Increasingly disgruntled with/moving away from Amazon

Tech Support
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TL;DR/BLUF - US-Centric MPU fam, what are your favorite online retailers (for any products - not just tech) for reasonable prices, reasonable shipping minimums, and reasonable customer service?

The non-TL;DR/BLUF somewhat-rant:

My wife and I have been Amazon Prime subscribers for quite awhile. And since we were Prime subscribers, we got to the point where we started using Subscribe & Save, Prime Video, etc.

The thing is, our local DC seems to be committed to finding new & innovative ways to destroy things. Their philosophy can be embodied in, “what if we put everything in a poly bag, rather than using boxes?”

Boxes of tea, completely smashed upon arrival. Canned goods dented. Paper goods smashed/folded. Multi-book orders thrown into a huge poly bag all loose, so that they knock against each other and bang up the books. It’s not just that they use a poly bag - they don’t even use it well. We don’t need everything to be pristine - but if you pay $30 for a notebook, you don’t expect the corners to be smashed in when you receive it.

Apparently they even managed to figure out how to destroy a 35 lb kettlebell in the shipping process. I never got to see it, but it was “damaged during shipping.” How do you damage a 35 lb ball of cast iron?

They’re always good about issuing a refund or a replacement product, but I kept reiterating to them that I don’t want a refund - I want it to stop happening. And despite the fact that they keep saying they’re going to address the issue, it keeps happening. This isn’t primarily about price. It’s about the fact that problems are too frequent, and Amazon’s customer service policy has become “we don’t want to hear from you - use the automated system.”

So we’re moving away, slowly. There are still enough little one-off items that we’re not going to be “off” Amazon any time in the immediate future - but we’re working on it.

  • We’re having good luck with Chewy for our pet stuff now. Decent prices, autoship, low shipping minimums, and they know what a cardboard box is.
  • We’re adding a number of non-refrigerated/frozen items to our semimonthly local store grocery shopping and/or our Sam’s Club membership.
  • My occasional purchases of paper/fountain pen stuff I’m mostly offloading to JetPens, with maybe once a year placing a Levenger order.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. :slight_smile: And remember the question - what are your favorite US-centric online retailers for decent prices, decent shipping minimums, and decent customer service?

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I’ve heard people have good experiences with Walmart’s subscription delivery service for household goods but haven’t tried personally.

The part of Amazon I have the hardest time quitting is physical books. The prices are unbeatable. I just ordered a hardcover of Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain biography for $15. That’s a book that came out in the past year that I’d pay $45 for at a bookstore. I do pay full price for books when I’m at small shops but it’s really hard to pay that for every book. I would love to know how people are buying new books (I know about libraries and used bookstores and do take advantage of them to preface).

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My wife and I are heavy users of Amazon, but if they continue raising the price of Prime, I may discontinue my subscription. The only Prime benefit we use with regularity is free shipping. Eliminating the subscription would likely reduce our overall purchases as well — perhaps the added friction would prove beneficial.

Like @tnetha, we have had positive experiences with Walmart, though we order there only for occasional, one-off purchases. We do not subscribe to Walmart+.

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I was gifted a 1 year Walmart+ subscription early in the covid lockdown and still use the service, mainly for groceries. Services are similar to Amazon, including Paramount+ or Peacock streaming.

I’ve never had any major problem with grocery deliveries, curb side pickup, or shipments of durable goods. But I do get the occasional dented can of beans.

I’ve been a Prime member since 2006, except for a couple of months after one price increase. And while I receive more plastic and paper bags than I used to, I’ve not had the problems you describe. Possibly because I tend to buy items harder to damage? Or the robots in the ginormous warehouse in our area are better at pick and pack?

But I have grown to hate driving. And ordering an SSD or some cables from Amazon beats fighting traffic for an hour or so to pick them up at BestBuy. Especially when I can get same day delivery.

Update 13 Mar 2026. Amazon just raised their price again. I guess I won’t be a Prime user much longer.

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Finally weaned myself off of Prime. The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the extra $3 to watch Amazon Prime video without ads.

It’s amazing that I held on as long as I did because my wife had a horrible tenure working for Amazon. That wasn’t entirely on Amazon as a lot of our focus was on our son who was under a year.

Now we’re at Walmart Corporate and the pain has lessened considerably. When we first got here Walmart’s website looked like an afterthought. The daily grind that all of the teams have put in during the last 5 years is evident. It used to be “why even search walmart.com they’re not going to have it” to now I get what I need 70% of the time. Sam’s Club has improved as well. I hindsight I still think they should have kept the Vudu streaming service. It would have been a value add to Walmart+ and now that Walmart owns Vizio it seems there was opportunities there.

If I have an addiction right now …it’s eBay. I always log in to browse thinking “I won’t buy anything” and 5 days later 3 boxes are showing up on my porch.

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I am not able to drive. I’ve been my Mom’s caregiver until recently. I depend on mail/delivery services. I too have been moving away from Amazon.

I use Walmart Plus (annual subscription) for brand-name goods, and a limited amount of produce and meat (produce and meat can be not great).

I use a local grocery chain with an annual subscription (half price at $50.00) for produce.

I use JetPens, Tokyo Penshop (https://tokyopenshop.com), Pen Chalet (https://www.penchalet.com) & Gentleman Stationer (Curated Shop Main Page — The Gentleman Stationer) in that order for stationery. I rely on coupons for Pen Chalet (via The Pen Addict).

