Trying to find a messenger bag at Amazon
Looks like I'm spoiled for choice. Temu has exactly the same for 11.29. Not that I'd be purchasing from either place; it's just another example of Amazon's enshittification.
I always love the nonsensical order of letters that these companies use.
It's because of the US patent and trademark office. Not many people are competing with those who slam their heads on the keyboard for their brand names.
Amazon required a US trademarked brand name after the first bout of "el cheapo boot leg" products hit the news cycle (the pajamas on fire and hair curlers that would kill you), so we had these alphabet soup brand names ever since.
I read that it's to avoid internal competition.
A Chinese company manufactures a product (or parts of it) for a Western brand with high quality control standards.
Half the production output meets the standard and is sold under the Western brand name for a higher price.
The other half is sold much cheaper, with a brand name that sounds unappealing to Western customers but can still be sold to Asian markets or people who don't care and only look at the price.
So the English name sounds bad on purpose to steer Western buyers towards the more expensive brand with a higher profit margin.
Amazon does not require a brand but having a brand allows the seller better access into amazing seller's tools.
Amazing incentivizes this shit and does not give a fuck about it. They could be easily detecting this using LLMs but they don't because they only care so it profits.
My favourite of these comany names is still BOIFUN who obviously sell DVD players, baby monitors and door bells.
There's a reason for them! I can't find the original video I saw about it, but this one explains it pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UrqlMfwUC4
I also like how sarcastic this person sounds (at least to me) during their sponsor segment.
edit: Removed the timestamp from the YouTube link.
You're probably thinking of the HAI video.
My favourite one so far is "Hoement"
"CTIRCHIU" sounds like an eldritch god
People need to realize that Amazon has them locked in.
I needed a tall mini fridge for a garage. Cheapest I could find was fucking $700.
I went into a nearby home appliance store and got the same one for fucking ~$200. Granted I had to pay for an $80 delivery, but it still beats the shit out of every option for a 7 cu ft fridge on Amazon.
Every dipshit with a freshly minted MBA thinks they're going to go and disrupt the appliance industry by putting it online and snatching it out from under all those antiquated local dealerships run by out of touch old men who can barely operate a computer. They think they're going to go from zero to nationwide tomorrow, and they're so smart because nobody's thought of it before.
It turns out that dealing with the final mile with appliances is killer, and extremely difficult logistically. That makes the entire operation much more expensive than anyone thinks at first glance. Not just in terms of raw dollars and cents paid to disinterested common carriers to move your product from A to B (who also won't install the stuff or even bring it inside your customer's house) but also in damaged and returned products and angry screaming customers who will be initiating credit card chargebacks all the time whenever anything goes wrong.
All of those little local dealerships have had decades to figure out how to move a refrigerator from their warehouse to your kitchen and how to remediate the situation if it all goes pear shaped on delivery day, and all of them only service their local territory for a reason. The further you stretch without some physical presence in where you're stretching to, the more impossible it becomes to control the logistics.
So yeah, that's probably in no small part why your fridge would have been so expensive. Amazon is among the latest figuring this out the hard way, and you can't just slap a refrigerator or a stove in a bubble mailer and dump it on somebody's front porch.
Local appliance dealers likely also have a dude who in a pinch can just carry most appliances where they need to go.
Tangentially, this reminds me of some advice I read on whole home water filters. Get this one or get that one. but get it from a local business who's been in your area for years and years. You will have a problem with it. You are going to need someone to call. And they say, just plan for that from the start.
Not to be that guy but there's no way in hell that $700 is true. There are pages of fridges for less than $400 that are 7 cu ft.
I mean, fuck Amazon and all that jazz, don't get me wrong - I just feel like it's worth noting the hyperbole. It's not that bad, at least from an end consumer perspective.
Amazon is admittedly powered by greed and the tears of the proletariat but they do a good job keeping the customer happy.
Everyone is free to set their own priorities, but for me, I'll just not purchase a thing at all, rather than buy it off Amazon. Most people buy too much crap they don't actually need anyway.
Some stuff is more, most is less, at least in my town.
Honestly, my strategy for buying goods online is to look up the relevant wikipedia article, read the list of manufacturers, look at their own wikipedia pages or read customer reviews, then finally go to the company site and ordering directly.
