Does anyone have any good alternatives to Walmart, Amazon, or Target? I’m looking for a general store that sells household products and preferably isn’t owned by a billionaire or a company that adds to our surveillance state… So does anyone have any online, or physical, alternatives?
Depends on what you need. My local Ace hardware has a surprising selection of household stuff and decor.
Grocery store for other stuff. I’m a big fan of Costco.
I didn’t realize Ace hardware is a co-op, I’ll have to check out the one by me. Thanks!
The only downside is Ace, at least the ones near me, are ridiculously expensive…almost prohibitively
I’ve begun to think that the concept of the large general store is part of the problem. In the before times, we would shop around for individual items and discover new small businesses.
Now when I need something, I make my first search off of Amazon. I usually find a specialty shop that is more than happy to help. Sometimes a large retail store is the only place to find something. Sometimes I don’t find what I’m looking for and decide it was an impulse buy anyway. Sometimes I find a better option than what I was looking for.
I’ve found that individual items typically cost slightly more but overall I’m spending less; I’m skipping more frivolous purchases and averaging better quality choices that require fewer replacements.
Yep I think so too. Once companies get so big they have more money than they know what to do with, so why not expand into tracking customers and selling their data for a few extra cents?
We buy most of our grocery at ALDI. It’s stupid cheap, everything tastes like the name brand version did when you were a kid, and even their shitty holiday chocolate is richer and more flavorful than US luxury brands.
If you don’t have one near by, take a little time to research your area for a closed building near an active population and you can email them the suggestion.
I’m lucky to have an Aldi within driving distance, but their cheapest stuff I used to buy has gone up over 150% since covid while other grocery stores around here went up 70-90% for similar food. Aldi is still cheaper, but not by as much.
Oh dang, I didn’t learn about aldi until well after covid so I can only imagine how cheap everything used to be!
Hard to do with one singular place, but aldi is great for groceries, pays workers pretty well and doesn’t donate to political campaigns. Harbor freight also doesn’t contribute to political campaigns.
IKEA is an okay option for furniture and household stuff if you have one nearby
The owner of Harbor Freight is a democrat who hosts fundraisers and donates to democrats. He’s also very charitable and seems to be an ok guy, for someone who owns a $350 million yacht.
Harbor freight never stops winning <3
Not sure this is an option in the USA, but I’ve reduced ordering online, instead I support physical stores in the city center, to purchase locally produced products. In addition I simply consume less.
That’s my plan: consume less, support physical stores, and use more cash.
I have no idea about their ethics or whether the money is going somewhere shit. But BH photo has a good digital store and comparable pricing for electronics
Thanks for reminding me about them! I remember shuffling through their catalogs a long time back.
Local is 100% on you unless you want to divulge information, which I would advise against.
Online, just find what you want on Amazon/Walmart, and search for that item in a general search. You can often find way better deals elsewhere, at least if you can manage free shipping.
Anything globally relevant is going to be another Amazon/Walmart wannabe, so asking in the general sense is a bit silly.
Polite reminder that Prime is not free shipping — it’s prepaid shipping.
I didn’t think about using amazon to search for an item to buy on another site, that could work well! Like the other user said, Costco might be my best bet as far as chains go, and for any other physical stores I’ll just have to try harder to find local ones.
Oh yea. Amazon is basically the average price these days. The trick is finding the places with free shipping for orders that aren’t already crazy expensive. Which … might be a lot harder these days with the price of diesel vs when I was shopping a lot.
Yeah, plus Amazon uses dark patterns to get you to sign up for prime, and then prime isn’t even fast shipping anymore…it bothers me enough I can stand to pay a little more somewhere else.
If you search on Amazon, and then buy elsewhere, Amazon still makes money because of that search…
I assume they get paid for serving me ads, and is that the case even when I don’t click on any ads?
While true, Amazon makes most of their money these days from AWS.
lol no. That is absolutely not how click through contracts work.
Ughughu: Sponsored listings (marked “Sponsored”). These are pay-per-click ads — the seller pays Amazon roughly $0.75–$1.50 per click, whether or not you buy anything. So every click on a sponsored product puts money in Amazon’s pocket directly from the seller’s ad budget. This is a big business: Amazon’s advertising segment generates tens of billions of dollars a year, precisely because sellers pay for clicks even when shoppers don’t convert.
go outside and shop local
Yes but you can’t help with that part. My goal with this post is to find lesser-known websites or chains that treat its customers like people.
One general online retailer I’ve found useful for good deals is Mercari. It’s more like eBay than Amazon I think.
I’ll be honest I heard of mercari but it just seemed like an eBay clone and I didn’t want to make another account just so it coulf leaked in a data breach, but I never bothered to look into them. Thanks for the recommendation, I think it’s finally time I check them out.
Depending on where you live, there may be second hand/thrift stores you can check out. Especially places like a Goodwill or arc Thrift stores in Colorado.
People constantly donate stuff they don’t want to throw away. If you’re in a bigger city, they’ll have just about anything you can get at a Walmart or Target, minus the consumable products: furniture, kitchen supplies, clothes, books, lamps, small appliances. The price is better than bougie thrift stores, bonus if the store/donation station is near a wealthy area.
Luckily there are some thrift stores around here, and one nice thing is they’re always small enough they have real people working instead of some AI robot. Although you never know for sure what they have so shopping takes longer. I’ll just need to plan for a day when I’m less busy.
I have to admit to using Amazon pretty heavily so I rarely need to shop anywhere beyond my local grocery.
But I more focus on buying less, buying choices that last, rather than where it comes from.
a company that adds to our surveillance state
Put the tinfoil hat down.
Target partners with Flock Safety and famously has one of the most sophisticated security systems to where they’ve partnered with the FBI to help them solve crimes. https://thehorizonsun.com/features/2024/04/11/the-target-forensics-lab/
Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and they build profiles on users and track people across other websites, plus they own tons of smaller companies to help in this regard. They also own Blink and Ring which have partnered with Flock and ICE to identify and track people in the real world as well as report them to the police if they are believed to be here illegally or potentially involved in a major crime. I will add Ring cut its partnership with Flock and ICE because they ran a dumb Superbowl ad telling people about it, but they will do the same type of thing again, just more secretly next time. https://hrnews1.substack.com/p/ring-cameras-join-flock-and-amazon
Amazon is also starting to make delivery drivers record everything with smart glasses. https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/amazons-delivery-drivers-are-getting-ai-glasses-and-thats-the-least-unsettling-ai-in-the-job
Amazon is also rolling out drone deliveries at the same time, which will be more cameras in the sky. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-expansion
Walmart partners with Flock, and therefore ICE as well, but I don’t know as much about them. I’m sure they also do some data tracking online like everyone else. I know I don’t want to give them money so I don’t bother looking up new stories on them. https://www.gadgetreview.com/fact-checking-the-whistleblower-what-walmarts-official-alpr-notice-actually-says
