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Comment by larrymyers | Hacker News Reader

I did not renew my Prime membership this year after Amazon raised the annual price again. We have too many streaming services in our house as it is, and we don't order enough from Amazon to take advantage of the free shipping.

I've also found Amazon's prices getting less competitive, especially for things you'd usually buy at placed like Target (drive up pickup is amazing). Combined with the endless search results that are likely counterfeit and full of fake 5 star reviews, it's just too much work to buy things from Amazon for too little benefit.

As a consequence I've found myself ordering more from retailers directly, without any real downgrade in shipping.

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I love how target has solved the Amazon as competitor issue with just incremental improvements. I much more strongly trust target’s product curation staff over amazon’s anything goes mentality

I just hope that Target doesn’t follow Walmart in copying Amazon’s flawed shared inventory system. I hate having to constantly check for other 3rd party sellers who both sell the same (potentially fake) product AND use Amazon warehouses and fulfillment. It’s for this reason that our household has been gradually moving more and more of our purchases to Target.

I can’t just mindlessly buy stuff on Amazon anymore. Haven’t been able to do that for years now ever since they hit Day Two in 2015. For me, it’s transformed into a slightly better eBay. There’s nothing totally wrong about eBay, but I don’t trust it enough to buy products like food and medicine.

+1 the counterfeit items on Amazon are getting out of control. It's so stupid that there are so many millions of cheap knockoff products in any category with an overflowing number of fake 5-star reviews.

I've been using Fakespot but at the same time I have always wondered wtf Amazon is doing about it at all.

I'm not doubting that there are a shit ton of counterfeits on Amazon, but I am wondering how I've managed to avoid them so well. I have literally never received something from Amazon that I thought even had the possibility of being fake.

Could it have to do with the specific categories I shop in? Maybe the stuff I buy from Amazon just isn't profitable enough for the bad guys to bother counterfeiting?

Same here. I don't doubt people's experiences, but I have never received a counterfeit product while shopping relatively heavily and in various categories (electronics, baby clothing and food, books, kitchenware, stationery, etc.).

Maybe you do have one that’s counterfeit but is functionally ok? I had several items that didn’t pass (a Braun thermostat and a wheeled kitchen stool).

I suppose that's possible, but if the thing I got works just as well as the thing I ordered, what's the difference?

Unfortunately there's a lot of niche stuff on Amazon that Target won't have -- 3d printing filament e.g. And there aren't that many 3D printing stores in town here. In fact there are none.

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