I mostly buy ebooks, except for scholary books which are pretty much equally expensive everywhere. I pay attention to Bookbub ebook sales (https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals).

I buy tea from Upton Tea (https://www.uptontea.com). I watch for sales there, especially with free shipping.

I use Costco for large items and a lot of technology purchases.

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I use B & H Photo for anything tech, computer, or photography/videography if they have it.

Prices on par with Amazon and others, delivery is a few days to a week, and free with their “Payboo” credit card.

Big bonus is they pay sales tax, which for me is almost 10% savings on all purchases.

They are fully authorized and reputable Apple dealer, so anything Apple that isn’t a “day 1” buy, I get from B&H and have been very happy (iPads, Apple Studio Monitor, Mac Studio, etc.)

You do have to be proactive and pay off the card immediately to avoid huge finance charges, but that’s worth the 10% added savings for me.

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A few years ago, we discontinued our prime subscription because it was easy enough to meet the threshold for free shipping as it is. At least in Canada. It’s wasn’t as fast, but we never order anything off Amazon that really requires next day shipping. It was nice, but not necessary. I enjoy the extra $100 in my wallet every year (more now I think)

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$139 in the US

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I started buying gray market Nikon gear from them in '82 and still buy stuff from them from time to time.

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extra $3 to watch Amazon Prime video without ads.

I really hate this. However, I have not had any trouble with damaged goods as @webwalrus has (we don’t get groceries from Amazon though).

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I recently ordered several grocery/pantry items from Costco.

The box containing my order was oversized with little or no packing material inside; therefore, every item in my order was damaged, dented, and banged up.

:rage:

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We’ve had Walmart+. The thing is, for grocery delivery, you still need to tip the driver. And by “need” I don’t mean “it’s required,” but rather “they pay the drivers so little that I consider it somewhat of a moral obligation.”

It’s not a bad service, as far as delivery services go. All delivery services can be hit-or-miss, but the couple of times they forgot something it was pretty easy to get it sorted.

This is where we’re at as well. Very occasionally we pop on to Prime Video, but the addition of ads and the constant upsells make it unappealing. The thing about the free shipping is that I find myself wondering if we budgeted $140 for shipping every year, and took reasonable advantage of the “free shipping over $35” offer on many products, would we be money ahead?

We likely aren’t ever going to order zero from Amazon. But our volume is dropping by a substantial amount.

The thing that I don’t like about most grocery delivery is that the store selling the groceries is usually separate from the delivery company. And every time there’s a disconnect like that, it leads to neither party being responsible in any useful sense. I remember a store not delivering our order on the scheduled day, despite having a reservation for 1:00 PM. They made it all the way until 10:00 PM closing without calling us or getting us our groceries. Our delivery with refrigerated itmes showed up the next day at a random, unscheduled time. “Not our fault. We’re not the delivery company.” Well, no…but you ARE the company that took my money and committed to a time. :slight_smile:

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I’m based in the UK so some of this will only apply to the UK. We’ve gone through a similar de-Amazon process about a year ago and to be honest we haven’t missed it at all.

For technology, most items we either buy from a nationwide chain (Currys) or for the more esoteric one-off items, eBay. Many retailers such as Anker have an eBay store as well. eBay is also good for random non-tech items if not available direct-from-manufacturer.

For books, we have moved more to secondhand books for environmental reasons. World of Books is where we get them from. Note that Abe Books, one of the other popular secondhand book retailers, is a subsidiary of Amazon. New books and eBooks are often from Hive who represent local bookstores.

We never bought groceries from Amazon. Most of the big UK supermarkets do home delivery for the weekly shop.

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Interestingly here at least, all of the big supermarket chains “own” their own delivery service. Whilst it’s possible that internally they’re a separate company, from a customer perspective it’s all one service. If I have a problem with the delivery, I call Tesco not some other company.

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100% this. It turned out that when we took away the option of same/next day delivery we didn’t miss it.

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Since I still have Amazon, I’m guilty of sending all kinds of small item purchased through them one-off since delivery is free and it more of a nuisance to try and find some of these low price items in stock at local stores.

Retail theft has gotten so high that much of the daily staples, especially health care items, are kept locked up.

It takes so long to wait for an employee to come by and unlock the case, and you have to know exactly what you want, that I just pop on Amazon more and more instead.

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We’re in the same boat. Cancelled Prime effective in June. I can’t give JB anymore of my money. I’m sure we’ll still order, but Prime has been enshittified in my opinion. We live in a metro area but more and more not getting things on time. Not to mention ads on Prime Video (which I’m already paying for).

Like you said, it’s the little, random purchases I am having trouble with. We already buy our pet supplies locally, household stuff at Costco, etc. Books have been coming from our library more and more.

I find myself going to the original seller website if I find something I want to buy. Not as convenient but also adds some friction if I “really” need to purchase.

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I wasn’t happy about the extra $3 but I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound”. Then this “straw” showed up in my Inbox a few minutes ago:

“Thank you for being a Prime Video Ad Free subscriber. We’re writing to let you know that on April 10, 2026, Prime Video Ad Free will become Prime Video Ultra with enhanced viewing features, and your subscription price will increase to $4.99/month.”

Looks like BestBuy, B&H, Walmart and others will be getting more of my business after all.

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YIKES. I saw that the Prime members that suffer through ads in Prime Video are losing 4K in April but I did not know they’ve already hiked the price of ad free.

I’ve gotten the same if not cheaper price on items from B&H with fast shipping. Zero regrets on getting off the “Amazon Juice Squeeze” train.