I keep reading comments people say to buy stuff on Amazon. they swear buy it. I am old school and hardly ever buy anything on line. Now I have started to see prices seem to be cheaper on Amazon. Thing is I don't know how Amazon works. By that I know it's an online store. But how does it work to have cheaper prices than going to a store?

I am old school. I go to the store. I like to support the local economy. Thing is when a store doesn't seem interested in selling me something I may as well go else where. If I can't go else where I have to try something different then. So I thought I would try Amazon.

For me it's one of those "if it's too good to be true it's not" scenarios. I am seeing things on Amazon like $100 cheaper than going through a store where they really don't care about selling the product to me. Thing is, as I said if it seems too good to be true that I can save $100 on something brand new and get in in a few days or next day. (read somewhere you can get your stuff next day but I don't know how that works) I might actually try to do some shopping in the twenty first century.

Since I am a skeptic anything about online shopping I came here to our great forum where you have helped me a lot. So if I see something on Amazon where I can save $100 or more and get it relatively soon should I trust it? Is it really true? Why would it be if I buy it on Amazone I would pay say $150 but on the actual web site of the product that company would sell it for $250. I just can't believe this is true.

So have things changed. Is Amazon the exception of "if it's too good to be true..." or is it still buyer beware and I might not get what I wanted. Does Amazon have an actual good return policy? If they do, is it a hassle to get your money back or do they guarantee everything they sell?

As I said, I really can't believe you can save this much money on brand new products. I want to make sure before I buy.

I've been buying products from Amazon since about 1996. Over the years I have put in probably a hundred orders. They have delivered what I ordered. They never overcharged me. And they always delivered reasonably on time.

If it's the same product, it's the same product, and there's usually no reason why it should work differently depending on who is selling it. Amazon can sell things cheaper because they don't have expensive shop space, just warehouses. If the company who is selling the same thing on their website at a higher price, because Amazon is big enough to offer reductions on some things without harming their profits.

Amazon's own return policy is pretty good, but you also need to take account of things that are being sold by independent traders through amazon, rather than things that are sold by Amazon itself. They may vary in the cost of postage and their return policy. Amazon's own warehouse tends to send me things the next day, even if I choose 4 day delivery, because I live 3 miles from their warehouse. As for supporting local shops, it may be a laudable aim, but eventually delivery technology will wipe out most shopfronts anyway, even the larger ones. Personally I consider that to be a neat solution to the housing crisis, having all that empty space in towns. The loss of small shopkeepers wouldn't be a problem in itself if our society didn't require people to have jobs in order to survive, regardless of how unnecessary those jobs might actually be.

Yep, Amazon is fast and reliable. I've been ordering from there since 2002. I much prefer it over ebay.

I believe they also stock their warehouses by purchasing in bulk, which can allow for cheaper prices but still maintaining a profit

Probably. I was thinking of rivals like the big stores that sell TVs and vacuum cleaners. Presumably their warehouses are full too.

Thank you so much everyone. This is good to know and I have learned a few things. Greatly appreciate it everyone.

I've.been ordering from them for years. What's nice is that I use Amazon cards so there's no bank information to be stolen.

I have Amazon Prime and have done quite a bit of shopping there for many years. I've purchased just about every type of item you can think of like electronics, office supplies, furniture, and even some groceries. While no service is absolutely perfect It's been very reliable. I've only returned a couple of items which I had no problem doing. If you have Amazon Prime you get 20% off on new release games and they also have a really nice video service (Amazon Video). It's similar to Netflix complete with their own original tv series and movies.

They are great especially if you have Amazon Prime Membership because that makes everything that has the Prime label free shipping no matter what its is or the weight sometimes I order maybe 80 lbs of cat litter for free shipping of course Prime Membership costs $100 a year but it's well worth it,mine payed for itself in maybe 2-3 orders.


I buy usually all dry ,canned,packaged food from them and all fresh/frozen stuff at the local grocery store,thats how good their prices are.


BUT and this is a BIG BUT don't EVER buy a Amazon Gift card from a store because for some reason they don't work and you get ripped off until you make a big deal then take picture of the card and receipt then send that to them,after all of that they will credit your account,my ma just bought $175 worth of cards that didn't work and she don't have a Amazon account but fortunately I do so they credited my account then she bought her stuff with,otherwise she'd have been screwed.


I buy from them so often that I've had my debit card on my Amazon account for like 7 yrs or something and nothing bad has ever happened,you know hacking or stealing?stuff like that? Yeah never happened.


With Prime delivery and Returns their service is usually ridiculously fast, the Prime Membership is so cool sometimes if I order the wrong thing them email the seller they send the item that I meant to order and it comes before I even mail the first wrong item back,like 2 days after emailing that I got the wrong item and im sending it back I get the right item,returns are fast also usually..,sorry for the long post I just really dig Amazon,EXCEPT FOR THEIR CARDS DON'T BUY THOSE unless you are buying it off their site and they are sending the card number by email, I heard that that works great.


If you can't afford the $100 for Prime Membership get like 10 friends together that don't have it either and put the Prime on one account LOL my brother did that with his coworkers now they all order off there.

