Rather temped to buy a used item from the site, and wondering if fellow members have used it before. Instead of search a random referral invite code, anyone want to share theirs? thanks :)
For example: someone will buy, say, several different pairs of pants. They really only want one pair of pants. They’ll try all of them on, keep the one they like best, and then return the rest.
The key here is that they never intended to keep all of them — it was only ever about one pair.
This has come up frequently for me in conversations with others recently. Just today, a penny-pincher family member who never spends more than he has to on anything and will take weeks to make decisions about even the smallest purchases, mentioned deliberately overbuying some stuff that he’s planning on returning.
I don’t know if it’s a new trend, or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or what.
I got the sense from one person I spoke to they weren’t serious about the return part, and that the “I’m going to return most of it” was a sort of intellectual safety for buying too much in the first place. But for other people it seems like it’s a legitimate practice.
I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it, because it seems like a lot of mostly unnecessary hassle. It also seems like it ties up a lot of your money for no good reason, and is perhaps even risky if the store(s) find ways to deny your returns. I can additionally see this as pretty harmful for smaller businesses. It feels like there are a lot of negatives for me, so I’m having trouble seeing the appeal.
Does anyone here do it and can speak to it as a practice? I’d love to get some first-hand insight to demystify it for me.
Where do you go for decent reviews? Context-i was looking for a site to find good popcorn, and all the results on google for as far as i cared to scroll were fluff (pun intended).
Here’s what i use:
Rtings for stereo.
Wirecutter for appliances.
Reddit for everything else.
And my results are quite mixed, and involve a lot of scrolling.
Where do yall go?
This story was basically the last straw, but the bigger frustration is that I ordered a NAS on Black Friday that STILL hasn't shipped. I have zero trust in this company to actually deliver me what they claim to be anymore, and their listings are crap.
So instead of just spending my time whining (like the Ars comment section seems to be), I'd like to brainstorm alternative places to buy stuff. The main problem is breaking the Amazon habit, especially as it dominates all Google results for whatever you're looking for.
Nothing will ever be as much of a "one stop shop" as the A->Z store, naturally. But I think I'll just set myself up some bookmarks and go to one based on what I'm looking for. Also, while I get that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is definitely a sliding scale of better and worse so that should weigh into things.
So let's go by category. I'm just listing out places where I've started to look for things instead. Please feel free to make suggestions. Whatever people recommend, I'll edit back into this list. If you include any general comments about what you like or what they could do better on any of your recommendations or any of mine let me know.