buying regular household things online

[ta240]

Has anyone had much luck with regular online shopping for things for around the house? I tried shopping for a few things last night that were nothing to do with toilet paper, hand sanitizer or cleaning and had very little luck. I needed sinus medicine and Amazon showed it in stock and had the exciting news that I could have it as soon as a week and a half from now. Several other small things on home type sites were "we have it in store for pickup but not for shipping".

We ended up with a marketplace with one or two huge businesses having the corner on selling online and now that they are overwhelmed it is hard to get stuff. My initial theory was it wouldn't be a problem being stuck at home because pretty much everything can be delivered now but I'm finding that less and less to be the case.

 

[Boris Badinov]

I ordered some non-essential items from Amazon(toslink and RCA cables) and Ebay(a CD player). Both showed tracking of about 20 days and I received them 4 days later.

 

[ta240]

So far mine have been the opposite; if it says I should get it this week when I place the order it then updates to next week pretty fast after that.

 

[amirm]

It is a struggle to find things on Amazon for 2-day prime delivery but I have managed to find the items I need that way.

Separate from that, we are looking into store pick up for groceries. Not sure how well that will work.

 

[BostonJack]

I'm going to the minimal for household goods via Amazon. Did make a couple of purchases to get my sudden "miniature at-home electronics lab" up and functional. (Doing some reverse engineering of a small system and some forward testing of modifications). Deliveries have been pretty much on time as projected.

 

[Boris Badinov]

So far mine have been the opposite; if it says I should get it this week when I place the order it then updates to next week pretty fast after that.

That's what happened to me - supposed to be 3 day shipping and when I got the confirmation it would be almost 3 weeks. I didn't mind because I wasn't in a rush for these so I never checked the tracking, but I came back from Home Depot last Sat. and they were at the front door. I guess the porch pirates were self quarantined. Maybe because I have Prime?

 

[DuxServit]

We have not been able to buy anything from either Amazon Fresh or Wholefoods-online. Would be happy to pick-up somewhere (e.g. outside WholeFoods) but the option does not present itself.

 

[HemiRick]

All my Amazon orders of non food items have been showing up a day early lately.

 

[Daverz]

I've been doing Amazon Fresh and Amazon Pantry. Fresh is really hard to get an order in, and things sell out quickly. I believe that Amazon is not just rationing items but also limiting number of orders (1 per week?). You have to keep trying over and over during the day to get a delivery time. Their system just does not seem to be set up for this kind of demand.

It's easier to put in Pantry orders, and I'm fine if shelf stable stuff takes a couple weeks to get here. But it's really hard to get the items you want.

The other worry is that Amazon is not stepping up and making sure their employees are safe (which makes their customers less safe). Outfits like Instacart are worse. They just don't want to take any responsibility. I haven't been able to get any Instacart orders in anyway (I pay for the service), so it's easy to boycott until they step up.

Oh, but I'm being a huge hypocrite, because I'm still using Doordash to get growlers from a local brewery (Karl Strauss, delicious), and Doordash has been caught outright stealing tips from their shoppers, and I'm sure they are just as bad about taking resposibility for the safety of those shoppers.