I recently bought a camping tent from Naturehike, a budget but respected Chinese brand. I ordered on their website and, long story short, my parcel got stuck at a warehouse for weeks, presumably lost. They said they can't refund me before they retrieve the tent and "inspect the package", as if I somehow went to a warehouse in a different country, found it there, and damaged it.

It took me well over a month of back and forth to get a refund, and only after I repeatedly threatened them with a chargeback. I ordered the exact same tent on Amazon and had it the next day. As a bonus, it was now discounted on Amazon but not on the manufacturer's website.

I only order from Amazon a handful of times a year when I can't find an item elsewhere, but manufacturers are really doing their best to push me towards it.

Yeah, Amazon has disadvantages (counterfeits, fake reviews, more expensive) but its advantages (insane shipping speed/cost, strong return policy) are nearly impossible for competitors to compete with. The manufacturer is not going to offer same day delivery and no-questions-asked returns.

It is also often more expensive than Amazon, which is I think is largely due to Anazon's anti-competetive, and possibly illegal "most favored nation" terms, but as a consumer it does discourage avoiding Amazon (which is why Amazon has those terms).

I bought a weed whacker directly from the maker about 5 years ago, and since then have received literal tons of their catalogues in my tiny mailbox. They send > 80% of all the mail I receive. I've regretted it ever since. Now I feel like I need to keep my address a secret unless there's a good reason not to. Amazon has had it since the last century and has never abused it.

I'd buy more from such if it was easy to hide my personal info from them.

This. Amazon has the best checkout and delivery system in the world, and that alone is worth a few extra dollars. The excess crap gets caught in the appropriate filters and I just end up with my item in a box.

What do you mean? Where is the percentage of "75-80%" coming from? Local service is great, and I'm happy to pay a little extra to see my neighbors employed.

I was the same way and got tired of it so I keep a layer in front of my life just like I do on the web with multiple identities, emails, VPNs, etc.

I pay $100 per year for a private mailbox near my apartment, registered under an LLC with a registered agent (not in my name and in another state) where I get deliveries in that name. that llc uses a fintech bank where I can spin up as many debit/credit cards as I want, I rotate them just like api keys. I also keep a twilio phone number that only receives texts with a webhook that goes to my discord. any sort of loyalty card etc goes under that number. I can enable phone calls if I need to, and of course a 2nd/3rd email account attached to this.

> Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support

We've been dealing with different Amazons. Also, credit cards in my experience are built to deal with that stuff. Have you encountered protection issues by using your credit card? The only chargeback I've initiated was against Amazon and my credit card company handled it swimmingly.

Credit cards are pretty locked down, you can't connect to that network without a verified identity to be sued when unauthorized charges are made.

Many CC let you generate one time use CC numbers if you’re actually concerned about manufactures information security.

Most of the time you’re giving that info to stripe or Shopify. But also credit cards are protected - you can dispute charges - so it’s not a huge risk IMO

I feel like a better solution would have been anonymized/single use card numbers.