I tried shopping Newegg recently (BC). Newegg's online customer service made Amazon's look positively erudite, and in addition Newegg's return policy is terrible by comparison. I still haven't received an item that I ordered 7 weeks ago (shipping was not advertised as being particularly slow), and I still haven't been refunded for another item that I returned 2 weeks ago. Amazon gets that if you can't touch the item in store, there should be a no-fault return policy (and yes, I know that returns are environmentally unfriendly, etc).
I tried to shop Jet (before they were acquired) and I found the search / shop experience had too much friction. Amazon's UI has plenty of annoyances, but they've made it _real_ easy to get something into your cart and check out.
On the other hand, all of my music studio purchases I make at Sweetwater. Great customer service, free shipping, will price match if you ask, and frictionless returns.
IMO Amazon is vulnerable to good competitors, but the emphasis is on good. I can tolerate a small shipping fee, and I don't need next day or two day shipping (although it's nice). On the other hand if you make it hard for me to shop, customer service sucks, or I have to jump through hoops to return something, I'll go back to Amazon.
Sweetwater has never let me down in 20 years. It’s been quite sometime since I’ve used Crutchfield but I’ve always had a very high opinion of their customer service as well.
Had a very poor experience ordering from Ikea. Just some kitchen towels, nothing particularly interesting. Took six weeks to ship, zero updates on the site about order status, estimated delivery date came and went unceremoniously, wasn’t able to contact anyone via phone. Finally got an email out of the blue that they shipped and arrived intact the next day. Pretty much a ‘never again’ experience.
Amazon’s policies and employee treatment/relationships may need improvement or complete overhaul, but their execution at getting matter into your hands and dealing with issues is, in my experience, second to none.
The only times I can remember having real issues with buying from Amazon is when I failed to notice that I was buying from a third-party on their site, not actually from Amazon directly. And that said, the vast majority of my (intentional) third-party purchases on Amazon have been flawless.
But, if they happen to sell what I am shopping for... Sweetwater and B&H Photo are two stores from which I have had consistently great service. I've never been to Sweetwater in person, but the physical B&H store is also a cool experience.
Sweetwater is awesome in person. Super friendly staff and they have a free arcade for the community as well as a massive slide that my nephew loves to go down.
Did you order Newegg or third-party? So many stores, Newegg included, are trying to be a 'platform' or something and allow third party sellers, but it makes the buying experience awful.
Arguably the worst things about buying from Amazon all derive from third-party sellers: long shipping times (from China, generally), commingled inventory, counterfeit products, faked/swapped listings... Companies like Newegg should be explicitly doing the opposite as a competitive advantage -- yet they seem to be copying. I don't get it.
Yeah, one of the items was third party, one was Newegg. But I agree - you can't outcompete Amazon by trying to be Amazon.
Sweetwater (who I mentioned upthread) are great because they do musical instruments (and related) and nothing else. Deep domain knowledge, rich and well organized catalog, community of music nerds, and (as far as I've noticed) no third party junk.
A Newegg could theoretically do the same for computers and peripherals. (Find me all motherboards compatible with i7 and ddr4, with usbc, blinkenlights and onboard wifi - much easier on Newegg than Amazon, but unfortunately it suffers from the aforementioned issues).
Look for a Ryzen 7 laptop with 16GB RAM from Newegg. I mean specifically check 'Newegg' as the only seller. You get two choices starting at $900.
Then uncheck 'Newegg' as the seller and sort by lowest price. You get 24 of the exact same laptop from 24 different sellers with an $80 spread in price. And that's just the cheapest 24 items. There are hundreds more. They start from $650.
For every $900 laptop Newegg sells from its own inventory, they have have to source it, receive it, photograph it, inventory it, ship it, etc. For every $700 laptop from somebody else, they have to...well, do almost nothing. Somebody they don't employ does all the rest. They just keep their web app up and running. Granted, the development of the site is expensive. But it's not expensive per item.
So they can make $50 off every $700 laptop with a minimal expense of pennies per sale. Or they can make $50 off some $900 laptops that cost them pennies + $150 labor per sale.
My last newegg experience was ordering parts for a computer with the free shipping option (2-10 days?). Power supply hadn't shown up 6 weeks later, so I tried to do an online support chat. Sat in a queue for 2 hours before it crashed. I called, and got a time slot for them to call me back. No one ever called. Tried again the next day, support chat was down. When I eventually got through, they said they'd file a claim with FedEx, and if FedEx agrees they'd refund me. Power supply showed up on my door a week after that. Had to repeat the process to do a return.
I'll never touch newegg again. Their own system said I never received something I paid for, and yet sorting it out took 2 months and 6 attempts contacting customer support.
In the US, another amazing source for high quality tools is www.toolsforworkingwood.com Don't be put off by the archaic site design, they have amazing customer service.
I tried to shop Jet (before they were acquired) and I found the search / shop experience had too much friction. Amazon's UI has plenty of annoyances, but they've made it _real_ easy to get something into your cart and check out.
On the other hand, all of my music studio purchases I make at Sweetwater. Great customer service, free shipping, will price match if you ask, and frictionless returns.
IMO Amazon is vulnerable to good competitors, but the emphasis is on good. I can tolerate a small shipping fee, and I don't need next day or two day shipping (although it's nice). On the other hand if you make it hard for me to shop, customer service sucks, or I have to jump through hoops to return something, I'll go back to Amazon.