I've made hundreds, maybe thousands of purchases on Amazon over the years, but recently have tried to go "old school" and buy direct from online sources whenever possible.
It seems like Amazon is a really shitty company. It has a 150% turnover rate per year. It consumes employees and spits them out. I've also noticed that the prices on some items really sucks. I just bought a TIG welder direct from a manufacturer and the price was hundreds of dollars less than the listings on Amazon. I bought a computer direct from a manufacturer and saved hundreds.
A few years ago, business analysts were claiming that nobody could compete with online retailers like Amazon because their "costs" were so much lower due to a lack of retail brick and mortar stores and the associated expenses of physical infrastructure.
Amazon kept accumulating expense and infrastructure, though. For example, they displaced UPS and FedEx with their own delivery system. I've noticed over time since Amazon made that decision that the reliability of deliveries has slipped.
Anyway, their overall suckiness eventually got me to change my habits and look around for better prices where possible. Ten years ago, amazon inevitably had lower prices than any other sellers, but now it seems to be flipping around the other way.
The business model of using Wall Street funny money to buy up a monopoly on some segment of the economy probably just doesn't work very well in the longer term.
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