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Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm a little surprised to hear that. I've bought all sorts of stuff from amazon.com, despite living in the UK. Why don't they ship to Canada?
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You may be right! Last time I tried to buy from the .com site, it just redirected me to the Canadian site, but now I can go through the entire checkout process. So apparently I've been using their site for years as just a reviews aggregator/showroom out of ignorance, rather than any hard block.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Apparently not to you because you think the b&m should still sell for the same price as the lowest online price. Perhaps it would be best if all the b&m stores simply disappeared and you had to buy everything on faith.
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Oh, I don't think that at all. I just don't particularly care what the brick and mortars set their prices at, and I'm just observing that if what they do is seen as a benefit to most people, then most people will shop there. Since we're complaining about online killing B&Ms, evidently most people aren't finding enough value to actually shop in B&Ms.
And I'm hardly buying "on faith". Is it it faith if I'm basing my purchase on 100+ user reviews, and product information that is far more complete than what could be displayed in a physical store? Is it faith if I can see what buyers of an item typically bought with it? I will trade away in a heartbeat the tactile thrill of actually touching an item before I buy it for that kind of information.
Maybe while we're lamenting the death of physical bookstores, we can lament the fact that no one sends personal letters anymore through the mail, or that used record stores are becoming increasingly scarce. Or maybe we can just embrace the fact that markets change and what's seen as a benefit in one decade can be overshadowed in the next.