OT: WARNING: Amazon *forcing* "prime" on customers.

No. He's hair sniffing.

eful if you use Amazon a lot. I don't care for it so much. I often don't see a way to reach the vendor to ask questions and pretty much every time I do reach a vendor they are unwilling/unable to answer. I just don't get t he impression Amazon is interested in providing negative info on any vendor s. eBay at least lets you rate the vendor with feedback which I take serio usly. There has to be a reason to use a vendor with an approval rating bel ow 99%.

They aren't always reasonable. I found one vendor who was cheating people by selling undersized wire. He offered a return, but I don't have a printe r for the label and the nearest Staples is 25 miles away. I tried to get h im to acknowledge it was fraudulent (the wire is marked with the company na me and fake size) and time ran out on the return. I disputed the transacti on on the credit card and now have both my money and some 15 gauge wire.

Way back in eBay's early days they tried to force their customers to agree to not charge back. The credit card companies told them to cut that out!

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Unfortunately eBay eventually realized they were being held back by the lac k of buyer trust in the market. So they made it a lot harder to pull one o ver on customers at the expense of vendors getting ripped off occasionally. I'm sure they simply factor that into their profit margins just like ligh ting, heat or insurance for the occasional hurricane.

I've bought a number of flash SD and USB devices that were fraudulently siz ed. I test them and get a full refund on reporting it. If eBay didn't hav e the refund rules they do, I would never buy any flash devices through the m at all. Same with Costco and virtually all brick and mortar stores.

There was a thread that seemed to come under fire here recently, but I'll mention it anyway. If you want to talk about fraud on eBay, just look at their stun gun listings. The gentleman here had a point recently and, no, it wasn't to test the da** thing on himself, but the false voltage. *Anyone*, where they are legal to purchase of course, could purchase one off of eBay and open a case due to inaccurate description/ advertising of item! Probably end up with a free stun unit!

Sorry. That was a typographical error. I should have written:

Some *Amazon* vendors require that buyers use Amazon Prime. You might check if that is what happened.

I tend to use eBay far more often than Amazon, mostly for repair parts and sub-assembly purchases that were scrapped from allegedly working machines. I've never been intentionally cheated either buying or sell, but have purchased wrong parts usually due to either a vague or deceptive item description, or my failing to carefully read the item description. I've also returned some items for various reasons, and have noticed that the transaction only seems to go awry when an eBay employee or contractor becomes involved. Caveat emptor and caveat venditor.

I may be a bit too old school, but I have no interest in buying online many things like clothing, bedding, furnishings and such that I would want to t ouch and see first hand before I buy. I know people who buy these things o nline and simply return them if they aren't suitable. The process of retur ning by shipping is anathema to me. It's a big enough PITA to return thing s to stores I visit regularly.

I don't believe for a minute that stores will disappear, but then I've been wrong about paradigm shifts like this before. I never thought anyone woul d feel the need to have a cell phone instead of a land line unless they wer e in an occupation where they needed to be reachable pretty much all the ti me. Boy, was I wrong about that and this might be the same sort of outdate d opinion.

For me the ideal combination is to be able to buy in the store, but also ha ve the store be a free delivery pickup and return location for Internet pur chases. That works for me. I was tickled to get a sealed lead acid batter y at half the cost of other Internet sellers because of the high cost of sh ipping which Home Depot ate because they tossed it on a truck arriving ther e anyway. Awesome! I think I've done that with Walmart once or twice as w ell.

I tried that with Best Buy once but they messed it up in that the item was on sale, so when I was able to get there to pick it up the sale was over an d they wouldn't give it to me. I guess this was a bit different in that I was buying something already in the store. Still, it was very goofy. The web site said it was on sale, but the dates were not very obvious and there was no mention of having to pick it up by any given date. It was flash me mory, so any time you don't buy it you end up saving money by buying it a c ouple of months later. I just bought a 256GB Sandisk USB drive for somethi ng like $30 at Costco. Amazing! Of course, with Costco you have to factor in the $1.25 weekly membership fee. I think that comes to around 1 or 2% added markup for what I end up spending there. The guy at the return desk shared a Costco tidbit. When a price ends in $.99, that's a regular price. When it ends in $.97 that's a closeout price.

The best deal I ever got on electronics buying new was at Walmart four years ago. I happened to be checking their "clearance" isle and almost missed about a dozen or so 1 TB self powered USB hard drives for $9 each. I couldn't believe the price and thought maybe there was some sort of error, but it rung up at that price at the register. I think the reason for the sale was that they were "formatted for Mac" which, as most PC savvy folks know, is a no brainer to format to something else but much of the public wouldn't know that thinking they could only be used on the Mac. Anyway, I picked up half a dozen with the intention of returning to get the rest. The cashier really looked them over and I'll bet when I walked out, she or someone she knew grabbed the rest. Anyway, the best deal I've ever come across and I use the drives regularly for back ups and other purposes.

Thanks. Looks like proof of forcing "prime" on someone to me..

• Saw no mention / indication of that.

Thank you very much!