For used items or niche items not widely produced, ebay or craigslist.
Amazon always had funky shit with how they recommended things - now people just know how to game it more, so winning move is not to play there.
Check out an app called Karrot. It's basically craigslist but you periodically have to confirm your location, so you know all items are local. It also has a shockingly accurate photo identification and pricing feature.
I usually start with a google image search, find ones that look good and then try to track down where I can get them from.
I'm not going into such depth (unless it's technology I don't understand), but I usually shop on Amazon after I figured out what exactly I wanted, and what price below other stores I was willing to pay. I found that only two categories I still overwhelmingly purchase from Amazon are books and branded art supplies.
I don't know where you are located so this may not apply to you, but in the US for branded art supplies I always go with DickBlick or Jerry's Artorama, because in addition to the usual "stick it in a bubble bag and see how damaged we can make it before it arrives" Amazon shipping policy, branded art supplies are now being counterfeited on Amazon, like so many other things.
I already could not safely buy liquids (Gamsol, OMS, etc) or soft supplies (paper or canvas pads, single watercolors) because of careless shipping, but now I won't even try because of counterfeits. If you want the branded version of something that already has budget knockoffs, say an item like Holbein or Caran d'Ache colored pencils where the real thing is vastly more expensive than others in its category, you're taking your chances on Amazon. Amazon has been selling counterfeit fountain pens for years, even low end pens like Lamy Safaris which always blew my mind, but now it's a lot of things in the art supply world.
So now I only get cheap knockoffs there, anything under $50. Anything over that, or anything liquid or bendable/breakable, I go with a real art supply store. It's absolutely worth it, they pack it all very carefully, excellent return service when I've needed it, and I can still pick up deals better than Amazon without ever having to worry about the possibility it's a counterfeit and I just wasted hundreds on a scam.
If you're not in the US you may be having a markedly better experience, so disregard. But in the US, Amazon for branded art supplies is a big NO for me.
This shit frustrates me to no end. These days I just look on Aliexpress first, just so I’m aware what the usual drop shipping item actually goes for.
It’s very annoying that platforms like Amazon tolerate this. Because it’s actively driving me away from them. I want to see good quality items, not the same Aliexpress shit priced ten times higher. But I can’t FIND the good stuff because the platform is literally full of garbage.
It’s missing the random “Amazon’s Choice” badge on one of the 20 identical choices 🤣
Amazon is just a drop shipping marketplace where everything comes direct from the exact same warehouse in China.
Exactly. Once you know about "white box" goods and the robust Chinese manufacturing chains that support it, you can't unsee it.
What blows my mind is that Amazon is just accelerating this, and at times, embracing it with their own brand. They've gone from being a whole-ass shopping mall to end-of-days-K-Mart in just a few years.
How do they drop ship from China in 2 days?
Hey now. China's been churning out much higher quality merch of late. And the American Tech Giants have been increasingly wrapped up in US trade war politics. So a lot of this shit now comes from the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh.
Honestly, I stopped buying on Amazon 3 years ago. Apart from an enshittified experience I don't want to pay for Jeff Bezos next Helicopter. I go to the store or buy on alternative web sites which are 10€ more expensive, but fuck Jeff.
ebay. You get pretty much the same offerings but at least on ebay the people selling actually care about looking good since negative reviews really tank your scores and those actually matter.
Just a week ago I got victim of Amazon dropshipping on eBay. The product was delivered by and from Amazon, but the ebay seller used a weird tracking service so it isn't too obvious. He put the 5€ difference directly into his pocket. I complained to eBay, but they decided "based on automation and the use of artificial intelligence", that no rules were broken. So be careful with using eBay as an alternative. Negative reviews can be more or less easily removed on eBay, better give a neutral review in these cases.
Their b2c stuff isn’t what’s making bezos rich. It’s AWS, which is difficult to avoid as it runs over half of the internet. But I get the sentiment.
Man it’s fallen off a cliff. Many years ago I bought a knockoff Chinese messenger bag from Amazon. It’s fantastic, great materials, good quality zipper, it’s held up to daily use for years and looks even better than when I got it (leather developed a nice patina).
