same with stores. there are some stores from which i buy without even checking the price, namely: Amazon, Costco and Home Depot. i just had such consistently good service from these stores for so long that i see them as my partners rather than my adversaries. i have to be clear, however, that by "Amazon" i mean items SHIPPED AND SOLD BY AMAZON not 3rd party items that you can buy from Amazon.com and by "Home Depot" i mean purchasing physically in the store, not on their site. i had bad experiences with 3rd party sellers on Amazon as well as with ordering from Home Depot site but if you buy items with PRIME shipping from Amazon or physically in store from Home Depot it's always smooth sailing - you will always get your money back if you're not 100% happy. and i wish i could list stores from which i would never buy but honestly it's basically all of them except the handful of stores that i trust like Newegg or Provantage or Global Industrial or other stores i have previously used. i will never buy from a store i don't know if i can buy from a store i know. I will always try Amazon, Costco and Home Depot first. then places like Newegg, Provantage or Global Industrial etc. Only if none of the stores i know have what i need then i will read the store reviews on Trustpilot and read feedback on Reddit. If i can't get any confirmation that a store is legit then it has to be a purchase in the amount i can afford to lose - so like if i am buying a $20 case for sunglasses or something i can afford to have it never ship or have the wrong item ship and never get refund etc. but i would never buy something like a TV or Computer from a store i don't absolutely trust. View quoted note →

i didn't understand brand loyalty when i was younger because my Kike pops and my Commie mom brainwashed me into believing that being rich is evil and that the things rich people have are no better than what we have - just with a fancy label but these days i make my purchasing decisions almost entirely based on brand - and it goes both ways - that is there are some brands i use without hesitation and others i will not use no matter what randomly off the top of my hand brands that can be used without hesitation: Tumi, ASUS, Alienware, Toyota/Lexus, Milwaukee Tools ( though they have facilities in Israel ), Nvidia, Qualcomm, JBL Speakers ( not headphones ! ), Bose and Sennheiser Headphones. there is IMO no such thing as JBL headphones. it's just cheap headphones with JBL branding. JBL is a speaker company. JBL constantly publish research papers on speaker design and i read them all - but i have never seen them publish any information on headphones. not even talking about research papers - any INFORMATION at all. i can only guess AKG makes them since JBL and AKG are both owned by Harman which is in turn owned by Samsung. but AKG was always second to Sennheiser and they were never known for the type of headphones that JBL sells either, so really JBL headphone is probably a bastardized AKG - don't bother. get Bose or Sennheiser instead. brands / companies you could not pay me to use: Tesla, Apple Tesla and Apple have a laser focus on Dunning Krugers. Apple focuses on college girls who think they are important because they go to college and Tesla focuses on techno-Pajeets who think they are important because Dunning Kruger. furthermore Apple and Tesla have demonstrated time and again that they are all about appearance rather than substance and that they have zero concern with making a product that is useful - only one that is "cool" or "futuristic" etc. finally Apple and Tesla both have a penchant for proprietary connectors that exist for no reason other than to screw everybody over. thus Apple had lightning instead of USB and Tesla had its own plug instead of standard CCS plug. if you use Apple or Tesla you are human garbage, fuck you and i hope you die !