to buy the occasional tool or some materials for personal projects, but Etsy has changed a lot since 2018. It’s basically just eBay or Amazon with the veneer of “this is totally handmade.” They pushed “free” shipping and decreased lead times, which undermines actual handmade products.
My assumption that this was about SVB sounds totally off the mark now that you’ve put it this way. From your story, it sounds like this is about an entire culture shift that’s been alienating Etsy’s original community of artisans for quite some time.
I’m pretty sure the main issue with etsy these days is that they allow/encourage dropshippers so now it’s just filled with cheap crap from AliExpress etc
Add comment