So, I needed another bag, went looking for the same brand as mine. No longer there, but there are 75 identical looking but weirdly named brands instead. I found one that looked as similar as I could to my old bag, and this one is an utter piece of shit. I mean, I’ll use it, it’s a duffle bag so not as much use as the messenger bag, but the difference is stark. Stiff, cheap cloth, leather sure, but probably harvested entirely from cow buttholes, zippers look brass, but one zip and the color wore off…
Everything, even purchased goods have enshittified. Everything looks cool but just absolutely sucks.
I wonder what enables this business model to survive? 🤔
People being afraid of AliExpress
A market of lemons
leather sure, but probably harvested entirely from cow buttholes
lmao
The internet was so good in 08. You searched for stuff, found exactly what you needed, and were done.
Poor kids today will never know anything other than ad ridden bot corponet.
The internet was so good in 08. You searched for stuff, found exactly what you needed, and were done.
Shit was bad in 2008, too. The degree to which drop shippers had consolidated down to one mega-wholesaler rather than a dozen crappy fly-by-nights hadn't happened yet. You got a dozen different flavors of crap rather than just one. But it was still crap.
Poor kids today will never know anything other than ad ridden bot corponet.
Under an Amazon keyword search, sure. You can still find good quality products outside of Amazon. You can even find it inside Amazon if you know what you're looking for.
The difference between 2008 and 2025 is primarily that Amazon's algorithmic tools have degraded to the state of Yahoo or Sears.
You think normal people today go outside the 5 walled garden corpo sites?
They dont.
They are terrified of an html website. I dont have tech friends irl, so trust me. The real internet, the original non corpo net, is only for ultra nerds now.
If you seriously think the internet is better now than 08 ish, well I dont agree.
In 2008 you could do a web search and have relevant real results right on the first page. Maybe an ad or two.
Now it is effectively:
I forget the exact proposed bill, it might have been SOPA (or something else threatening net neutrality), and it might have been around 2010. That made me think "they want to make the internet into cable TV". And we're pretty close to that being reality in a way.
(For real: all those products and descriptions/titles are so bad, it has to be AI-slop)
I deleted my Amazon account last month. No more Goodreads and IMDb is just another plus.
Extracted my ebooks from my Kindle with Calibre, so I am fine.
Feeling good and less targeted and bombarded.
Having really hard time converting Kindle books lately, especially since last time I tried this, the deDRM plugin couldn't handle the newest Kindle for PC versions. Is there an easy way that doesn't involve getting a physical Kindle device? Does the Android thing work?
I suppose the easiest way is installing an old kindle for PC version, if that's the problem (not through the kindle website)
Cannot say. I had a very old Kindle and all my books on device.
Does that work for Google Play books? Is it an app?
Google Play Books allows publishers to set the DRM policy. Some titles are not protected and can be just downloaded as EPUB. For the DRMed books, it can send them to Adobe's ebook reader/sync app, which (last I checked) can be decrypted by the Calibre deDRM plugin.
More expensive AliExpress...
It feels like Amazon is flooded with dropshipping beyond repair.
Are you looking for something which can actually take a beating? I have bought like four of these cheaper bags on Amazon and they all fall apart in a year or two. And before then they all have shitty strap adjustments which slowly slip over time.
I'd strongly suggest getting something like a chrome or timbuk2 bag which will be like 5x more expensive up front but will actually last decades instead of years. I have been dailying the OG chrome citizen messenger bag for five years now and it's barely broken in.
Timbuk2 isn't as good as they used to be. If you can find a used one it's worth it, I've had mine for like twenty years, but I wouldn't gamble on one made in the last five years. (They closed all their physical stores and cut costs on manufacturing by moving offshore)
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
GNU Terry Pratchett
I agree. I have several timbuk2 bags and the only one with significant damage is the pet carrier that my cat clawed the shit out of. The company repaired it for like $10 to cover the shipping
I second this. I am currently still using the waxed canvas bag from the distilled collection and all I've had to do is replace the strap from wear. Its seen rain, snow, and shitloads of abuse that would cause these cheaper bags to just disintegrate. Its old as shit by now but aside from being well worn - is still perfectly functional.
