Try shopping on Discogs or EBay. They both can handle a single cart with multiple vendor items shipping from different places.
Comment on Random idea: a federated alternative to Amazon Prime built from independent shops?
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 4 days ago
Love the idea in concept. One major issue is the shipping. A major benefit of Amazon is just being able to add 20 things to your cart and get them all in like 1-2 boxes. In this hypothetical scenario, you’d presumably still have to handle checkout through each individual store, and if you ordered 20 things, you’d be placing up to 20 individual orders, each with their own shipping costs.
This becomes more problematic when maybe multiple stores you’re buying from sell multiple things on your list… ideal case would be to buy as many things from one store as possible, to consolidate shipping, but what if their prices for the individual items vary? Now you’ve got to search each individual storefront for each item and calculate the difference in cost. (This store sells item A for $2 cheaper but shipping is $3.50, is there another item I can add in to save shipping? They sell item B for $0.50 more, but I might save on shipping costs…)
Technically this is no worse than it is now if you’re shopping from a variety of stores rather than one megastore, but it would be a large barrier to adoption if you’re trying to capture some of the “fed up with Amazon but still like the convenience” crowd.
mx_smith@lemmy.world 3 days ago
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
If this has worked for you in the last 5 years, your Amazon experience has been very different than mine.
It was wonderful, when they did that.
dil@piefed.zip 4 days ago
You get the option to pick, fewer boxes or faster delivery for some items? I always get the option.
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Oh, teah. I’ve used Amazon recently enough to see the “fewer boxes” option.
Last time I checked “fewer boxes” I got emailed a half assed excuse blaming their “partners” and then slowly received a shit-ton of boxes.
I don’t give them many chances, now, anyway. I try pretty hard to shop non-megacorp, now.
I’m not mad if it’s working for others.
Really I’m just curious if there’s a set of customers that Amazon still excels for, or if Amazon is just coasting along on reputation from past quality.
dil@piefed.zip 3 days ago
I like stuff fast, so it works for me. 90% of things get overnighted with no minimum limit with prime. Only have a local walmart, everything else is 30+ minutes away and even then amazon usually has cheaper and better stuff compared to whatever cheapo brands retail stores carry at a markup.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 4 days ago
I had a horrible Amazon experience 3 or 4 years ago and haven’t shopped there since, so I’m probably remembering the time when it did work.