I have found this to not be the case, ever. Everything I'm looking for is ALWAYS cheaper on Amazon, has FREE shipping (as opposed to sometimes upwards of $10+ for basic items) and the shipping is FAST, as in, actually 2-3 days. If the shipping isn't free, it's reasonable, or absurdly low for what you're doing.

I recently bought a book from Japan. Every site that imports these books, and buying anywhere from actually in Japan, the book was ~20% more expensive, the shipping was ~$12 and the shipping time was 14-30+ (PLUS!) days.

Amazon shipped the book for $8 shipping, while having a lower price in the first place, in TWO DAYS, from another country, to my door.

This is not an outlier. This is the norm in my experience.

I have had conversations with people from companies, including specifically the one I almost bought this book from, and time and time again the conclusion is that Amazon does insane bulk shipping (as well as makes deals with shipping companies) and storage, that absolutely no one else can compete with. Even if you can compete on the price of the item (or give discount codes), you're not doing free or absurdly cheap shipping, and if you are, expect absurd wait times for your items.

This argument is a lot like the "Walmart" arguments I see. We get it, Amazon bad, Walmart bad, etc, but at the end of the day I'm broke as shit, and it absolutely matters how far I can stretch my dollars, so they win out, every, single, time.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have "feel good" money, and can't go about spending multiples of my money for the same products just to feel like I'm "hurting" multi billion dollar companies.