this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
427 points (97.1% liked)

A Boring Dystopia

9791 readers
979 users here now

Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

Rules (Subject to Change)

--Be a Decent Human Being

--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title

--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article

--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.

--Posts must have something to do with the topic

--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.

--No NSFW content

--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is Amazon really your only internet retailer, or have you just not bothered looking for other online alternatives?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's often the only one where the shipping costs won't be 30% of the item's price. I've had lots of times where I was gonna buy something somewhere only to find the shipping would double the price. Etsy is the worst for this. Lots of stuff where the price tag is just barely what I can justify paying, but the shipping (and often duties) would make it comically expensive. Those things I would buy locally for sure, but finding them locally is hard.

[–] phx 0 points 1 year ago

In a lot of cases, not even that. Look at stuff like a "raspberry Pi CM4".

Pretty much EVERY single retailer I've checked in Canada is waiting on stock. You can't get them from anyone here, period, and I've been on a bunch of wait lists.

Even Amazon's stuff is coming from overseas but they do help handle logistics, currency conversion, and have some guarantee of a real product. Throw in shipping AND duties+fees and you could be paying 3x from an OOC store.

Other choice would be AliExpress, but if I receive a lump of metal with a chip glued to it at least Amazon makes it easier to get my money back.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

It’s often the only one where the shipping costs won’t be 30% of the item’s price.

Ok, so it is not about amazon being the only player on the market, but of you not wanting to pay the actual cost of things.