Other than shipping damage, I don't regularly get misleading or broken items from other retailers, especially small ones. This only happens with third-party Amazon retailers, who mostly sell trash and hope you don't care enough to return it because it was so cheap.

It's rare, but I did, back when I regularly ordered from other places.

I also regularly didn't get things on time. And I don't mean a day late, I mean "hasn't even shipped yet by the time it should arrive" late, and without even a notice.

What really sold me on Amazon was game sales, though. I'd pre-order something at Walmart or Gamestop and show up on release day to find out they didn't get it. This happened enough that I finally just ordered it on Amazon instead and hoped it'd work out. It not only worked out, but it had great tracking so I always knew what was going on. I had maybe 2 games be late from Amazon in all the time I ordered from them, and at least one of those was weather that stopped the planes and would absolutely have affected GS and WM, too.

From there they introduced the 2-day shipping and the rest was history.

Yeah, Walmart, Target, and basically any large reseller is excellent when they have the inventory in their warehouse. Once you use them for drop-ship (which they aren’t transparent about…at all), orders will get dicey. The arrive by date is an estimation that assumes that their last-mile logistics pans out.