I know there are similar communities like !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net about finding products that you don’t break after a year, and any number of buy<insert_country_here> communities. I’m looking for a community specifically for finding reputable products that aren’t sold on Amazon, regardless of where the seller or buyer is, and regardless of the ethos of the seller beyond making quality products.
Edit:
There’s also !deamazon@piefed.social, but that’s more about general anti-Amazon sentiment than specifically helping steer people away from Amazon’s online retail monopoly.
I want more on this too. Amazon’s monopoly has made it so hard to find alternative online stores to buy a lot of stuff, particularly if I don’t already know the name of a trusted manufacturer off the top of my head. Even competitor companies like Target and Walmart often offer less selection with higher prices and slower shipping. Also why is it that online retailers seem so scammy these days? Most brands seem to be new/disposable Chinese company names I’ve never heard of and reviews seem inflated/bot generated.
It seems like my local thrift store has the best quality to price for a lot of stuff, but they don’t always have something I’m looking for
Drop shipping has become a really big thing online. I just watched a video about people creating fake sad stories to push “handmade products”. All cheap mass manufactured shit from China.
Hard to find legit businesses right off the rip since it seems everyone is trying to scam these days.
I see it on social media all the time, some sob story about how “we are closing our store of handmade stuff due to personal circumstances, please buy our stuff at 90% off!” And it’s mass produced Chinese crap that is way overpriced even at supposedly “90% off”. People fall for it all the time.
I actually don’t totally agree with the shipping part of this.
Anecdotally, I’ve found that pretty much all of the “big box” stores have good shipping now, and often for free (so long as you hit a price point, of course). And at least in my city, Walmart or Best Buy often ships within a day and it only takes 2-3 days to get the product(s).
Now, there can certainly be a conversation on whether or not it’s good to buy things from these companies, which is a good conversation to have. But their shipping is often good.
Most online retailers have ALWAYS been scammy. Its part of what helped grow Amazon in the first place. They were actually trustworthy, reliable, and offered good consumer protections in simple and straight forward refund policies
This is basically true of all the current giants. No company that gets that big can start out entirely fucked up. They have to get their legitimately THEN go to shit.
If you (or anyone else) end up making one, please tell me, I absolutely want to follow something like that.
We second this, we have a LOT of online shops that we have on our phone saved and would love to share
I tried to make one literally called not-Amazon but pretty much everybody had an opinion on how I was doing it wrong and I just didn’t have enough emotional bandwidth to deal with it. Would be happy to be a secondary mod if somebody else has the energy to deal with those people.
everybody had an opinion on how I was doing it wrong and I just didn’t have enough emotional bandwidth to deal with it
Straight up why larger communities often have mods with terrible personalities. They’re the only ones who dgaf enough.
This is the issue I’ve had with many of my ideas. So I stopped asking people and just started doing things the way I want to do them, instead of getting negative responses and not starting at all.
Yeah but I’ve got ideas I have more to contribute with like my biggest project on fedi is !DIYMentalHealth@lemmy.dbzer0.com which is an effort to create a slightly more structured mental health support space that gives people specific tools and education to get by when they can’t afford a professional.
The biggest thing holding me back right now is that I think the space would really benefit from a bot. I tend to be kind of flaky and lose focus and I have all the posts written but often forget to actually post them once a week. I think if I could do that plus an automatic weekly check in thread I might be able to kickstart some better engagement.
I left Amazon 10 years ago. I try to buy direct from manufacturer’s websites, for instance, I just ordered a pocket hole jig from Vevor. I’ve never not gotten something because Amazon was the only source, that’s not a thing as far as I can tell. Everything Amazon sells can be bought elsewhere online, sometimes for less.
That would be great! I cancelled my subscription and have been trying to buy direct for a while now.
No idea, but it’s great that many of y’all and us are doing this. Buy local, buy from worker co-ops, buy from ethical countries!
I’d recommend to also use Buybeaver & No Thanks, to boycot the US and the like. Generally I exclude Russia & Belarus, most of the Middle East (Israel included), and North & Middle Africa.
I go to ebay and select “Canada Only” when trying to find a particular item. (Am Canadian)
There was, but it’s shipped by Amazon. The site just redirects to an Amazon store.
Nice! Thanks for updating us. Joined!
