Anyone else struggling to avoid Amazon because of the price of some things? I need 3M Tegaderm for example and on Amazon it cost 28€ for 10cm by 10m roll and on other sites that are not Amazon I can only find it for pretty much double the price (shop-apotheke.com has it for 58,40€ https://www.shop-apotheke.com/arzneimittel/3816512/3m-tegaderm-roll-10-cm-x-10-m.htm and medizinbedarf.eu has it for 49,60€ https://www.medizinbedarf.eu/3M-Tegaderm-Roll-Transparentverband-unsteril-10-cm-x-10-m). Stuff like this really makes it difficult.

Anyone know where I can find this as cheap as on Amazon or at least not much more expensive?

  • tab@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    I consider amazon as not even an option. If I think other prices are too steep, I just don’t buy things or save up. It helps not to compare the prices.

  • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
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    18 hours ago

    Amazon requires vendors to have their lowest prices on Amazon. It violates their contract to sell cheaper elsewhere.

    • Iloveluigi@feddit.org
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      16 hours ago

      Despite that, you can sometimes find the web shop of the vendor where they sell it cheaper or for the same price as on amazon.

      • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
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        9 hours ago

        True. Also, I believe that the contract is specific to the SKU. So a TV with a minor feature change would be a different item, as would a different count of items in a multi-pack. For example, poppi sodas have a 12 pack on Amazon and a 15 pack on Costco’s website for the same price.

  • MudMan@fedia.io
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    22 hours ago

    Price and availability.

    Which is part of why “voting with your wallet” is a fallacious late capitalist trap. You don’t have much of a vote and you can’t use it freely.

    I’ve lived in places not covered by Amazon and they have much better local alternatives than the Western European regions where Amazon has sucked the air out of the space. You’re not going to re-enable competition in logistics by buying from local online stores, you’re re-enabling competition by breaking up Amazon and nationalizing their local branches (or taxing them to hell until they can’t compete, I suppose).

    • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 hours ago

      I have the privilidge (or I might consider it a curse, since I’m under the poverty line and extra savings would mean a lot), of living in a country without Amazon. So the amazon shipping prices and customs mean it’s inconvinient and often more expensive to order from amazon.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
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        11 hours ago

        Yeah, last time I was in a place under those same circumstances I was surprised at just how competent their local big online retailer was. It really did most of the same things Western Europeans and North Americans think only Amazon could do. Same day delivery in major cities, free delivery, no-questions-asked returns, the whole deal.

        It was a remarkable confirmation that Amazon isn’t deploying some secret sauce. Their model is entirely replicable, they’re just so big that any local retailer doing the same thing is just crushed before they can compete.

        You don’t fix that with a soft boycott.

  • RobotToaster
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    23 hours ago

    Careful, I bought 3m masks on Amazon and they were fake, confirmed by 3m by email.

  • a887dcd7a@lemmy.worldM
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    23 hours ago

    Actually I had it the other way around. The item on amazon was like 25€ and on Galaxus 19€+3€ shipping, so basically the same.

    In case of other products it was super helpful to have a product/shopping search going (like idealo) to find the lowest bidder.

    But in sum I find the product search on amazon more convinient: I start there just to search different shops for the found product 😈.

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    22 hours ago

    Here in the Netherlands Amazon did not operate for quite a long time, so a local digital store covers most of the needs of delivery shopping.

    So it’s relatively easy to avoid Bezos

  • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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    20 hours ago

    Amazon has good pricing and availability.

    • Local shops had nilfisk pressure washer o ring kit for 50 eur.

    • Amazon had it for 10. And even that is overpriced.

    • Local espresso cleaning tablets (8 pack) are like 16 eur.

    • Amazon has them for 10 eur. Oh and its a bottle of 100 cleaning tablets.

    • Spray booths are like 200 eur here at local hobby store.

    • Amazon has the same one for like 80.

    For that money I’ll gladly sell out the yanks to russia and destroy local pop and mom shops. Not to mention things like battery powered lightbulbs, iwata gas stoves, popular IEMS, other small weird odds and ends do not exist outside of amazon.