Okay so this is actually driving me insane because it feels like such a basic thing that should exist by now. My roommate and I are moving into this new spot in Chicago next Friday and we have like a $2,000 budget to basically furnish the kitchen and bathroom from scratch since neither of us has anything. I have been using Amazon for basically a decade, I know how the UI works, I know how to manage lists, but trying to actually coordinate a single checkout is a total nightmare.

My logic was that we could just use one account but the security stuff is so aggressive now. Every time he logs in to check what I added I get a 2FA notification on my phone and then if we are both browsing at the same time the session cookies seem to get all messed up and items just disappear or the quantities get doubled. It is so frustrating. I even looked into those Shared Lists things but they are kind of useless for actual purchasing because you have to move everything to the cart one by one and then verify the sizes and colors again anyway. It is just a massive waste of time.

I thought maybe there was a Chrome extension or some kind of third party tool that lets you sync a session but everything I found on the web store looks super sketchy or hasnt been updated since 2019. I even considered just making a giant Google Doc with links but then we cant see the live total price with the taxes and the bulk discounts and all that. Its honestly ridiculous that a multi-billion dollar company doesnt have a collaborative cart mode yet. Does anyone know of a legit way to do this without just sharing passwords and getting locked out every ten minutes? I really dont want to be sitting on a Zoom call for three hours just to buy a toaster and some towels...