I only use Amazon when I absolutely have to, or if there's a huge profit. Other than that I buy from the shops. It's not because I don't trust them, but rather because of what we in the UK have been hearing about them lately, and how they treat their staff. Rather than staff I think slaves would be a much better description. Bullying is rife in their warehouse, with their staff not being allowed to take breaks, having their wages cut for being late after going through routine searches, having to go to the toilet on the shop floor, and even being paid under the legal minimum wage. Hire and fire is also regular. Their drivers also get the same treatment, including being forced to make at least 200 drops in a day, which forces them to break the speed limit and not take breaks to even go to the toilet. Like I said, if I can get the same thing in town and within ￡10 of Amazon, then I avoid them. They're totally trustworthy, but they're also total b***tards to their staff.

I love Amazon. I got the Amazon Prime thing and I get all kinds of movies/tv and music I can check out, not to mention free 2 day shipping on select items (which most of the time you can find what you want in those select items). I've never had a problem with them and when I did need to return something it was a very easy process.

Amazon Prime for Game Preorders... I would not buy Art Books from Amazon for if you want them in undamaged condition

I've started using other places for movies as long as they were cheaper. http://www.bullmoose.com/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/50-off-the-criterion-collection/_/N-2dy8for Criterion Edition movies... Because they have semiannual 50% off sales

Yes.

I've never had an issue with Amazon, just make sure when you shop you check the seller's ratings 95-100 with five stars are the sellers you want to buy from anything less than that don't without checking that sellers reviews.

I often use Amazon because of the convenience and their returns policy, which I've found to be better than most stores, especially when it comes to stuff like computer bits. Considering the amount of stuff I order they're mostly very good, although not totally trouble-free: I think their aggressive sourcing of some stuff can occasionally cause them to become unstuck and I have for example ended up with counterfeit mini-SD cards before (confirmed as such by the manufacturer) so I'm wary of ordering certain small, high-value goods from them. But for the most part I've found they're very reliable.

I disagree with the part about not buying Amazon cards. I always buy them and never had a problem.

I've bought a number of art books from Amazon and they've been fine - in fact they tend to be more securely packaged and better handled than buying from sellers on Amazon marketplace.

I too have found Amazon to be totally reliable and great for returns if something goes wrong. Lost count of the amazing books I've bought on Amazon marketplace at reallly silly prices like 1p. It's just a pity that, as Chadric rightly points out, they're reportedly utter bastards to their staff and have dubious tax arrangements. Being disabled I'm almost totally reliant on getting things through the mail otherwise I'd buy more in high street shops.

Amazon aren't always the cheapest and it does pay to shop around.

EDIT: Oooops messed up posting there - nevermind.

Last one I got just had a a single airbag tossed in a box

Even so it's very unlikely that people would be able to "steal" your card info without breaking into Amazon's databases. They conceal most of the card number and ask you to enter it again if anyone tries to have something delivered to an unregistered address.

Still, your caution is reasonable.

edit: fixed silly typo

You are very fortunate,when this happened with the cards is the first time that I found out that there is no customer service number,and upon doing more research I found out that it happened to many people,I guess that they have counterfeit cards with bad numbers and even some with NO numbers at all,from what I read those people that got no numbered cards got straight ripped off because the store that sold them won't refund and in order for Amazon to credit a account they need a picture of the card # with the receipt,as much as I like Amazon their phone customer service needs a overhaul because they didn't even answer their phone,I had to leave MY phone #,they got back to me in like 20 min. But the whole thing was so inconvenient.

While it's true that usually these sites are safe, I feel the need to point out that your experiences don't mean that they don't happen. I've had bad experiences with paypal AND amazon. Amazon, I was using my parents credit card(I don't have one, it was for them anyways) and their # got stolen, Amazon confirmed it happened because of them and tens of thousands of dollars were charged to my parents card. They spent months working it out with their credit card companies, thankfully it all happened overseas and my parents have never left the country, so in the end it was all refunded.

Paypal, we had our bank account linked to their(again, no credit card), and someone hacked our paypal account and we ended up being charged $900 that we didn't have, + overdraft fees. Thankfully paypal was very good about the whole thing, they spent hours talking with my bank representative straightening it out and convincing them to take back the overdraft fees(at first my bank were being d-bags, saying they wouldn't reverse the OD fees ><).

And this isn't a case of "Poor computer security", I don't go to more then a handful of sites on the internet, none of them places where you download stuff, I have noscript and adblock plus with Firefox, I have a firewall and a good antivirus, as well as malwarebytes, and our passwords are long, complicated things that we have to write down because it's impossible to memorize, with uppercase/lowercase letters, #'s and symbols. The issues both times were on the other guys end(paypal/amazon). So while your experiences may have been great, there are bad times as well.

On the other hand, we(my wife and I) have used paypal since 2007, and that's the only time anything bad has ever happened with them. Amazon there was one other scare, my wife got a notification of someone from another country trying to get into our account WHILE she was on the computer, so she quickly changed the password. Since then we got rid of that account, she created a new gmail, and used her name instead of mine and we haven't had any issues.