• Lumisal@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I live in Finland and have managed to always find an alternative. Ireland gets way more shipping options than Finland. You’re literally just not searching hard enough.

    1. don’t use Google. It always only tries to give regional search options. Use Startpage and change the region.

    2. search in a different country’s language. If searching in Poland for example, search in Polish.

    And heck, if you somehow still can’t find what you need from those stores, just look at China - EU shops. Most of Amazon’s shit is from China anyway, so might as well avoid the middleman.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago
      1. I don’t use Google.

      2. I went to a Polish site and they don’t deliver to Ireland.

      You’re literally just not searching hard enough.

      That’s fair but now you see why there isn’t a European Amazon? Amazon makes things convenient. They operate on a single language and have good localised pages for many parts of the world. I could have my Firefox browser translate but it’s still done awkwardly. Europe doesn’t offer an alternate Amazon because of multiple languages and different structures because each countries do their own. The closest rival is Wildberries but there is sanction on Russia.

      Sorry to be flippant, but again, people who speak on high horse about completely avoiding Amazon speak from their own experience and incorrectly think it’s universal. If it’s that easy to boycott Amazon, it would have already gone bankrupt.

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago
        1. Then why mention Google search in your previous comment?
        2. There’s more countries than Poland. That’s just an example. You could try Spain - they have a big market too, for example.

        Or you could do option three I mentioned and you ignored - buying straight from China if out of options. It’s likely the thing you wanted was made there anyway if you can’t find a European courier service to ship it to you.

        We both know why Amazon is successful. But unless you or I get a couple million euros minimum, we can’t do much about setting up a competitor to Amazon (Also they operate on multiple languages too btw, there’s Amazon.de in German or Amazon.es in Spanish).

        Firefox browser at least translates well enough. If it didn’t exist, you’d have a much better reason, but it does.

        It’s not that hard to boycott Amazon, but people from 1st world countries have gotten extremely lazy for very particular things. This is one of them. Buying something already takes more effort than not buying something - units you’re someone born with a silver spoon in your mouth I suppose. People in these countries have a more “throw it away” attitude than a “needs to keep working a long time” one. It’s cultural.

        Does it take more time to give something without Amazon? Yes. Does it take a lot more time though? Not really. In the end, it really comes down to just not caring enough about fascism/climate/corruption. Because realistically, by choosing Amazon, you’ve already decided that those things matter less than whatever doodad you’re buying, and outside of something that’s from the base layer of the hierarchy of needs, like medicine or food, you don’t have a good reason.

        I’ve grown up poor. I’ve gone through times of poverty so extreme I went without food for nearly a week, and other times would walk miles to forage for food in a forest. While in university. The ones in high horses are the ones privileged enough to think needing to buy something from Amazon is a realistic issue.

        • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          I never said Google, not sure what you’re trying to read. I use Duckduckgo but I admit it’s getting terrible over the years and I might start using Startpage because I think it’s slightly better.

          The Amazon pages have bettee localisation and better translation to many languages, unlike Firefox translation which I still find clumsy.

          Does it take more time to give something without Amazon? Yes. Does it take a lot more time though? Not really. In the end, it really comes down to just not caring enough about fascism/climate/corruption.

          That’s a fair enough argument.