But you know that capitalism is so good because the free market ensures that there’s so much variety and choice in quality and innovation.
What we have isn’t even capitalism. The supposed free market doesn’t exist when the big players pocket the regulators to use as a weapon against smaller businesses and secure their own market positioning.
Incidentally, this is typically the end result of capitalism if you don’t reign in and break up these companies.
What we have is exactly capitalism. A "winner-takes-it-all" system breeds oligopoly, and oligopoly breeds corruption.
the big players pocket the regulators
That's the entire point of capitalism, it's how it's always been, and it's how it will always be. It's class analysis: the capital owners have the media, the political power, and the repressive force of the state apparatus behind them.
There are two factors necessary for a truly free market that prevent any capitalist system from actually being a free market. They are:
It is impossible to achieve either of these in the real world.
It used to work. When something no longer sold, manufacturers would diversify. Now they force you to still buy the same product with the help of politicians and bribes.
Do Amazon companies count in Scrabble?
If hoement wasn't a word then now it is.
We are totally making hoement happen
About to have a ho moment with my Business Messenger Bag. 💅
Probably not but "zoomer" and "yeet" do!
I will not defend Amazon. But the lack of local retail/price gouging which is shipping in Canada keeps pushing me to Amazon.
I need a role of 3D printable filament or an SD Card. The nearest store is 1-2 hours away and costs twice as much for the convenience, buying from the manufacturer may not possible and if it is shipping cost just as much as the product.
I would love it if there was competition, but there isn’t and Amazon knows it. So for the most part I just buy from brands I know are safe.
I have a few local electronic shops.
It's just that they dont have what I need or are way more expensive.
It is almost impossible to buy RAM or a CPU in person outside of specialty shops.
SSDs or HDDs are only available in low capacity (<2TB) and/or low spec (M.2 Gen3).
Nothing of use for an enthusiast.
The only worth they have to me are as a appliance seller (e.g. TVs, household appliance, general use audio equipment)
This is what people aren't talking about enough. It may make people feel all good inside to not have Amazon and everything - until they are commuting for long periods, having to spend more than they budgeted for and shipping to not be available. Also, who loves it when you have to store-hop multiple places and still not find what you need?
It's like I can't rely on Walmart or even Best Buy to have what I'm looking for. They have their limits. I can't rely on small businesses either because they probably won't have whatever it is I need.
So, sorry, I'm going to keep shopping Amazon as sparingly as possible. Do I hear anyone who is Anti-Amazon prop up any stores for reasonable commute and pricing and available shipping for people and communities? No? Then shut up about your lectures that people don't need Amazon and how they're sheeple for continuing to buy from it. It is all about self-pride and virtue signaling.
My co-worker & I have the exact same lunchbag, except the label has a different gibberish name on it. Yup, both from Amazon.
Just in case anyone actually intends to buy one, buy european: https://blahol.com/
Lmfao 170€ for a bag. Are you people rich? If Europe can't produce a good quality 50€ bag ethically, it doesn't deserve my money either. It's a fucking BAG
Randomly recommending a 600% increased price bag is crazy.
Difference is the quality.
The listed item may break after 10 months or is not comfortable.
Meanwhipe this holds up for >5 years and feels very good.
You pay for actual wages, quality assurance and not being subject to cancerous dyes they use over there without preparing them.
I will never buy anything plastic on Amazon or AliExpress that will enter my body.
Thats the price of a good quality product produced in decent conditions by a small company in Europe. Maybe could be cheaper if it was facory produced, but not much of that going on anymore is there? Anything lower is either sweatshop, low quality material/work or not produced in Europe. I use this stuff and can highly recommend it. You can check my posting history if you think I go around promoting a random buisness.
More and more I’m finding things I want either aren’t on amazon or are buried under so many inferior products that they are hard to find. Earlier I was looking for geek themed ugly Christmas sweaters, and the ones on the first few pages of amazon results were absolute garbage. Found several viable suppliers elsewhere in no time.
Once again capitalism has bred all sorts of innovation in the space!
