Amazen has killed nearly all of them before we recognized what’s going on. But recently a few have started to grow up again.
In Germany there’s Otto which is okay. I try to buy more from specialized shops these days like alternate or mindfactory for pc parts, Bauhaus for household items or directly from manufacturers when it makes sense.
I only ever buy from amazon if items are not available elsewhere or unreasonable more expensive which was 3 times this year.
I recently bought PC parts for a new PC build from Mindfactory. Went without problem.
In general, I recommend searching for products with https://geizhals.de/ which shows prices and availability across many retailers.
Vielen danke! Seems like I have been bamboozled here in France (been pestering about drive prices for a while):
Vs:
There’s also Galaxus. Usually slightly more expensive, but feels like the “old” Amazon: only products selected by Galaxus, no marketplace flooding listings with crap, fast shipping and actually good packaging.
I’ve had them say the product is available only for the listing to change after I bought it and then it took weeks to restock and ship
Ouh :(
I use galaxus, kaufland or otto in germany if i want something new. Backmarket or rebuy for used tech with a guarantee and really everything else i just use kleinanzeigen most of the time
amazon is bottom-of-the-barrel in sweden. our local alternatives feel like they’re 10+ years ahead, and that’s after amazon played catch-up for the better part of two years. when they launched they had just machine-translated everything and the results were insane.
They have a lot of niche things that Swedish stores don’t have though. They win on that aspect, but otherwise yeah, I agree with you.
still not gonna buy from them after that whole business where they tried to fire a guy because he broke his leg. but yeah the amount of stuff is larger.
Woah, wait what? I mean, I’m not surprised by that behaviour but I’d not expect it here.
For people living in Spain, https://www.coolmod.com/ is quite good. I only bought one keyboard for them earlier this year, but the delivery was fast and the tracking good. The website was intuitive too.
I had a good experience with the refurbished electronics market place Back Market in France (sound bar, ipad, keyboard, mouse, cooking robot, laptop). I haven’t used it in a while as I moved outside of EU.
Bol.com is much better. Has been since time immemorial.
Except for small external sellers selling small things. Bol is quite expensive for those items.
A lot of small pieces cost ≥30% more on Bol without free shipping than either amazon or the seller’s website. I usually try to go to the seller directly in that case.
In Switzerland Galaxus overtook Amazon years ago. Brack appears to be improving lately, offering faster delivery options.
I don’t want to end up with a duplicate Amazon problem though, so for 3rd party sellers on Galaxus, if they have their own website, I often buy directly from them.
I’ve completely switched to Otto, and I’m pretty content so far. Only problem is that the choice of products isn’t quite as broad
France has cdiscount.com, usually cheaper… they dont sell books though
allegro.pl, has always been better than amazon, nothing changed
Allegro is the best online shopping experience in my opinion.
In Hungary: Allegro, Alza, Emag. Alza has next day delivery, Amazon doesn’t
Here in Greece we have skroutz, bestprice and shopflix, small local shops in (one) website. Way better than amazon and faster, but prices not always good. For example macboot card cost’s 25, while on amazon 14.
Otto’s been good, although some sellers are a bit slow
I’ve lived in Poland and Sweden.
In Poland, Allegro dominates, it’s much more convenient than Amazon.
In Sweden, I used Amazon once. There is no other general website like that I know of for first-hand stuff, buy you can get half-price new stuff from sites like Tradera or Blocket, or Vinted (very European), or Sellpy. I would try to pass by a charity store first, but for example for shoes it is very hard to find what I am looking for and in size 47 there.
For first-hand stuff, in Sweden, I just search (or know websites for the kind of product I am looking for), and rarely would Amazon be even competitive. For example, to buy books I often use Adlibris, and while it is not as nice as the local bookstore, they do sometimes have things I would have trouble finding otherwise (including a broad selection of books in English).
