Ask Lemmy

in germany we have local shop comparing portals like geizhals.de

Posted most of this in another thread but I'm glad to help share my tricks. I have managed to nearly eliminate Amazon entirely from our lives for the past two years. I usually find things by searching what I want to buy on DuckDuckGo and then adding "-amazon", "-etsy", "-walmart", "-temu" and "-pinterest" as search modifiers.

A lot of little shops are perfectly legit, but watch out for:

Things being ridiculous bargains. Small shops will almost always be more expensive due to higher overheads and less bulk

Too much variety in product (unless they're a marketplace with 3rd party vendors). A legit shop will have inventory that makes sense together in its theme. If they sell everything from bubblebath to uranium they're either probably not actually selling it or drop shipping it.

Pictures that look like they come from lots of different sources, or no consistency in images. If they don't have their own pictures of products or standards of presentation that's suspicious

Some general recs:

For anything electronic or computer related: B&H Photo or Microcenter

For music stuff: Sweetwater, but there's a lot of great small music stores, or you can use a marketplace like Reverb

For clothes: if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website. If you don't, go to local secondhand shops and touch, handle and try on some clothes to see them in person. I've discovered some brands I like by finding something in a thrift store that was well made but not my size or preferred color.

For house repair and DIY stuff: we order from a local building supply store, but there's also hardwareandtools.com, 1stoplighting, Waysource, Lightbulbs.com, Timothy's Toolbox etc.

For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it's a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites. There's also Hive or GroveCo for some granola type B Corp goodness

For tea, coffee and spices, Adagio and its sister websites

For super fast, need it now shipping, Target has a lot of the same things Amazon does and even does same day delivery for an extra fee for certain items.

For something hard to find you can't find another site for, try Ebay.

I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. These are sites that I've personally bought from but there are a lot of smaller sites just trying to make a place for themselves on the internet

1. Search Amazon for product you want.
2. Check reviews
3. Throw out reviews because a) they're for the wrong product or b) they're bot written.
4. Use the product numbers to search for the the same product elsewhere, preferably from the company's own website or brick and mortar.
5. If it's something you actually need and can't find it elsewhere, it's ok to buy Amazon, just don't pay for a Prime account. No one needs shit that quickly.

Lifes basics are often online at Costco for prices much better than big box or Amazon with same shipping times. eBay is potential alternative. For niche items, directly to the manufacturer. No need giving Amazon a share when it could go directly to the engineers, designers and people who made it.

I use Amazon to find the stuff and then Google the seller. They typically have the same product for sale at the same or similar price on an unaffiliated website. It takes extra effort but it's worth it if you are seriously trying to boycott Amazon.

Ebay, first party sites, dedicated sites.

Buy directly from the seller. Due to most people using Amazon the past decade, created a modern shipping infrastructure. Everyone has similar shipping pricing and timeframes. Amazon doesn’t provide anything special now. Other big box store just use their stores as shipping hubs like edge computing. There’s a lot of same day delivery.

Benelux has Bol, so that's what I use.

If I need something bad enough, I start within my range of locality and then work outwards. Like for instance, I'm currently looking for a full set of seat covers for my car. If I were to use Amazon, wham bam I'd get the cutest ones by tomorrow. But instead Ive been looking up the availability of the auto goods stores nearby for delivery or pickup. That way i can go see the quality with my own eyes.

If there aren't any cute or affordable seats covers nearby, Ill end up going straight to the websites of the manufacturer qhile cross referencing whatever reviews i can find online. A lot of times the manufacturer or distributor website will have coupon codes at checkout. And yes, the websites can be seedy, but I have in the past gotten some really high quality products from sus websites that like never sent me a confirmation email.

Sometimes there are really specific or niche things that seemingly almost only are on amazon, (like my damn vaccuum filters that dont exist anymore,) about 99% of the time youll find them on ebay too.

Not a single comment with an ideal alternative, despite best efforts. We need a fediverse Amazon alternative. 😞

Denmark has Pricerunner. When buying electronics I can find many different types of local dealers and suppliers.

Second hand can be gotten through Den Blå Avis (dba.dk. Essentially translates to "The Blue Pages").

Clothing has various online solutions as well, but it's also easy to just hop onto a bike and cycle to the nearest shopping centre. I live in Copenhagen, so there's also train and metro, but I prefer biking.

When it comes to food, I only ever order food online through Too Good To Go. Recently got a large breakfast cereal box through TGTG.

While I don’t put enough effort into it to really make a difference, I’ve had decent luck using Amazon to narrow down a search, then purchase from a company’s store.

Of course that’s quite possibly Amazon also

Before searching I am asking myself 10 times "do I really need this" and I compare caracteristics ans prices on various websites (this process can take months), I check references about sellers and items, then I prepare myself to buy it but at this step I forgot I wanted/needed this, or it does not answer my need, in 80% cases.

Reminds me of a thread I saw here a while ago on "What if advertising were illegal?"

I've found the best method for reducing my need on Amazon is to just buy less crap. Online shopping is simple because you can get stuff immediately, but I don't think anybody "needs" 3-4 new products per week.

Aside from that, I try and support local: find local shops that sell items similar to my style, or trust word of mouth for online retailers that are good. At the end of the day, as long as you're buying good-quality stuff (which oddly seems to spend less on advertisements) it doesn't really matter where exactly you buy from, as it's all pretty similar in price / quality.

I’ve never used Amazon. eBay is pretty much where I get what I want and that has been true since 2004 according to my account.

I go rob container ship

I personally look to see if the company has their own storefront. And sometimes it pays off in unexpected ways.

For example I was in the market for a soldering iron. I found a solid Hakko one on Amazon, but I decided to check their site first and, lo and behold, they had the exact same one for sale for the exact same price. BUT I could choose what color I wanted; Amazon only had the standard blue/yellow, whereas they had two other color choices.
On top of that they included an extra goodie of my choosing, which I chose their coffee mug (I forget the other options).

So because I took the extra time to look around, I was able to get one in a color I preferred, got an extra item out of it, and cut out the unnecessary middle man. Win-win-win as they say.

Sometimes, though, it's just not possible. I was in the market for a triple monitor stand as I use a unique configuration (ultrawide as my main, with two regular widescreens side-by-side above it). The only viable stand I found was available either through Amazon or Walmart. They did not sell directly from their site. So I had to choose which devil I wanted to support.

You could use Amazon as kind of a browser or search and then go directly to the brand's web site. Any particular thing you're looking for?

Electronics: We have a local (DACH region) to compare nost electronics both in specs and price

Anything else: Search on the web and decide from there.

For example: I bought tea from a local japanese tea farm I got introduced by a youtuber visiting said farm.
Example for other stuff: I will research it and then market research where it's available.
Is it a pain to get (example: No other payment then SEPA), then I'll choose a shop that is more expensive but less pain to deal with.

But everything is a trial and error. For drinks I am very cautious if I can't test it while shopping and thus refrain from shopping it online.

I just go directly to the company's website and go from there. Usually it's the same price, on rare occasions it's a few dollars more but to me it's worth it not to do business with Amazon. I've passed up on buying things entirely because they were only available on Amazon.

In fact, over the last couple years I've been transitioning from buying online to buying from small-business brick and mortar stores. Sure it's less convenient but it's also less wasteful, it keeps resources within my local economy and I'm buying a lot less junk that I don't really need.

aliexpress has most of the same stuff from amazon, just without the sellers nonsensical name slapped on it.

For more important stuff, most brick and mortar shops have an online storefront nowadays.

I use Facebook. I hate that I have to use Facebook, but I feel like using it to buy second hand items (which is most of what I buy anyway) is slightly more ethical.