Amazon free Christmas

[TheGirlOnTheLanding]

I'm trying to avoid Amazon this year (don't want to get into an argument about why, just personal choice) but having a tiring and fruitless search at our local shopping centre has made getting it all online really really tempting. So far, I'm impressed with Hive for books and DVDs (ordered a lot in Friday with free p&p and it's already been delivered!) but I'm struggling with an equivalent for the toys and stocking fillers I need to get. Any top tips for online shops I might not have heard of? I know about Hawkins Bazaar and Yellow Moon for stockingy bits, anywhere else?

would just focus on what you want then google rather than going to site and looking for instance, most djeco stuff is far cheaper from toy shops, rather than amazon....

ebay of course...

Tk has a good on line website with loads of toys and brilliant cheap book sets...

so if you googled djeco glitter boards it would come up with loads of toy shops selling or google djeco glitter and then look at them on google images and it wil come up with shops.

Don't you have old fashioned shops near you? Where do you live?

I've managed to avoid buying anything on Amazon all my life .

Oh, yes, we have shops. As I said, I was in them today - tiring, grump inducing (stuck in traffic, hard to park, busy shops) and couldn't actually buy the things on my list. I came home after two and a half hours with two bags of chocolate coins and a bottle of shampoo (not a Christmas gift). That's why online shopping is more appealing.

Do you have a smaller town near you that isn't dominated by a shopping centre? They are the sort of places that have really good independent shops. We have a fab local toy shop which will order in Lego sets etc if they don't have them in stock.

I like Hive, and it supports local book shops too, so win/win.

Toyella for toys?

Ooh, that's exactly the sort of gem of a site I was thinking of, HoHo, thank you so much. I have already seen half a dozen possibilities there.

AmazonAnonymous have a list of non Amazon alternatives. Can't link, not sure why.

Maybe this will work: www.amazonanonymous.org/better-than-amazon/

Imagido is a good site for toys.

Myriad have lots of great toys.

These are great, Snappy and House. Would never have found these in months of googling. Thank you! And thanks Raleuse - I did look at that site a long while ago, thought it had it bookmarked but didn't and then forgot what it was called. Really really helpful. Thank you!