I'll show my ass on this, but calling someone is absolutely an order of magnitude more effort than checking online. Anytime I have to put in an order via phone or place a reservation, I do a mental check of if I actually care enough to not just go with something else. There's a social battery cost associated with it, even higher than talking to someone in person.

For a lot of random things, like... say, a suction cup thingy that mounts my smartphone to a car dashboard, I have no idea which stores are likely to sell such things, and they could have a wide discrepancy in prices. I can type into Amazon and see a list of products and prices, but if I want to buy one at a local retailer I might have to call three or four stores before finding someone who carries the thing I'm looking for. It would be really nice to have a search engine that can search products across brick-and-mortar retailers.

>... a suction cup thingy that mounts my smartphone to a car dashboard.

Try your local phone store. Most carriers have brick and mortar locations.

So for another example, I wanted to get a stainless steel pasta strainer. I checked four different kitchen/cooking stores and the ones that had them them only had ones that were too deep, and they were all priced as ridiculously luxurious items, over $90. Then I checked a local hardware store and they had exactly what I wanted and it was only $12. I only thought of that place because I passed it on the way home and was desperate.

Sure, sometimes things take a bit of work and might not be instantaneous or easy. It all boils down to whether or not one values immense convenience over not supporting Amazon.

Right, this is why I'm suggesting it would be awesome if someone were to make a retail search engine, so we could have both at the same time.

How is patronizing your "local phone store" better than just going to Amazon?

My hardware store is locally own and carries phone mounts. I realize this is an outlier though.

Similar to the other response, I have locally-owned options in my area that sell them. I'd imagine many areas do.

Beyond that, if it's a national carrier brick-and-mortar spot, it could be argued that it's a case of the lesser of two evils.

I honestly wish this were the case for 80% of the calls I make to local stores. Most people they have working the phones do not care about the inventory and will just say they're out of stock or don't know if there are any on the shelves. This goes double for requesting a special item from a store that would normally carry it, but doesn't. They put the order into their "system" and then it disappears, never to be heard from again.

Calling retail stores to do anything other than to see if they're open or, in the case of restaurants, get a reservation is just wasting time. At least for the retailers that I've communicated with.

Will they do this outside businesshours?