Asklemmy

I do my best not to feed money unnecessarily into Amazon, because they're well on their way into abusing their near-monopoly advantage.

I can't change how the world treats a company that shrugs off news of their employees peeing in bottles, and doesn't seem to care about heat exhaustion in their own staff. But I can control how I react to that news.

I use separate dedicated online retailers for groceries, hardware, and toys. I generally get free or very low cost delivery, directly to my door, within a week. My delivery timing is actually more reliable than it was with Amazon, back when I still ordered a few things from them, after they started enshitifying.

I'm generally always using a retailer who has a presence in my city, so if I need to return something, I just return it at the store.

The quality of the return desk experience is usually what determines which specific retailer I buy from, for each category.

(Which is ironic because I almost never need to return anything. I'm shockingly good at fixing stuff, so if I get something mildly broken, I just fix it and use it. But I really hate it if it's a hassle on the rare day that I do.)