Amazon's product search is intentionally bad
Almost everything on Amazon is cheap trash, and they promote the hell out of all that trash instead of products of any quality. I am also so sick of the click funnels where you search for a specific item and they just give you pages full of knockoff trash as search results even if you go to a specific brand store. It's nonsense.
Why would they want to sell you a nice thing once when they can sell you a shit thing ten times?
I stayed away for a few years, ended up buying a fair bit more frequently when doing up the house just due to cost and delivery but the site does look exactly like any other slop store now. It looks like chinavasion or alibaba.
So I just got a steam deck... A little birthday present to myself.
My local microcenter sells nothing for it... Neither does best buy. And if best buy did I wouldn't over pay anyway at that failing store.
So... Amazon it is. 40 bucks and two days later I have a silicone case, anti glare screen protector and a cheapo dock.
I didn't want to get all that shit off amazon... It was just the most convenient place and in my case the only place.
If anything amazon needs to crack down on these bs Chinese sellers.
I haven't bought anything at Amazon for like 6 or 7 years now. Alternatives always exist, but you have to look for them. So many people act like there is no option but to submit to Jeff
Like what? 2x the price for worse hardware?
Feels like the only alternative for reasonable priced stuff is AliExpress (in regards to electronics)
They have a near monopoly on certain goods. I built my home gym using Amazon 2 years ago. I couldn't find most of the stuff anywhere else for anywhere near the same prices.
Things have changed. I don't use Amazon anymore. Out of curiosity I checked some prices on my gym equipment and a lot of it is 50+% more now. The squat rack I have is almost double the price.
Prices elsewhere haven't gone down. It is still probably cheaper to buy the double the price squat rack from Amazon. But I'm done, Amazon is full evil.
Sometimes Amazon has the stupid low priced widget that I need, at a lower price than anywhere else, with next day delivery...
Like... Fuck...
They have a most favored nation policy, meaning that people who sell on their platform can't have a lower price anywhere else than what they have on their platform.
Yeah I had the same thing happen with a smartwatch. I want a new band made of fabric instead of the silicone rubber or whatever it is. It is extremely frustrating to find one anywhere but Amazon. I don't use Amazon anymore, so I guess I'm getting my random Chinese products from ebay now. Not sure if that's any better.
Two major differences between Amazon and eBay eBay has longer shipping times but a significantly better rating system which holds the buyer accountable as much as it does the seller.
But since I like and enjoy instant gratification Amazon's faster shipping times are a little better for me especially as a consumer rather than seller.
Maybe people will stop using Amazon?
Nahhhh
Amazon's going through the same enshitification cycle as Sears and JC Penny did a decade ago.
It's not a question of "Will people stop using Amazon?" but "Will people start using
<X>
" where X is better than Amazon. Solve for X.Consumer action is a lie that doesn't work. Worker action through unions is the way
It’s worse than when eBay peaked.
A brush for cleaning around your sink
This shit has literally always been the number one reason I avoid Amazon as much as possible, even back when they were pretty new. As soon as they started selling more than books, it's been like this.
Same. Companies named 5 random characters that come and go as fast as the sun rises. and thousands of white label products. Amazon is a flea market of shit, hard to find what you need even with exact part numbers.
Shop local if you can, avoid Amazon.
For me, local is improving, but slowly. Living in Ireland, the local market is, well, insular. Until recently, local shops faced very little competition, so their prices were exorbitant and customer service non-existent. This attitude is slowly changing, and my shopping habits are shifting to local, so hopefully in time I'll stop buying from Amazon, Ali Express, and the likes.
I mean, if you've got an REI in your neighborhood, that can be handy. But even they still get their merch from somewhere that isn't the storefront or even the city. There really isn't a "buy local" option for textiles in a material sense, unless you really know where to look.
Shop AliExpress if you can, avoid dropshippers and petit bourgeois
Don't use Temu, lol. Good ol' AliExpress has proven it's quality over a long period of time. Also, there are many trusted stores that were proven to be of high-quality. Just Google some reddit posts asking for the good ones.
Oddly enough, I've had better luck with temu than with aliexpress.
