I feel guilty and dirty for buying from Amazon

Ready said:
I thought about this thread as I made my way down to Kohl’s to return an Amazon item. I knew they would give me a 25% off coupon so I figured I would try and buy a pair of sweatpants at the local store just to try and give them some business. So I grab a pair that looks like it might fit and look for the dressing rooms. Well, they are all closed due to COVID.

So the last remaining benefit for me of buying at a local brick and mortar store was the ability to try on clothes before buying it. With the dressing rooms closed there is no remaining benefit for me to having a local store. It’s no wonder why the only people in the store were lined up to return Amazon packages.
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Yea, I ran into this last summer at WalMart. Was at our summer house and needed some work pants - I didn't bring any from home. OK, I'll run up to WalMart and buy a pair of cheap jeans for $20 to keep at the cottage. Found 4 pairs of ~$20 jeans from different brands and headed to the fitting rooms. Closed due to Covid. :mad: Employee there says we have free returns.

Sure enough, I bought all of them and tried them on when I got home. Returned 3 of them a few days later. Not a problem with WalMart but ugh!

And not good for the economy.
 
ivinsfan said:
My Costco comment was more about the shop local aspect. If people are saying don't use Walmart or Amazon because it doesn't help local business, the same can be said about Costco. I guess as a country at a whole, we don't really know what we want from our retailers.

I can tell you at an old school Mom and Pop, the owners feel fortunate if they make good money and the employees are generally not very well compensated. Not because of greed on the owners part but because the money isn't there.
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The money isn't there because everyone shops at Amazon, Costco, or Walmart. When Walmart first came along they decimated some towns but people didn't care because they saved a few $$. Now Amazon and Costco have joined the game.

Eventually the competition will be gone and shopping options will become limited but but by then it will be too late. Sure you can buy anything you want on Amazon but if Amazon suddenly decides one day that they don't like you then you're out of business. They're already knocking off successful products and destroying the businesses that created them.
 
I'd feel guilty and dirty if I was buying prostitutes with cocaine.

Amazon, not so much.
 
Music Lover said:
The money isn't there because everyone shops at Amazon, Costco, or Walmart. When Walmart first came along they decimated some towns but people didn't care because they saved a few $$. Now Amazon and Costco have joined the game.

Eventually the competition will be gone and shopping options will become limited but but by then it will be too late. Sure you can buy anything you want on Amazon but if Amazon suddenly decides one day that they don't like you then you're out of business. They're already knocking off successful products and destroying the businesses that created them.
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That makes no sense. If Amazon did that, and there was a market for whatever product you're talking about, then something else would start that would service that market. That's how free markets work, and I don't think Amazon, or Walmart, or KMart, or Sears, or whoever is powerful enough to stop that process. The gov't could, but that would require a change in our system that would be so major that who you buy your socks from would be the least of our worries.
 
Music Lover said:
I see two parts to it...brick and mortar and country of origin. Maybe the brick and mortar stores can't be saved but you can still choose to buy product made in your own country.
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I’m not sure this is entirely true of most products any longer. I’m looking around my kitchen & office, and I bet that almost every single item, from the floors to the ceiling, cabinets to counters, coffee cups to computers, has at least some portion sourced or assembled in a different country. Even if I buy that hand-made coffee mug from the local potter, chances are good that the clay and the glaze came from another country.

This extends to our food (many of the fresh fruits & veggies currently in the house were grown in another country).

Years ago, I had a non-Harley motorcycle. Occasionally I’d get harassed by hog riders spouting “buy American” slogans at me. What they didn’t research was that my bike (at that time) had more American-made components & assemblies than theirs did.

Global goods movement is even more intertwined & complicated nowadays.
 
Music Lover said:
Sure you can buy anything you want on Amazon but if Amazon suddenly decides one day that they don't like you then you're out of business. They're already knocking off successful products and destroying the businesses that created them.
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Walmart has been doing this for many years. As soon as a product becomes really popular, they copy it and within a few weeks only the “Great Value” version is available and the original product disappears from the shelves. It aggravates me because I usually don’t find the GV versions as good as the original. (I know many here do: I’ve seen posts to that effect, and that’s fine. Tastes vary.)
 
RVplusDog said:
I’m not sure this is entirely true of most products any longer. I’m looking around my kitchen & office, and I bet that almost every single item, from the floors to the ceiling, cabinets to counters, coffee cups to computers, has at least some portion sourced or assembled in a different country. Even if I buy that hand-made coffee mug from the local potter, chances are good that the clay and the glaze came from another country.

This extends to our food (many of the fresh fruits & veggies currently in the house were grown in another country).

Years ago, I had a non-Harley motorcycle. Occasionally I’d get harassed by hog riders spouting “buy American” slogans at me. What they didn’t research was that my bike (at that time) had more American-made components & assemblies than theirs did.

