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Unfortunately I have to agree with this view. I'm in the UK and I've ordered from many vendors, including food from brick and mortar shops which offer the option to purchase online.

Although in the majority of cases things went well, the two things that really set Amazon apart is (A) the fact that it acts like an arbiter in favour of the buyer (which I argue it should be the standard anyway) and (B) it doesn't haggle or makes it difficult to return faulty or products I'm unhappy with for whatever reason. Again, though I didn't need to return many products for the most part, when I did need to do that a number of sellers made it cumbersome for me to do so.

For a more recent example, I've ordered food from Morrisons online (a UK supermaker chain) and one of the products was not in there. There was no easy way to get it fixed somehow (like a partial refund or something), which reminded me once again why I buy on Amazon even though I'd very much prefer not to.

> Absolutely not. Amazon is the only company that reliably shows when they'll deliver, even before you order. Other companies tend to indicate deliveries within 1-2 days or 2-3 days if items are in stock. You never know when the cut off time is and if they ship out on Saturdays. I know that's a very hard problem to solve logistically but as a customer I don't care.

Except in NL ... that's exactly what the other stores do when they say "order before 22:00 and have it delivered the next day!", almost entirely without doing the things that make people dislike Amazon.

> Also the no questions asked return policy is pretty unique. If I get a defective item I don't want to argue with the seller why it doesn't work, I just want to have a working replacement tomorrow. Amazon always delivers on that, others very rarely do.

We have a 30-day "change your mind" policy required by law, I thought that was a EU policy, but I guess it's Dutch ..

14 days is required by the EU rule (Distance Selling regulation), the Dutch can extend that in their own law.

> Also the no questions asked return policy is pretty unique.

The 14 day period to return something you've purchased online (or by post or by phone), starting after receipt of the goods, is EU law.

Choosing local/national, ethical, tax-paying retailers is easily worth a very occasional inconvenience for me. Using Amazon pushes that inconvenience onto the warehouse staff, and whoever the government's current spending cuts are affecting.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Not in my experience in Germany:

Ordered items on the 24th (a Friday) and they said normal delivery was expected on the 30th (next Thursday) and premium would show up on the 27th (next Monday). Didn’t want to pay for Prime, so went with the standard shipping. Received the items the next day on the 25th (Saturday).

I’m not complaining, but I’ll never trust the Prime/premium shipping again which now just feels like a scam.

On of the major online shops here, bol.com, has a thing for most of their products "Order before 23:59, in your house tomorrow." Generally the other bigger Dutch online shops do the same. Even during current busy times, I've not had them fall short on that.

With the returns, isn't it an EU requirement that they take a return no-questions within something like 2 weeks?

> Amazon is the only company that reliably shows when they'll deliver, even before you order.

Except when it's not reliable and it arrives 2 days later. Or, in the case of the used book I ordered a while ago, there's no indication of when or how it'll be delivered and only at the start of delivery it suddenly tells you that it'll take at least a month to ship because the product is on the other side of the planet.

Amazon is usually pretty good, but even with Prime it rarely takes less than 3-4 days to deliver, most local shops are at least a day faster. And with those I can be sure they won't sell me fake products mixed with genuine ones.

This is maybe true for items shipped by Amazon itself but Amazon nowadays is a marketplace. I twice ordered something where it said 5-7 days, turns out it's shipped from China and took several weeks to arrive. The not-on-stock-despite-saying-so with other shops happens but not very often in my experience.