I’ve been on it since things got bad in the US. And in most cases, I found a good replacement. Different Pizza delivery, book order, convenient even, most of the time.
For general products I switched to Otto (Germany) mostly, Thalia for books. And I was able to get the biggest recent order through there (two big screens, screen mount, cables), as well as some smaller ones. Alternate would have been another option.
Cost is significantly higher, often +10 % - +20% for the same product and no free shipping.
But what I miss most is convenience. The whole process at Amazon is just working great, especially for stupid people with bad attention (that might be me). Miss a little detail, and you ordered with advanced payment, adding double the clicks and inputs to do a wire transfer. Or not realise you did that and wonder why the product never ships a few days later. Buy from a marketplace seller who ships through DHL, but can’t use a DHL pickup location anyway.
What I always disliked about Amazon was the exploitation of employees. How much does that even save per product? I bet that the people handling my order would be happy with EUR 2 extra split among them, as they certainly handle many orders per hour, and I’d be happy to pay that. Is there really no market for high convenience with fair prices?
I do have 10 minutes extra per day to work through a lacking order flow for a good cause, but it would take lots of resources to catch up to that level of convenience.
Just about every serious seller on Amazon has a website or another direct sales channel. The bigger ones will even ship with a professional warehouse in about the same time. Some even give discounts or return incentives if you shop them regularly and can almost surely handle customer service or tech issues faster and more directly without going through Amazon. If they are honest in their dealings their return and exchange policies may even be better too.
Amazon really understands the lifetime value of a customer and benefits tremendously by having the biggest catalog in existence. They do a lot of stuff to keep buyers satisfied and sellers on edge. It’s a race to the bottom there and nobody wins except Amazon, while customers get cheaper and cheaper shit and sellers can have their livelihood and the funds to pay the salaries of their staff by a Monday morning email which could come after the slightest infraction.
This gives me an idea for a browser plug in that would show you the sellers direct store as you shop Amazon. Maybe something like that exists already.