Anything?

?

I do prefer the buy local sentiment. I bought a book over the holidays (Humans of New York) at the bookstore downtown. I paid $29.99. A day later I was at Target in Blount County and bought a second copy for $20.00. Amazon currently sells it for $17.99. I don't begrudge the downtown bookstore for the high price, they had it displayed nicely in the window and on a table. If it hadn't been for them I might not have found out about the book. It's so much fun to flip through a book before buying, especially a picture book.

We currently make many of our Amazon purchases, except for Kindle reading and we don't have that many Amazon purchases, because we don't have time to drive to the many stores to see if they have something in stock. Many times when you try to call it is a fiasco.

Oh, I see. It appears you meant to say "I've never bought anything from Amazon"?

The topic was supposed to be a fun trivia post for people who shop at Amazon and what their first purchase was, which you are able to find out because Amazon keeps the records.

In your case it doesn't really apply because you don't have any history for the reasons you stated.

Those are all good arguments that we have heard before, and I tend to agree to an extent.

But I shop at Amazon because there are times when what I need is not available locally.

For example, I recently bought a StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express USB 3.0 Card Adapter. This was not in stock at Best Buy, Staples, or Office Depot and was available for for online purchase only.

Since I already have an Amazon account and past good experience with pricing delivery, returns, etc., I ordered it from Amazon. And because I have Prime membership, shipping was free.

One could argue the chicken and egg aspect of whether online retailers are the reason local stores and especially Mom and Pop stores don't carry as much in stock inventory as they used to.

In this case, I doubt any local store (except maybe CompUSA which is long defunct) would keep the the StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter in stock because there probably isn't much local demand.

(If there's a local computer store that carries this and other items like it in stock I'd be happy to know about them for future reference.)

As for paying for shipping, most online retailers now have free shipping options, usually for purchases over a certain amount. Even if they didn't, the convenience is worth it. If it takes me an hour to make a trip to West Knoxville and back to shop, that's an hour wasted. My time is valuable, at least to me.

So for me, online retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, Tiger Direct, PC Connection, etc. provide a useful service. We even buy stuff online sometimes from more traditional brick and mortar retailers like Dillards because what we're looking for is not available in their stores.

I did recently buy a TV from the brick and mortar Best Buy at Cedar Bluff. Am I really supporting a local business? Sort of, I guess, in terms of sales and property tax. (Amazon is now collecting sales tax in Tennessee, Newegg always has.)

But most of the money goes out of town to Best Buy corporate headquarters. And many national retailers pay so little that some of their employees qualify for food stamps and Medicaid. So what's the net net?

Anyway, all of this is off topic and I'd be interested to hear from other folks who shop at Amazon regarding their first purchase. Not that it really matters, it just seemed like a fun trivia question, and an interesting look at the history and growth of the company.

Maybe it would be more appropriate for you to start another discussion about the evils of online retailing, especially Amazon.

Hah! No, nobody stole my copy. Got it for nostalgia purposes.