Believe me, this is no exaggeration: as a former professor, I have probably over 40 book boxes in storage; at some point, I need to go through my stuff and donate/sell most of it. In contrast, I have over 200 Kindle titles stored on my Fire tablet which I can easily fit into my front pocket, say going to the laundromat.
Amazon does provide an incredible one-stop shop for a number of items. Sometimes, for instance, I find a number of items out of stock or not carried by my local Wal-Mart. To give some anecdotal examples, I have an affection for New England Coffee blueberry cobbler coffee which I had first found at a Wal-Mart. (It's a bonding thing with my late Dad. Dad also loved blueberries. In his youth, he sometimes worked at a relative's New England farm. The farm women sometimes baked blueberry pies and put them out to cool. My Dad and the other guys swiped one of the pies and chased it down with the fresh cream layer off raw milk. The farm ladies noticed one of the pies was missing and confronted the boys, who quickly denied the theft. She then demanded for them to stick out their blue-colored tongues. Caught!) But when I moved to the South, I found that the local Wal-Marts didn't stock the brand. But I could easily buy it from Amazon.
It's not just Wal-Mart. I'll often frequently grocery-shop at Shop-Rite with vastly superior product selection (plus I'll be emailed a digital receipt, a nice touch). I bought a Keurig-compatible coffeepot some time back, probably at Wal-Mart (I recently inherited my late uncle's original Keurig); I had encountered them in business offices, auto maintenance shops, etc. I did like the idea of freshly brewing one's choice of a variety of flavors and not settling for some nasty, black, inky leftovers from a carafe on the burner for God knows how long. (My worst cup of coffee, like just described, was in an Orlando McDonald's way back while I was still an ensign, years before their McCafe launch. I never bought another coffee from McDonald's for years after that.) Not to mention the convenience of small disposable pods (no coffee filters or measuring coffee). The drawback, of course, is that pods are incredibly expensive. especially when you can probably get over 70 cups of coffee from one pound of ground coffee. 100 K-cups probably start at over $30. I happen to like pumpkin spice coffee and have occasionally bought a pound or two from Amazon (I usually don't find it in supermarkets). So one day Shop-Rite advertised a sale on Green Mountain capsules, and the ad showed pumpkin spice k-cups. Alas, if they had them in stock, they quickly sold out. Amazon, however, had them in stock.
Another more recent example: I recently went to buy some long johns at Wal-Mart. I could find the tops in my size, but not the bottoms (So much for Wal-Mart's vaunted logistics.) Again, with Amazon Prime membership, I had my matching bottoms in 2 days. Another example: frequently in northern MD when I go to my car in the morning to go to work in the fall/winter I'll find a frosted windshield and other windows obscuring my vision. Last year I came across at Wal-Mart a Prestone DeIcer spray product which makes it easier and quicker to get on my way. But when I recently checked at WalMart, either they had dropped the product or it was out of stock. Once again, Amazon had a vendor with the product in stock.
Amazon also provides easier, more natural methods of reordering certain things Wal-Mart doesn't carry. For example, Amazon recently provided a future discount incentive to reorder things through its voice recognition interface Alexa, which I communicate with via my Echo Dot. So I recently told Alexa to reorder bulk macadamia nuts, and when I next went to my Amazon account, I found the product sitting in my cart.
But Amazon has its issues. To give some examples:
- Not all merchandise, granted, is eligible for Prime membership free 2-day shipping. (E.g., some merchandise is stocked by partner vendors.) But maybe I'm gotten accustomed to quicker fulfillment and I hadn't noticed any disclaimer at purchase, I wondered what had happened to my purchase. I looked up my order and was astonished to find they had the order set for 2-week delivery. Really? They're doing that to a Prime member? I quickly got on a chat session with Amazon customer support who said something about a fulfillment center glitch bur it had been resolved and I should expect delivery shortly. Another 2 days come and go with no delivery. I think I finally got a delivery a few days later, earlier than the posted 2 days. No explanation, no apology, no discount for my inconvenience.
