• Ramblingman@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    We cancelled Amazon Prime, and I won’t buy on their platform anymore. I bought something off Ebay, and sure enough it came from Amazon anyway. I guess they either dropped shipped or they fulfill their orders. I’ve bought a few things straight from the company and the price was the same. Shipping took a little longer, but I’ll gladly wait if means not supporting these companies that grovel to dictators.

    • turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I bought something off Ebay, and sure enough it came from Amazon anyway. I guess they either dropped shipped or they fulfill their orders.

      Argh, this drives me crazy! I went to ebay and was willing to pay more to avoid Amazon, but the stuff comes from Amazon anyway. I’m pretty sure this is just 3rd-party sellers drop-shipping stuff. I don’t believe ebay sells anything themselves.

      Anyway, I finally figured out that anything being sold new on ebay with only stock photos for a higher price than amazon has a very high likelihood of being cross-shipped from amazon and the seller is pocketing the difference (minus ebay fees?). Either look for non-stock photos, prices less than 5-10% higher than Amazon, or ideally both to avoid this.

      A couple of times that I fell for this I made it a point to return the products for a refund. I didn’t give the sellers a negative review because I figured that it’s just some poor slob trying to eek out a living, but I came close.

    • thatKamGuy
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      2 days ago

      Buying direct also gives those companies a higher profit margin; meaning they have the opportunity to expand, or better pay their employees (whether or not they do, is a seperate matter).