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I live in Seattle, so Amazon is a local store for me. And our Amazon Prime membership has paid for itself.
Also, I live in Seattle so shopping at small merchants in popular areas means time wasted in traffic and money wasted for parking. The malls have the same stores that you can find anywhere else, so there isn't any local benefit there, either. Plus, I loathe shopping. Absolutely loathe it. It seems pointless to spend all the time to drive to a store to get something that I can buy online with a few clicks. That leaves me more time to spend playing with my daughter or doing things around the house.
The only things I go to the store for are groceries and clothing. Everything else I pretty much buy online. Running out of razor blades? They are cheaper on Amazon, I get free shipping, and I'll have them the day after tomorrow. Need replacement wiper blades for the car? Heard about a good book? The kid wants that new Tinkerbell movie? Amazon. I do have to admit that once I find a style of pants that I like, it's easy to buy the same type online using the brand and style number.
I bought a replacement mirror for my wife's minivan online and replaced it myself. $60 for a job that the Mazda dealer wanted to charge me $350 to do. Got a car stereo for Christmas and a pair of speakers. Wanted to get another pair of the same speakers and saw that Best Buy had them in stock. Then I pulled up Amazon on my iPhone and saw that they, too had the speakers. At half the price. Press, "buy with one click" and two days later they are on my doorstep. Instead of dealing with someone asking me if I wanted an extended warranty on my speakers and parking in a dark garage filled with cell-phone-chatting suburbanites in SUVS, I was able to buy what I wanted in 15 seconds.
I can see a time when I only go to the grocery store to buy produce and meat. Amazon and other stores like Safeway and Albertsons deliver to my address.
Would I rather spend my time with Sam Walton's boys or with my own daughter? Would I rather spend a Saturday schlepping from store to store, or going for a hike with my family?
Sorry, local retailers, but my family is more important to me than you are.
I'm like you on this area for it a pain in the butt at time's to have to go a store and deal with the crowd's or the people who do not know what you are looking for and trying to find it and it just much easlyer to go to amazon to find book's or dvd's movies and tv show's i like to food item's i like to find where i can not find in the local store's and the shaveing and personal grooming item's i can not find it in a store or dvd empire to find dvd's movie's and tv show's i like ..
Sign up for Amazon Prime. $80/year and you get free two day shipping on all orders. I order pretty much all books/gifts, and even some groceries through Amazon now. When you spread the $80 membership across a full calendar year, the shipping costs become negligible. I also don't have to plan. I can order a $2 tube of toothpaste and have it shipped to me in two days without shipping costs. The $80 you spend is much less than you would even pay in gas driving to/from physical stores in a calendar year.
^^^^correct answer^^^^
I can buy a bottle of Tide cheaper on Amazon Prime than I can get it at Walmart. Delivered to the front door by UPS, no shipping, no sales tax. Multiply that by about 50 other items I routinely buy by clicking the mouse three times. And, I don't have to set foot inside Walmart.
And, not only are most items cheaper, but you can get the right item. I wanted a very specific dimmer switch the other day. The company makes about 20 variations of the same switch. For multi switched lighting, 300w vs 500w. several colors, etc. I started with Lowes. DO you have it? I'll look. 15 minutes laler. Yes we have it. Is it white. Well we have it in Ivory. What about white. I'll check. Four mouse clicks and it was in the mail got it the next day. $14 cheaper than Lowes. End of story.
Last edited by Wilson513; 03-01-2011 at 03:42 PM..
Just yesterday, I ordered art supplies on line. For a well-known name brand product, some online sources had it for $79, which is probably what it would cost in a store, and there are probably no more than two stores that stock such supplies within 100 miles of here. I found it online for $39, and the shipping cost was $5. If I had bought it locally, the sales tax would have been more than the $5 shipping charge, in addition to costing twice as much in the first place. It'll take ten days or so to get here, but I'm in no hurry.
There is an interesting dichotomy in America about the growth of small towns. Most people live in small towns because they want to live in a small town. So what is the incentive to encourage "growth", if the reason you live there in the first place is because the town did not grow like the alternative big city that you have rejected? So I am inclined to not support "local merchants" because I don't want to encourage my town to grow and become another Houston---that's why I don't live in Houston.
