I’ve entered my crotchety old man phase early. Amazon has given me an unreasonable hatred of online shopping, and therefore I do everything in my power to find brick and mortar places to shop at.
I too am old. Your story reminds me of 25+ years ago when I would go to Fry’s and get a nice new board or card or whatever component. Now I order everything online.
When I was about 14 my dad got me my first computer from a local place where I’d been buying Warhammer. They were the only people in the area that sold either computers or Warhammer, and they sold nothing except those two things.
I remember it wouldn’t turn on one day and I asked my dad to take it back to them to get it fixed. Nearly all of the data on it turned out to be irretrievable and it came back with nothing left on it but the operating system and two or three 144p porn clips I’d downloaded. I seem to remember backing those up on a floppy disk afterwards, so they might even still be at my parents house somewhere!
It’s really frustrating. Many years ago, my older brother helped me get a new GPU, buying it from a nice online store. Some years later I used it when buying hardware and it was so good compared to all the established stores, instead of pushing promos everywhere it made it easy to browse, find and buy products, because oh god are those big stores shitty. Just having a responsive website with filters, reasonable element sizing and a straightforward checkout process stands out.
A few years after that, when I used it again, noticed something peculiar, as they added lootboxes. And I don’t mean physical surprise boxes or something, they added digital lootboxes to get random discounts on products, with a premium subscription that gets you a better pool of discounts. That is a level of “what the fuck” that’s just stunning. And they might still have the best service, which combined with inertia of it being my goto store makes things rather difficult.
I’ve entered my crotchety old man phase early. Amazon has given me an unreasonable hatred of online shopping, and therefore I do everything in my power to find brick and mortar places to shop at.
I too am old. Your story reminds me of 25+ years ago when I would go to Fry’s and get a nice new board or card or whatever component. Now I order everything online.
I would actively commit crimes against humanity to have a frys near me again.
When I was about 14 my dad got me my first computer from a local place where I’d been buying Warhammer. They were the only people in the area that sold either computers or Warhammer, and they sold nothing except those two things.
I remember it wouldn’t turn on one day and I asked my dad to take it back to them to get it fixed. Nearly all of the data on it turned out to be irretrievable and it came back with nothing left on it but the operating system and two or three 144p porn clips I’d downloaded. I seem to remember backing those up on a floppy disk afterwards, so they might even still be at my parents house somewhere!
Happy times.
Fry’s still exists! But it’s not a tech store anymore
My local Fry’s had the best motherboard and CPU combos back when AMD and Intel were relatively competitive with each other still.
We have a Microcenter but it’s nearly a hour away, one way
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
It’s really frustrating. Many years ago, my older brother helped me get a new GPU, buying it from a nice online store. Some years later I used it when buying hardware and it was so good compared to all the established stores, instead of pushing promos everywhere it made it easy to browse, find and buy products, because oh god are those big stores shitty. Just having a responsive website with filters, reasonable element sizing and a straightforward checkout process stands out.
A few years after that, when I used it again, noticed something peculiar, as they added lootboxes. And I don’t mean physical surprise boxes or something, they added digital lootboxes to get random discounts on products, with a premium subscription that gets you a better pool of discounts. That is a level of “what the fuck” that’s just stunning. And they might still have the best service, which combined with inertia of it being my goto store makes things rather difficult.