I've lost interest in Amazon when it stopped being the economical customer oriented giant it started out as. And in the early days, I was a big fan, but as they captured the huge market share they certainly deserved and ran out of growth from that, they began finding ways to squeeze both their customers and employees. People now buy from Amazon mostly out of habit, not for their pockets, and not for convenience. I still buy things from them when they are not available anywhere else, but it bothers me when I do.
My new go to place I always check with is ebay, cheaper, faster, and free shipping most of the time. There are still sellers asking absurd prices for items on ebay, but these can be sorted out by showing the cheapest prices first (including shipping costs if there are any), and their speed of shipping usually beats Amazon by a long shot, unless you pay Amazon for Prime, and now it sounds like Amazon is even starting to milk their prime customers for anything extra they can get.
But be careful on ebay. You can't assume their prices will always be cheaper, so you still have to search. A lot of ordinary retailers, now selling on line beat Amazon on prices and shipping, and I often find the best buy, just by typing in the product, rather than the outlet. Places I never heard of show up, and sometimes they are selling items for dollars less than even ebay, with reasonable and/or no shipping charges and they can be lighting fast on delivery.
For those who don't have Amazon Prime, items can sit in the warehouse for a whole week before they are shipped. I think this is Amazon's way of punishing those who don't want or need Prime. One of the things that turned me off about Amazon was their shipping times. After they introduced two day shipping for $100 a year, everything else that was ordinarily "two or three day" became a week, and those shipping costs went up, and if you are in a rural area, "two day" is seldom "two day" anyway.
