Not really, at least with higher tier retailers.. Amazon is charging more for product, and with Prime you're really paying for prioritization.
Amazon builds warehouses all over the place to avoid air shipping, but optimizes it's internal fulfillment to the prioritized customers. So you either buy Prime (ie. the online version of a warehouse club) or wait 3-5 days for Amazon to sit on your order, pre-sort it and send it out UPS Ground or Parcel Post, just like they do with prime.
I live in New York. If I order from Newegg or WalMart, they typically ship from New Jersey or Philadelphia. That's a 1-2 day UPS Ground shipping zone. Sometimes I pay some nominal amount for shipping, but the product typically costs substantially less from Newegg or Walmart than Amazon.
Amazon is superior to smaller ecommerce operations. My wife orders swimsuits from a vendor in Texas without a distribution network. So she pays about 50% of retail UPS ground charges, and waits a day for the retailer to pick the product, then 3-5 business days for her suit to take a train to Chicago, another train to Syracuse, and then a truck to our home in Albany.
Amazon builds warehouses all over the place to avoid air shipping, but optimizes it's internal fulfillment to the prioritized customers. So you either buy Prime (ie. the online version of a warehouse club) or wait 3-5 days for Amazon to sit on your order, pre-sort it and send it out UPS Ground or Parcel Post, just like they do with prime.
I live in New York. If I order from Newegg or WalMart, they typically ship from New Jersey or Philadelphia. That's a 1-2 day UPS Ground shipping zone. Sometimes I pay some nominal amount for shipping, but the product typically costs substantially less from Newegg or Walmart than Amazon.
Amazon is superior to smaller ecommerce operations. My wife orders swimsuits from a vendor in Texas without a distribution network. So she pays about 50% of retail UPS ground charges, and waits a day for the retailer to pick the product, then 3-5 business days for her suit to take a train to Chicago, another train to Syracuse, and then a truck to our home in Albany.