On 13/03/2021 23.57, Wolf K wrote:
On 2021-03-13 16:24, Rene Lamontagne wrote:

....

Amazon relies on "It's Amazon, so it must be OK" factor. My take is the
precise opposite. If it's Amazon, it's probably not OK. For one thing,
Amazon takes a hefty slice of that vendor's prices. I prefer to deal
with vendors directly, not through Amazon. They are not alone. Even Best
Buy is a problem, most of their bargains are from 3rd party vendors.
Even Staples now offers goods "shipped directly from the merchant".

I prefer supporting a local brick'n'mortar shop if possible. They pay
taxes locally. Amazon doesn't. It's a free-loader. Example: The town
needs cash to pay for snow plowing. Amazon depends on that service so
the delivery trucks can get to the customers. But Amazon don't pay a
cent towards the cost of that service.

I prefer to buy locally if I find what I need. But Amazon allows me to
search for things relatively easily in places that maybe be far from me,
with a common interface, and usually reliably with some exceptions.

It may be that the same product can be found, cheaper, on the web of
some vendor, BUT! Webs that I do not know if I can trust.

(My first purchase on the web was a fraud of about 1200€.
Two laptops for the company I was working for. Year 1999 or so)

Or maybe not cheaper, because mail and packaging has a cost, and with
Amazon Prime most things are covered.


I have been able to find, for example, spare pieces for my old vacuum
cleaner sent from several frontiers away from me. No way I would have
found and bought that on my own. Some shop on Europe has those spares I
needed.

Sometimes I search for something in Amazon, and when I find it I may
also then know who has the same thing locally and I can buy it. Some
times cheaper, sometimes the same price, some times more expensive.


So, it varies.


In the case of the OP, seeing the reports, I would not buy.



--
Cheers, Carlos.