Amazon is going down. 20 years ago they had excellent customer service, now they are violating EU laws and cheat the gmp developers out of a CPU replacement:
> 20 years ago they had excellent customer service, now
... you will use them anyway because, customer service or no, there’s a good chance you don’t have a choice that doesn’t cost half again as much. (Regional availability may vary.)
They aren’t cheaper anymore. The “real” branded stuff is usually more expensive on amazon than straight from the manufacturers website. The “cheap” fake aliexpress stuff is just that charged at a premium. You can find the same exact product images even on the same products on ebay from probably the same merchants listing on both marketplaces.
It has changed dramatically over the past 5 or so years into this.
At least for stuff like electronics, random plastic household items etc EU Amazon isn't particularly cheap. Branded stuff costs about the same in many smaller stores, and random Chinese no-name brands can be bought from Aliexpress cheaper.
In terms of usage, maybe, in terms of service, probably not. Often the biggest dogs are not the best. They have inertia and marketing, and that's why they're the big dogs. Not because they're providing the best, or the cheapest, good or service.
Depends on how local you go, there are local alternatives that are bigger in their domain for almost every domain in most parts of Europe. Amazon is much much smaller outside of USA and there are plenty of alternatives with better and cheaper service.
Also not true in Switzerland. Amazon was ranked #4 overall, #2 in tech, based on sales in 2024, with a massive distance to the leaders. It's not that popular around here, and with current U.S. boycotts I expect it to drop further this year.
https://gmplib.org/
Granlund's gcc optimizations probably save Amazon millions in electricity each year. But evidently they don't care about real programmers.