Global goods movement is even more intertwined & complicated nowadays.
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Moreover, if I buy a product that's manufactured or grown in Mexico, I'm supporting an economy that needs jobs too. Without those jobs, the people who need them will move to where the jobs are.
 
retire-early said:
To my mind they really are the Evil Empire

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gk3w/amazon-is-forcing-its-warehouse-workers-into-brutal-megacycle-shifts

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mq5m/amazon-will-pay-gig-workers-dollar617-million-for-stealing-tips

:mad:

I am not going to shop on their website unless I cannot buy the item anywhere else.
I will use their website for my purposes and discard it like trash when I don't need it.

.
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You all do realize that thousands of small businesses sell their goods through Amazon :confused:”
 
Music Lover said:
They're already knocking off successful products and destroying the businesses that created them.
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Do you have any examples of this happening, or is this hyperbole? I don't agree with your basic premise that Amazon will kill competition in general, but then I started trying to think of a situation where they destroyed a business by selling knock-off items. Especially since the Amazon Basics items that are their knock-offs tend to be pretty mediocre at best. Just as an example I bought some Amazon Basics Sharpie-type pens. They were cheap, but they sucked, being mostly dried up when I got them. So I went back in to Amazon and bought Sharpie branded pens. I haven't had much luck with their batteries either. So I don't think EverReady or Duracell are in any danger. So who did they destroy?
 
A small brick and mortar business is nothing more than a person who chooses to make money selling whatever they sell. Why are they entitled to be in business more than sellers on Amazon? The big brick and mortars like Home Depot struck the first major blow and the world has changed.
Small businesses that provide a service are alive and well.
I owned a small flooring business for 23 years, did just fine happily and easily beating the big chain stores.
 
Amazon has allowed many small speciality manufacturers and distributors to be successful by creating an online platform that can ship products worldwide to a vast audience. If these companies had to compete at a local brick and mortar level they would fail because they can’t reach a large enough audience to sell enough products to make their business sustainable.

When I buy products on Amazon they are almost always made by small manufacturers that would never get their products on the shelves at Home Depot, Best Buy, Target, etc. They don’t have the manpower to market their products to big box retailers who tend to favor national brands over small manufacturers.
 
I'd imagine too that there are thousands of small businesses that don't treat their employees particularly well.
 
O2Bfree said:
I'd imagine too that there are thousands of small businesses that don't treat their employees particularly well.
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I bet you mean small business owners like the guys who gave my sister two paychecks that bounced and never forwarded the withholding tax money to the Treasury, I have to agree.

Let that be a lesson. Keep your pay stubs. When the IRS came after her for unpaid taxes, thankfully, she had the stubs to show them the money had been withheld from her pay. Needless to say, they directed their efforts towards her previous employer at that point.
 
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Chuckanut said:
I bet you mean small business owners like the guys who gave my sister two paychecks that bounced and never forwarded the withholding tax money to the Treasury.

Let that be a lesson. Keep your pay stubs. When the IRS came after her for unpaid taxes, thankfully, she had the stubs to show them the money had been withheld from her pay. Needless to say, they directed their efforts towards her previous employer at that point.
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My wife tore her meniscus last week.
I went to the local medical supply place that had Thrifty in its title to buy a basic wheelchair . The chair was 400 dollars. I said hold on a minute and went out to my car and got my iPad. I showed the owner the same wheel chair on Amazon for 150 bucks. She said sorry we do not price match. I said I am not asking you to match it but to be reasonable. She said she would take off 10 dollars.
I left and went home and researched some more because my wife had just gotten the wheelchair prescription an hour earlier at the doctors office.
By chance I found another medical supply place 2 blocks from my house selling the same chair for........150 bucks. He said I will have it here tomorrow morning and will assemble it for you. Got it the next day.
Now, did the small brick and mortar 400 dollar for the same chair store have my best interest in mind? What gets lost in all of this is that most small stores are not owned by altruistic people looking to better society.
 
retire-early said:
To my mind they really are the Evil Empire

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gk3w/amazon-is-forcing-its-warehouse-workers-into-brutal-megacycle-shifts

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mq5m/amazon-will-pay-gig-workers-dollar617-million-for-stealing-tips

:mad:

I am not going to shop on their website unless I cannot buy the item anywhere else.
I will use their website for my purposes and discard it like trash when I don't need it.

.
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I watched. I don't feel sorry for folks working four 10hr shifts. Times stated get you out of normal commute cycles. Shift ending around noon allows ppl to conduct business after normal shift. I worked 12hr shifts with 4 days on and 4 days off. We rotated between days, 8am-8pm, and nights, 8pm-8am. If you want a job you work the hours they give you. Maybe I'm not understanding the problem here.
 
ivinsfan said:
It's funny I don't see people whining about Costco the way they do about WalMart and Amazon..
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Another aspect to consider is the public perspective of the company founders, from their statements and actions. In my opinion that is also a factor.
 
jollystomper said:
Another aspect to consider is the public perspective of the company founders, from their statements and actions. In my opinion that is also a factor.
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I agree completely. The main factor for me, but YMMV.
 
aja8888 said:
Yeah, that worked well with Tesla and Musk.:LOL:
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Are you saying people feel guilty for buying Teslas because of Musk? I do not really pay attention to him, but I perceive that he has a very popular image among the general public.
 
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