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I was a huge fan of Amazon from a usability perspective. Unmatched, I'd say!
But there are obvious reasons against it: Worker exploitation and the political situation.
Got to admit, I'm a "soft-quitter", still got my account and still order there as a last resort.
My latest purchase: Several different types of heavy-duty storage racks.
Method used for shelf type one (4x):
- Amazon for search & comparison
- tried the product on geizhals.de, but to my surprise, it omitted the manufacturer as an option!
- went directly to the manufacturer, who had a very decent paypal checkout integration (obviously, invoice / wire transfer and auto-fill form would be preferable)
Price compared to Amazon: Exactly the same.
Method used for shelf type two (2x):
- Wanted to try the new ChatGPT "Agent" to do a research based on a list of criteria. (I know, it's not European!)
- Quite happy with the results, which included a table with metrics such as "price per storage area". It did not include any Amazon results and showed mostly manufacturer stores
- It had this as the top result: https://juskys.de/products/2er-set-lagerregal-easy-160-x-80-x-40-cm#%3A%7E%3Atext=Mit+bis+zu+640+kg%2Cbelastbar
- I decided to go with a bigger version of that
- Checkout was just slightly quirky, but lost no more than 3 minutes compared to Amazon
This is what ChatGPT Agent generated. Is it a viable shopping method in general? We'll see. In any case, it's not European, and there are huge environmental issues with it. Similar results might be gained from asking online, like in a home community.
Otto in Germany, although it doesn't sell books and is beginning to reek of Amazon with its cheap Chinese crap.
For books there is Thalia and the Kulturkaufhaus.