If I can bore you with an anecdote, I once moved to a small town, Oak Grove, Missouri. About 2,000 people, but growing because people were moving there from Blue Springs, which had grown too large because so many people had moved there from Kansas City. Obviously, most of the population was trying to escape from cities that had, serially, gotten too large. So, there was a local election, and the local paper gave each candidate space to present their platform. Every single one of them said they were for "growth". Of course, every candidate was a businessman who would sell more cars or insurance and get richer if the town got bigger. The voters who would elect them had been trying to escape from growth, but then bought houses and were suddenly more interested in rising property values. Growth.
I'm also one who buys online, for the same reasons all of you have mentioned. Our sales tax is 9% which is huge when trying to save money. And, now that gas prices have risen again, it makes more sense. I've found a lot of ways to save by buying online. Although I have an Amazon account, I haven't signed up for Prime yet, but I'm considering it. I use discount coupon codes from retailmenot and save a lot on shipping, sometimes canceling the cost altogether with the discount.
The cost-saving comments on this thread are the reason legislature wants to tax ALL internet sales. Many companies will charge the state sales tax but there are still quite a few who are working on the honor system and trusting the consumer to report their purchases to their state's franchise tax board and pay the tax due them. How many people really do that? Never mind, I don't want to know.
Aside from the savings, the biggest reason I enjoy shopping online is that I don't particularly like getting all gussied up and drive from store to store, trying to save a couple of bucks. I can shop in my jammies and slippers, any time day or night. To me, that's golden!
I am not one who advocates shopping online just for the sake of shopping online. In reality Amazon is worse than Wal-Mart. At least Wal-Mart keeps jobs and money in a local economy. Amazon does not. Before long towns and smaller cities are going to lose most of their brick and mortar stores. You are already seeing it in many places. In a perfect world you could purchase everything online and have same day delivery but unfortunately we are nowhere near there yet. I only shop online for things I can't get locally or that are significantly more expensive locally. If the price is the same or just a few bucks higher, I'll buy locally. Plus, due to my apartment office hours the shipping is a major pain for me.
I like drugstore.com. I made one small purchase from them for a skincare product I couldn't find in a store in Tucson. They began sending me E-mails that announced specific sales. One regular sale is $5 off orders over $40 and free shipping for any order over $25. Their prices for most drugstore items are quite comparable to Target/Walmart and cheaper than my local Walgreens in most cases, even without an additional discount. I still get huge bottles of things I use every day (like multi-vitamins) at Costco. But for other things, I've been saving money -- and gas! -- by using drugstore.com. The package comes within one week of ordering, using the free shipping option.
it would have to do with out of state travel, or music or books that are no longer "hip" enough to be sold in the stores.
Thats been my experience. Here in Dayton we have a limited selection of things like music and DVDs, so you'd have to go to, say, Chicago or someplace bigger to get stuff. It's cheaper to buy online than to travel a lot to go shopping for these specialty items. It is more expensive with shipping but I can get that 'free shipping' sometimes via Amazon.
I am not one who advocates shopping online just for the sake of shopping online. In reality Amazon is worse than Wal-Mart. At least Wal-Mart keeps jobs and money in a local economy. Amazon does not. Before long towns and smaller cities are going to lose most of their brick and mortar stores. You are already seeing it in many places. In a perfect world you could purchase everything online and have same day delivery but unfortunately we are nowhere near there yet. I only shop online for things I can't get locally or that are significantly more expensive locally. If the price is the same or just a few bucks higher, I'll buy locally. Plus, due to my apartment office hours the shipping is a major pain for me.
I'm with you- I'll buy a few things online but I really like being able to walk to local stores and buy items right there. Something is definitely lost when a town or city has so few stores that it isn't worth visiting or experiencing anymore. From a purely economic standpoint, the extra few bucks I spend each year to support local stores helps keep them in business and makes my neighborhood more desirable as a walkable neighborhood that then makes my property values go up or at least be more stable- so, in effect I'm making money when I shop locally.
There is a cause and effect people. Why would you like to live in a place that had no stores and the community experience that they bring?
One of the main criteria of "frugality" is being able to weigh the prospects, and make the right choice about where and how to shop and how to prioritize your strategy for each purchase. It is not frugal to automatically fall to one side of the other when faced with a choice.
Personally, I tend to find better deals on eBay, than at Amazon. Although you have to watch yourself on ebay a bit more because of the possible scammers.
But I've definately switched the majority of my shopping over to the internet over the past 4 years. I still do brick and morter stores, but only when I feel like going out for something.
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