- Occasionally Amazon will make a fulfillment mistake. I can only remember once off the top of my head, but it was a doozy. I seem to recall I ordered a low-carb blueberry pancake mix, and they shipped something like a bread mix, not close to a substitute. Now they did send a postage-paid return label and eventually refunded my account (after they verified the item return), but I still had to go to their shipping partner to process the return.
- You need to know your prices. Let me give an example. As a native Texan military brat, my high school diploma and all 4 college degrees were earned in Texas. I love my iced tea, typically my beverage of choice. I've got an iced machine et al. But over the past year I noticed Sam's Club carrying a 48-count gallon tea bags, specially blended for iced tea. It's fairly easy: I basically put a bag and brew a carafe full of tea concentrate and add it my gallon pitcher with water and stevia to taste (a small handful of stevia blend). I'm down to my last 24-count box (purchased in 2 box bundles) and somehow must have walked past them (it's in a different aisle than where they sell, e.g., Lipton individual tea bags). So here's the point: you can buy the 48-count bundle for about $10.52 (plus shipping). Amazon sells it for about $24.14. Even with free Prime shipping and having to pay for Sam's Club delivery charges of about $5 (Sam's Club has a Plus membership which provides free shipment but is about double the annual membership fee), you're getting twice the product for only a nominal fee (or less than half-price for in-club pickup).
- I had to overcome some annoying technical/usability issues in resetting locations and my changed WIFI password for my Amazon devices. I discuss it in my practical computing blog here.
Opportunistic Shopping and Holiday DVD's
I sometimes do some opportunistic shopping, e.g., sometimes not on my immediate shopping list. For example, I waited until Black Friday/Cyber Monday while living in AZ to buy my Amazon devices at very good prices. I recently bought my first new laptop in years (with a flippable display) on a one-day Sam's Club promotion. But it's been that way since I was a college student on a limited budget, finding bargain-priced gems in used bookstores or book sales.
You have to be flexible in scouting for bargains. Let me give a classic recent example. There are a number of accessories I normally buy with a new notebook PC, including a laptop stand (I've had too many freakish coffee spill issues over the years), a flash drive, wireless/keyboards/mice, and USB multi-port extenders.
So I pass by the electronics shelves at Wal-Mart and notice a $15 Logitech wireless keyboard--a decent bargain. Until I pass by some free-standing product displays at the end of the aisles, one showing a wireless keyboard/mouse sets for the SAME PRICE! A no-brainer purchase.
I don't frequently stop by the music/movie sections as often I did as a young adult. I love many holiday movies (although I have certain preferences). I stumbled across a 3-DVD "Holiday Collection" for about $15, which includes multiple favorites, including the Christmas Shoes trilogy (my favorite being the "Christmas Hope" with a social worker, whose only son had recently died in a recent auto accident and whose marriage is failing, and a newly orphaned girl whose mother had promised a special Christmas present), and a couple of movies that have played on Hallmark, "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and "Holiday Engagement".
What are other titles I recommend?
- "White Christmas". This brilliant musical goes beyond Bing's best-selling cover of the classic Irving Berlin title tune, focusing on a retired general's failing Vermont resort, a sister act, and a popular male duo act.
- "Love at the Christmas Table". I love this take on the kids of two fathers/partners of a furniture company. The girl's mother passes early in her life; there's a woman who has maintained her home in perpetual Christmas mode, hosts the families for Christmas parties and mentors the young woman. Will the young couple ever get together? Will the widower ever find love again?
- "Angels and Ornaments". A deceased war hero angel is sent on a Clarence (from "It's a Wonderful Life")-like mission to unite a music store owner with his (unknown to him) granddaughter, an aspiring singer who works for her former high school classmate but is in an on-again, off-again relationship to a jerk. The angel,had left his pregnant wife to join the WWII war effort; he used to compose music as a hobby and sent his beloved wife pieces of his new composition, the last segment of the still-unfinished piece delivered on Christmas Eve before the soldier died. The granddaughter as a young girl had given her grandmother an adaptation of the traditional "Twas the Night Before Christmas" as a tribute to her grandparents' great love..
- "Scrooge". I personally regard this brilliant 1970 musical adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" as definitive. I own VHS and DVD copies of this movie.
