Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Yeah, Amazon No Longer Has The Best Prices

I’m with you 100% on that driving around. I don't need the practice. I’m not going to spend $10 in gas and an hour and a half to save $10 on the item. People may value their time differently than me.

TRHs example is that he found a better price from Midway online delivered to his door same as Amazon. $10 on a $30-35 item is a good saving especially when you just have to pick up the package on your front porch to get the better price. You might have to press a few more buttons to place the order on Midway vs Amazon. I have accounts with the suppliers I buy stuff from and also set up on bookmarks on my ipad so it makes it easy to compare prices .

Amazon is my first stop. Depending on what it is, next stop is either walmart.com or ebay. Usually by then I can tell if Amazon has a fair price or not.

bought a pond liner yesterday from Home Depot that offered free shipping to house - was cheaper than Amazon for what I wanted.

I've found stuff cheaper on Amazon and cheaper elsewhere - Amazon sellers set their price and it can/might not be the best one. This is not a revelation. It's no different that pre-Amazon days. Either the local store had it cheap or the store 2 towns over had it cheap etc.

What I don't have to worry about with Amazon tho - setting up another account, re-typing my CC info, and then getting the in-box full of spam from another retailer etc. The buying experience is still top of the heap.

I'm pretty darn price conscious, but especially for business purposes, we pretty much just mash the Amazon button for petty-anty stuff. Can't afford to have a $40 an hour employee spending time and energy trying to save $1.50 on ordering "C" batteries.

Bigger stuff, yeah, shop around. I just saved $250 (a third) on 800' of 1/4" oxygen hose compared to the local gas suppliers and about the same on a dozen flow meters. Screw 'em, that's too much margin.

Free returns makes a difference. The Chinese shops do not have great translators and don't necessarily know what they are selling. My wife is so out of it she buys the wrong size or something stupid but knows how to send me those digital return things for UPS. I feel like a troglodyte fool flashing those things but man up for her. Driving across country it's obvious a huge paradigm shift is rapidly progressing. Huge transfer warehouses to serve online shopping, next day delivery popping up everywhere. This is killing the malls even with the sales tax loophole gone, thanks to Trump. How long regular brick and mortar retail lasts is probably shorter than we can imagine, especially with robotics. My daughter drives me nuts. She buys everything online, even appliances and swaps them back and forth for free. How the hell is that possible? Temu is trying to crash the low price floor and direct purchases from China are becoming common. Amazon is adapting pretty well. Brave new world. Or insane.