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Comment by Ancalagon | Hacker News Reader

Its funny how much less online shopping Im doing these days specifically because of my bad experiences ordering from Amazon.

I feel super old school going into stores, and even my girlfriend complains about it, but I no longer will risk the annoyance of delivery times and returns processes - nor the risky health effects of buying food online or clothing or kitchen ware that I'll interact with often.

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Yes, I've switched almost entirely to B&M shopping, and I haven't ordered from Amazon specifically since 2019. Physical stores have limited retail space, so they have a good reason to be choosy about what they stock. It's worth a few extra bucks to me to not have to sort through online flea markets like Amazon (plus, it gets me out of the house).

I find it more and more difficult to return items to stores in the US because they keep their returns deparments so short-staffed. Home Depot and Target are 2 places where I have stood in line for 45min to 1hr just to return something.

My experience is the opposite - at least with HD. I come in, wait 5 minutes max, and return my item and the money is back on my card within the day. Never had a hassle either returning even more expensive, even custom-fit orders (window blinds).

I don't know about target as I don't shop there too often.

Yep, my local Home Depot has no line for returns and they don’t ask questions. Example: They gave me a full refund when I returned an empty box of wooden dowels after I used them for a project and realized the box had fewer dowels than advertised (likely because someone opened it and stole a few).

I find the best strat is to buy only from a trusted reseller. In Australia, Kmart tends to have decent and cheap quality items for nearly everything.

Target is currently filling that niche in the US; Walmart has the "marketplace" sellers which you have to watch out for. Best Buy is also decent for now; hopefully they don't try to "marketplace".

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