I like B&H, purchased a lot of stuff there and will continue to in the future, one note is that they're a New York-based company and everything ships from there. So if you're on the East Coast: Great! Whereas if you're on the West Coast you'll wait 2-3 more days.
That and the website used to not let you even PLACE an order during Saturdays and some other Jewish holidays. I understand not working during those, but not letting an automated system write an order to a database somewhere, was odd.
B&H is excellent. I also tend to go directly to manufacturer sites. They may actually use Amazon for fulfillment, but you can be assured that the product you get, is real.
I generally don't go for extremely reduced prices. I find that it is way too easy for scammers to take advantage of us, not paying too much attention to something we get at a good price.
Every. Single. Time. that I've gotten a "great deal" on something, it has turned out to be fake.
I have a pair of "Nike" shoes at home, that I got from Amazon, and are obvious counterfeits. I still have the original Pegasus 30 shoes, that I got at a local store, over ten years ago, and they are fine. The soles got flat, which was why I wanted to get new ones, but the shoes still work fine, and the padding is still good.
The "Nikes" that I brought from Amazon, a few years ago, crapped out, after just three or four months. They actually cracked, and I tried out a couple of other types of sneakers, over the last few years.
Nike has discontinued the Pegasus 30s, so I switched to New Balance sneakers, and I got these directly from the NB web site.
This is where I try to buy most of my electronic equipment now. The shipping is quite fast to my location (faster than Amazon Prime) and the prices are usually pretty competitive.
That question seems absolutely alien to me. Surely you have alternatives in the US, don't you? Here in Germany I visit Geizhals, search for the product in question, sort by price and order from one of the countless shops that have the product in stock.
Maybe I'll end up on Amazon, maybe not - they all can deliver quite fast and they all have to adhere to european minium return policy standards. So the handling of returns isn't something most customers ever have to think about.
If we do, I have never experienced something that works and is useful, but just by using PCPartPicker to see shops to buy electronics my choices are Best Buy, Amazon, Newegg, B&H, Gamestop, and three other companies I have never heard of. The thing about that is I don't have europeaan minimum return policy standards, so any website I don't know about can rip me off and I cannot do anything about it.
I also live in a pretty remote area, so I have to drive 45 minutes to 2 hours to be in any big box store.
Microcenter will ship items purchased online. You have to select "Shippable Items" from the "Your Store" drop-down in the center at the top of the page.
Microcenter will not ship most items online. I just did a random check and there are 0 graphic cards available to be shipped online. In comparison my local Microcenter offers 63 models of graphics cards in stock today.
I use Best Buy for commodity stuff (cables, sd cards, etc) and B&H for more "important" stuff (PC components, monitors, etc) because they have a wider selection and I like their website better for comparison shopping.
B&H is the "new Newegg" for me, since Newegg decided to jump into the flea market business after Amazon.
Microcenter does sell/ship a good chunk of their inventory online so it's an option for people that aren't close to a location. I usually make the trek to my nearest one precisely because I can avoid the issue of counterfeits by shopping there.
That's such a weird question lol, there is more online stores then Amazon and Newegg? There is hundreds. Just go buy it from literally anyone else besides Amazon if you give me your state I can probably tell you a list of about 100 that will ship there.
And because I haven't heard of them, I'm taking as much of a risk as I am with Amazon and Newegg. The best part about hacker news is asking a genuine question often receives a genuine response, and it seems like "hundreds" boils down to separate people saying B&H.
I already use parts express for my audio equipment and probably always will because their customer service is incredible, but I rarely buy pc parts anymore. I want to do a new build in the coming year and having this conversation saves me the future research.
Newegg has done (will do) this exact same thing. One of the recent vibrant examples was with a motherboard and some Youtube personality.
Basically, most businesses have outsourced doing QA as "free returns" where the customer is the ultimate judge. This only works as long as they're willing to get stuck with some of the losses from return fraud. But as they try to cost optimize and assume the incoming checkers are foolproof, they end up blaming unlucky customers in the most hostile manner.
PenguinCoder|3 years ago
Someone1234|3 years ago
That and the website used to not let you even PLACE an order during Saturdays and some other Jewish holidays. I understand not working during those, but not letting an automated system write an order to a database somewhere, was odd.
ChrisMarshallNY|3 years ago
I generally don't go for extremely reduced prices. I find that it is way too easy for scammers to take advantage of us, not paying too much attention to something we get at a good price.
Every. Single. Time. that I've gotten a "great deal" on something, it has turned out to be fake.
I have a pair of "Nike" shoes at home, that I got from Amazon, and are obvious counterfeits. I still have the original Pegasus 30 shoes, that I got at a local store, over ten years ago, and they are fine. The soles got flat, which was why I wanted to get new ones, but the shoes still work fine, and the padding is still good.
The "Nikes" that I brought from Amazon, a few years ago, crapped out, after just three or four months. They actually cracked, and I tried out a couple of other types of sneakers, over the last few years.
Nike has discontinued the Pegasus 30s, so I switched to New Balance sneakers, and I got these directly from the NB web site.
kup0|3 years ago
thirdsun|3 years ago
Maybe I'll end up on Amazon, maybe not - they all can deliver quite fast and they all have to adhere to european minium return policy standards. So the handling of returns isn't something most customers ever have to think about.
Just to give an example here's the price comparison for a current AMD CPU: https://geizhals.de/amd-ryzen-7-7700x-100-100000591wof-a2801...
Don't you have anything similar over there?
lunarplague|3 years ago
I also live in a pretty remote area, so I have to drive 45 minutes to 2 hours to be in any big box store.
tvb12|3 years ago
anotherman554|3 years ago
coldpie|3 years ago
B&H is the "new Newegg" for me, since Newegg decided to jump into the flea market business after Amazon.
MDGeist|3 years ago
dubcanada|3 years ago
lunarplague|3 years ago
I already use parts express for my audio equipment and probably always will because their customer service is incredible, but I rarely buy pc parts anymore. I want to do a new build in the coming year and having this conversation saves me the future research.
benjaminbachman|3 years ago
valdiorn|3 years ago
Probably the last company you'd think of, but they have excellent service and return policy and you can trust them to be selling real stuff.
Not to mention the fact they're one of the only places that will sell you unlocked phones.
An iPhone, two iPads, a pixel 6 and an rtx3060 all ordered from them within the last 2 years.
xboxnolifes|3 years ago
mindslight|3 years ago
Basically, most businesses have outsourced doing QA as "free returns" where the customer is the ultimate judge. This only works as long as they're willing to get stuck with some of the losses from return fraud. But as they try to cost optimize and assume the incoming checkers are foolproof, they end up blaming unlucky customers in the most hostile manner.