to be considering only ordering online from Amazon ongoing?

[Americasfavouritefightingfrenchman]

I’ve been trying to avoid Amazon and order direct from smaller companies if ordering online for I can’t find things easily in the shops. Over the past week ordering Christmas gifts though:

1. My husbands beer advent calendar has been delivered to completely the wrong place (there is a delivered photo of a door that looks nothing like anything on our street). I can’t get a response from the company that it was delivered by (DHL) or the shipper

2. A set of beauty products sent with Evri show as having been delivered (at 2am?!) but are not here three days later and no delivery photo. I emailed the seller and they responded the courier tracking shows them being in the area and it’s marked as delivered and the photo shows it was. I’ve responded saying that may be true but if it is I can’t see any of that info in the Evri tracking app so can they please share it.

3. A 3rd parcel with some personalised items for the kids (again delivered via Evri) was just dumped on front steps while it was raining and some are now ruined. Seller is blaming me as says I shouldn’t have allowed delivery to a safe place (the front door step isn’t my safe place, the shed is)

I don’t love Amazon but round here their delivery drivers at least actually show up with things and on the odd occasion there is an issue you just fill in a form and they refund you without any fuss. I’m currently down £200 in things I may or may not be able to get the money back and with loads of additional hassle/admin. Am I just horrendously unlucky here or are deliveries generally a total disaster area?

There are a lot of small businesses who sell on amazon as well. I like the next day delivery so is my go to now. Xz

I live in a nice enough little town ( well 2 miles out of it ) but we don’t have many shops and that’s kind of sad .
We do have a pretty looking pedestrian precinct and a very nice looking high street.
However it is mainly cafes , a bakery , nail bars , hair salons , barbers, a grocery store with a cafe , vets , doctors dentist etc .
We are not too far from an out of town shopping centre with all the big name retailers so I think that’s what’s caused that .
Another small town a big further away from that we often visit is absolutely thriving and is lovely to head too when it’s bustling

Nope, I don’t care about greengrocers, since the supermarkets killed them anyway. I do care about garden centres but they’re not in the middle of town and are a day out in themselves so not really Amazon comparable. I prefer to buy home decor from the internet really, and cake shops can just deliver to me.

I only like bookshops so go to them. Of course, someone else may care enough about souvenir shops or fashion shops full of beige boring rubbish to want to save them - but I’ll leave caring About them to those people.

Yes. Our local shops are fab for day to day things. Food wise we have a thriving fruit & veg place, various bakeries and a good butcher plus a couple of micro breweries and a bottle shop that do lots of craft beers. Outside that there are mainly nice places that sell fairly specific things. So there is a sewing machine/haberdashery, a crafting supplies place, one that does custom invites, one with an amazing range of greeting cards and seasonal decor type stuff, several bookshops including a charity and specialist second hand one, a record shop, music store and some clothes places (formal menswear, second hand ball/wedding gowns, kids shoes). We have a lot of independent cafes/restaurants/bars too alongside a few chain places (B&M, Boots, Superdrug, Greggs, Sainsburys) and a hardware store.

Thing is for all we have a very decent selection there are also plenty of things you can’t buy, often the type of things you want as gifts/for special occasions.

Amazon is intensely annoying because it provides a pretty good service. Their delivery guys where I live are excellent. That's not annoying, the annoying bit is the berk that owns it.

On the plus side he looks positively civil compared to Musk.

My Evri guy deserves a gold star but their service falls apart when he takes holiday so I think the people have a real effect

PS price wise Amazon is OK especially if you have prime and use them a lot
.

I buy 70% of stuff from Amazon.

Wow! You definitely need to do what you can to keep those shops going. My town is now one of those sad places with only charity shops, nail bars and vape shops. Plus a B&M, Asda and Greggs.

Yes we absolutely are fortunate with them. I think as well they have enough custom that they are able to be a bit more competitive on price than some places local stores which helps. I particularly love our bookshop, who are immensely helpful with recommendations for the kids

The thing with shops is that they thrive when there are lots of them as a street full of shops attracts customers. Trouble is the rot sets in and then they tend to close, one by one, until you're left with the charity shops and Turkish Barbers.

My parents had a newsagents shop on a parade of several shops, including a greengrocer, grocers, butchers, chemist, hairdressers, bakers, off licence, post office, hardware shop. Over the 20 or so years they owned the shop, the parade went from a vibrant parade to our shop being the only one left open, which we had to close once we got a sodding huge Asda less than a mile away. Drove past for the first time in over a decade and it's now a dodgy looking ethnic convenience store, a Turkish Barbers, a couple of charity shops and a nail bar!

What started the rot was the closure of the butchers shop - the guy retired and couldn't sell it. Once customers weren't coming for the fresh meat, they went elsewhere for their meat, so weren't buying groceries or anything else as they'd get everything at the next nearest shopping parade. And then, one by one, all the other shops closed too due to lack of footfall.

In the town I live now, there was another parade that seemed to survive pretty well. Until the council "traffic calmed" it, by narrowing the road to put in pedestrian islands, speed ramps, double yellow lines, etc., which instead of "revitalising" it as the council planned, it killed it stone dead, which is, again, now just ethnic convenience store, Turkish Barbers, charity shops etc.

So it's not just supermarkets killing off small shops, it's stupid council decisions too!

Have a look at "Complaining Cow", the deliver firm are not liable it's the person/company you ordered from