In general they have a lot of the same products, but AE has a much larger selection. However, the AE interface is pure garbage. If you apply a price sort, everything just dissapears. Trying to narrow a search means looking through pages of items, most of which aren't related to what I seached for. Temu, at least, has a preety good search function, filters, and sorts. Plus temu doesnt have the annoying minimum for free shipping.
I'm not a shill for temu. They are a shitty company with low quality chinese crap. But if all I need is low quality chinese crap, it's actually the most effective marketplace I've found to get it.
Dunno.. As I said, what I like in AliExpress is that there are many trusted sellers that are proven to sell high-quality stuff. It's just a matter of finding them.
My wife uses Temu for disposable party items, but that's it. I'm of an age where I unironically ask for socka for Christmas, so I'm already beyond Temu's target audience.
I don't get why multiple people in this post are recommending AliExpress over Amazon. Like yeah it's cheaper and more from the direct source...but not everyone wants to wait a month to receive the item they want to buy. I've seen some items on AliExpress advertise that they now have "faster shipping", but it's still very very slow in comparison....still taking multiple weeks in my experience.
There is a reason why Amazon got big over other online retailers. Even the online shops for many brick and mortar stores end up making you pay more for the item, make you pay a sizeable fee for the shipping, and make you wait 1-2 weeks all on top of that. Not to mention that if your order does get fucked up or you do get scammed on Amazon, they are very quick to give you your money back because they know it helps with customer satisfaction.
I had an issue with an online order from Samsung before. And despite also being a massive company with shittons of money, they gave me a hard time and I really had to fight to rectify their own mistake.
I get Amazon is evil and all but there's a reason why they are the most used shopping platform. If no one else comes even remotely close to what they do, they aren't going to gain much of a foothold.
but not everyone want to wait a month
There are different options with different delivery times. You can just search for "Choice" option (IIRC) and get products that will get delivered to you in 2 weeks. Also, AliExpress has a lot of stores that ship from Europe. So, for example my lab power supply and router for woodworking got delivered to me in 5 days from Poland.
With an online order from Samsung
You learned your lesson. Don't buy stuff directly from the brands. Buy them on markets that have good reputation in following their policies.
In the nutshell, I never had problems with AliExpress and will recommend it to everyone for everything - from electronic components to.. anything else.
Just choose the one from the brand you trust most!
I recommend GHSOUNETS, or FNNAULOO
Otherwise just mash your keyboard and the best brands show up.
The more consonants the brand name has the more you know you can trust them. Vowels are sus
Warning: Cat-like typing detected
Depending on where in the world you are:
There is a resale store called Buffalo Exchange with a bunch of locations who always has the best messenger bags IMO. I've purchased several vintage messengers from them for carrying art supplies.
My favorite is a rigid leather satchel the size of a briefcase. Its new enough to have a laptop pocket, but old enough where the laptop would be expected to be gigantic. I use that slot for canvasses. Then it leaves the main pocket open for my mini-easel and brushes. External pockets act to replace my purse on days I carry it. All this covered with a giant leather flap which locks closed. V protec.
Edit: fixing autocorrect mistakes
Thanks! That's actually what I'd be looking for. I'll check whether they deliver hassle-free to Ireland. Relatively few speciality stores do.
Apologies for the YouTube link but Cory Doctorow explains this phenomenon really well: https://youtube.com/shorts/vrgtV_yxxn4
this is the exact reason I try to avoid buy off amazon. You pay 5% more elsewhere, but the seller probably gets 50% more
I have seen some sellers figure out workarounds. If you have a different SKU, it doesn’t get considered. So for example, Poppi soda sells a 12 can variety pack on Amazon. They sell a 15 can variety pack for the same price at Costco. Different SKU, lower price per unit.
"Hoement" immediately stuck out to me and sounds like a portmanteau of "hoe" and "moment"
Sounds cool enough to be used as slang
Best weird “brand” name on an Amazon product I bought was a “Lokass” cooler. And of course the name is proudly displayed on the lid of the cooler haha.
I have hoements every day.
I honestly haven't bought anything from Amazon for a long time. Sure, other online retailers are shit, too, but at least this year most of them like Walmart have been funding the DNC as a result of the tariffs. Amazon is funneling fat stacks into 45's pockets, doubling down on fascism.
