Amazon.com

Amazon.com has great prices, free shipping (sometimes), and great service, but...

Not everything you buy from Amazon.com is actually being sold by Amazon.com. Sometimes they provide a "front" for some other business. Normally, this works fine. They provide one-stop shopping even for things that they do not carry themselves. But be careful - if you buy something from them, make sure that you go back to Amazon.com the next time you want the same thing!

Not long ago I needed some ink cartridges for my HP 8550 printer. This printer takes five (5!) cartridges - three for color, one for "photo black" and one for black text. I went to Amazon.com to get one magenta and one black refill. Unfortunately, the black cartrdiges are not labeled as to which is "photo black" and which is "standard". The only way to tell them apart when you have them in hand is that one is twice as large as the other (but which is the big one?) I ordered a photo black cartridge when I should have ordered the standard. I discovered the error when I received the small catridge instead of the big one from GoFastParts, the company that was actualy selling the product. Since I'd ordered from Amazon, I called them to check and see if it was me or them that had made the error. Amazon support explained that I needed to contact GoFastParts instead of them. So I e-mailed them and discovered my error - I'd ordered the small, photo black cartridge isntead of the large, standard black one. They said I could call an 800 number and order the cartridge that I wanted (I'd use up the photo black cartridge eventually). So I called GoFastParts, explained my error, and ordered the standard black cartridge, paying by credit card. After I hung up, I got to thinking that the price for the cartridge ($42.98) seemed a bit higher than I'd paid in the past. So I went back to Amazon to check their price. The price there was only $27.99!! The moral of this story is, don't deal directly with Amazon's partners, perhaps thinking that you're doing them a good deed by keeping them from paying some sort of fee to Amazon. I don't know that my experience is typical, but I'm not about to find out by paying bonuses to Amazon's partners. My recommendation: Shop around. If you buy from Amazon, buy from Amazon - don't try to short-cut them.