I'm buying a refurbished iPhone from a reseller rather than buying new from Apple. And I'm buying American clothing directly from the Chinese manufacturer, so the American company doesn't see a cent of my money.
If you're avoiding Amazon, you can consider sourcing things from Alibaba or Temu. If quality is a concern, there are strategies to increase the likelihood that you are purchasing quality goods (I've learned several of them having spent years shopping on Taobao).
I'm sure many of us would appreciate learning those strategies. There are lots of YouTube videos about the bad quality stuff, it would be nice to know how to access the good quality stuff.
I found the following strategies to be helpful. Not 100% foolproof, but it does help to weed out the fake ads.
1. Number of recent sales - the more the better. On Taobao, I look for ads that have had at least 100 sales in the past month.
2. Reviews - the more 5-star ratings, the better.
3. Reviews - read the reviews. Read both the good reviews and the poor reviews. If there is more than 1 poor review saying the same thing, I avoid that seller. The reviews with with pictures are even better because you can compare the picture of the actual goods to the pictures in the ad or to pictures of the real thing.
4. Look carefully at the pictures in the ad. The ones that are fake will show different pictures that they have obviously downloaded from different websites, or the good that they are selling will look different in the different pictures. Look for labels to see if it's a brand name good or a knock off. For example, I was recently looking at Calvin Klein clothing, and noticed in the picture the label said "Cavlin Kieln".
5. Store rating - Taobao uses a 5-star rating system. I only purchase from shops with a 4.8 rating or higher.
6. Return policy - Go with one with a good return policy. When you receive the good, don't mangle the packaging. Open it carefully and inspect the good carefully and test it out before throwing away the packaging.