You can also shoplift at walmart.
You can shoplift from Amazon, too, but only if you're employed by them.
Knife sharpening stones are the same. I am thinking of using a brick instead.
Home Depot got some fine brick my friend, fine brick indeed.
Yeah, just get a couple of smooth ones, rub them together to take off any edges of necessary. Or sandpaper but that costs more.
If you’re in canada just go on the shop app. Forget this Amazon bullshit. Buy local.
Or hit up the thrift stores. Eventually you'll find something. I have to go because it's the best place to buy fat man clothes.
Shopify is American
The app itself just collects retail storefronts into one tool so you don't need an app for each store.
You should check out chrome industries. I’ve had two of these messenger bags and I have a few of the backpacks. Really great build quality and the bags last forever and look great.
https://chromeindustries.com/products/citizen-24l-messenger?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21779439101
My day bag is a Chrome. I got it at their brick and mortar location in lower Manhattan over ten years ago. It goes on every trip with me short or long and has seen multiple lengthy eras of daily use yet it doesn't have a single fray or tear. And if it did, they have a free lifetime repair policy. Fucking incredible, literally one of the most excellent purchases of my life.
This is why I have a few different bags. Their stuff is bomb proof and the lifetime warranty is solid.
It's like ebay in 2003.
I will also throw in for a chrome bag. I've had a messenger for a decade and its a tank. I got it made left handed. https://chromeindustries.com/products/citizen-24l-messenger
I just assume they're all scammers, the real challenge is finding one outside of that scope.
Because I've bought products when I've faced similar situations like this. Bought it, then that merchant mysteriously disappeared, never to come up again.
I really don't it's a scam, just a bunch of different vendor selling the same cheap bag from China. It's exactly what it appears to be.
Freedom To Choose
I have a messenger bag!
It's a tote bag with the MSN logo on it.
If I ever find a bag with with an ICQ logo, I'd pay in gold.
literally slop 🤣
just went through this myself
needed a gooseneck phone mount for tomorrow morning. nothing local has something suitable, so damnit amazon it is
oh look, it's dozens of the same product, using the exact same photo often even, from random shit brands
I've been doing pretty good at avoiding amazon for the past year or two, but every two or three months there's something that I just can't get somewhere else on the timeline I need or at a reasonable price
Just get a used Filson off eBay. I'm not even sure why you would consider anything else
Just a guess but, I wouldn't consider anything that was an order of magnitude more expensive than what I was looking to spend.
I looked them up now, and they look very good, but for my purposes I'd like a bag that costs less than the contents.
It turns out that I was looking at the wrong type of bags. What I really needed (and got) was a thin, lightweight laptop bag, which holds my notebook (of paper variety), a few pens, and some odds and ends. For anything that's capable of carrying significant bulk and weight, I prefer a backpack.
Fwiw I like ll beans. It’s quite expensive but really durable
I hate to say it, but I almost appreciate the honesty that comes from multiple different alphabet soup brands selling the exact same item often with the exact same photos. Additionally, unbranded items aren't always poor quality.
I've actually got some unbranded Christmas light strings I bought because I just wanted to put some lights on some columns at my wedding and wanted to spend less than $100 doing so, and those light strings have outlasted every commercial Christmas light string I've purchased. Heck I have a couple of those strings which have been on for 3+ years straight.
Most unbranded items are made by factories that do OEM and ODM work for actual brands that we've all heard of, so they know how to make quality products and they can get more ongoing orders if they make products that are worth restocking. Sometimes you get burned but far more often than not I end up with something that's relatively decent quality and fullfills the need I have for the item
I agree with the quality aspect. We got some solar lights for the garden that are brighter and last longer than those you buy in local stores for a much higher price. That said, I prefer to buy such no-brand items from Ali Express, which charges a third or half the price Amazon does for the same item.
Had to post this, gives me the giggles every time. Ryan George gets it.
What's Amazon
It's the site where you can buy things off of temu and the resell it here.
A river
A lot of it is done by hustle bros.
Why in the world would you be using Amazon
This kinda seems like your fault. In fact, it fully is
Sometimes I check Amazon to get ideas of options, then look for independent companies that sell products with the features I want.