- The author canceled their Amazon Prime subscription on a whim and realized they didn’t really need it.
- Leaving Prime meant slower shipping but the author was happy to wait and still found the selection and delivery speed satisfactory.
- Many people love Prime for its fast shipping and convenience, but some readers expressed ambivalence and considered canceling.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/3M27c
Some of us have been living without an Amazon account since 2007 and we’re still alive. Go figure.
i have reverted to this lifestyle, and i love it. creating the 5-6 accounts for local platforms was a slight hassle, but now i can enjoy the benefits of a “small” company which still cares about what the customer thinks.
Can you please expound on this?
I gave up on Amazon last year. I do without many things which is fine, but there are some things that are more difficult to find without them. I am still doing without as I’d like to figure it out for the long term.
Can you give examples of the vendors that supplant Amazon for you?
Not the person you asked, but generally I just go to the manufacturer website. Amazon is useful for it’s pictures and an aggregate of similar products, but now it’s usually just a catalog of stuff so I know what to look for
Plus then you can be far more certain you are not receiving a Chinese knockoff of your desired product
Home Depot, Staples, B&HPhoto (decent selection of general tech merch, but tons of photo/video)
As much as I dislike it, google shopping helps me find where I can pick things up locally.
There are things that I’ve been unsatisfied with the alternative options, or particular brands that only sell on Amazon, so I use it occasionally. But I don’t have a subscription to prevent the compulsion to use it.
creating the 5-6 accounts for local platforms was a slight hassle
What “local platforms” are you referring to?
It’s kind of crazy how Amazon has dominated so much that alternatives pretty much aren’t a thing over there.
Here in Sweden we didn’t get Amazon until a couple of years ago, and they’re honestly so skeevy. Most of the stuff they sell is weird computer generated garbage, and the brand stuff they sell is usually available cheaper or for the same price elsewhere. They also use the same shipping all other companies use, so there’s literally no upside to using Amazon outside of buying weird little niche products. These niche things could be bought on AliExpress or EBay anyway though.
When it comes to “real” products, it’s just generally preferred to buy them from Swedish/Scandinavian retailers. You know they operate within our legal framework with consumer protection in mind, and if you ever have any issues, contacting support puts you in touch with real people that work for the store, not some outsourced representative that’s disconnected from the whole thing.
The only good thing Amazon has brought is hilarious machine translations. Like curtains of people frolicking in the sexual assault, or fondue sets with integrated email functionality.
Where I am (US), Amazon’s anti-competition practices make it pretty hard for other companies to be cheaper. If Amazon doesn’t think they’re getting the best price, they can drop you, and so many people shop exclusively on Amazon that that can be a death knell. Which is part of the reason to stop shopping there.
That’s the experience in the United States now as well
seeking arrangements
e-commerce sites that are based in germany or at least in europe.
- otto
- coolblue
- notebooksbilliger
- caseking
- alternate
I started boycotting Amazon back in 1999 when they pulled the 1-click patent bullshit. I loved them before that.
In 1999? Brah.
I was an edgy college kid who was raging against software and business process patents. Their 1-click patent started me on a 25 year grudge.
Not a lot of people hold onto such a niche part of their righteous rebellious college years for so long. I love that, and your bar was so high too!
A fellow Great Book of Grudges enthusiast! I too started writing mine early. I have not purchased anything Sony since they put rootkits on their CDs in 2005. Nothing. Fuck Sony. And anything Intuit makes for multiple reasons.
And I am absolutely passing The Great Book on to my kids. They know exactly why we don’t buy certain brands.
What’s this one click patent ?
In 1999 Amazon applied for and was granted a US Patent for One Click Purchase. Before then, everyone had a shopping cart that you had to go into to check out and pay. Amazon realized that a huge percentage of people would add stuff to their cart and then leave without buying anything, either because they decided they didn’t REALLY need that thing or because they found it cheaper somewhere else or whatever. They allowed you to save all your credit card info plus shipping preferences, then just hit “1 Click Purchase.” It was convenient for shoppers because they didn’t have to go through the whole checkout steps or add everything then come back later to check out. They could just hit a button and be done. For Amazon, though, it prevented the dreaded “items left in cart.”
Other sites like Borders and Barnes & Noble, etc also implemented the feature, since it made a lot of money. Amazon filed for a business process patent (I think they also tried it as a software patent??) and forced the entire internet to go back to normal shopping cart purchases. They ended up losing the patent lawsuit in the EU, but that didn’t stop them from enforcing it on US websites. Borders and BN both implemented “2 Click Purchase” to get around it, but the damage was done. In everyone’s minds, Amazon was the place to go for convenience and speed. Amazon made more money, while others started losing money. With that extra money, Amazon was able to move into the “niche” of Walmart, since Walmart hadn’t yet figured out e-commerce. Amazon out-Walmarted Walmart on the web and became the trillion dollar behemoth we have today.
Wow. Thank you for all of this I had no idea. That helps put a lot of amazons growth and lack of competition into perspective.
It’s kinda weird knowing I advertised for them (word of mouth) back around ~2007.
Cheaper than brick & mortar! INCREDIBLE customer service! No sales tax (until you paid it at tax time of course)!
Didn’t realize I’d be concentrating power, helping create just about earth’s richest human.
Sometimes shop around on amazon. Find something I like or need: look for the website of the producer or distributor, order directly from them. Usually same price, sometimes cheaper. Fuck the middleman.
Well, this is exactly what I do sometimes. And not only for Amazon, but for quite a lot of local marketplaces.
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You’re kidding right? Are there actually people thinking they just can’t live without Amazon Prime? Seriously? Fuck even if you HAVE to order something off of Amazon, which you absolutely don’t HAVE to do, you don’t fuckin need prime just for… what… slightly faster shipping?
Free shipping, but at that point you should question why you are buying so much from amazon in the first place
I effing hate amazon and what it stands for. Yet, it’s one of the very rare companies here (krautland) that actually give a damn about support and reliability.
Got a prob? It’s solved saturday night.
Got a prob with {most other german companies}? You can call us mo-fr between 11:00 and 12:00 but only when it’s not fullmoon. Also your estimated queue time is 2hrs. And wait till you hear our mind-dissolving on-hold-“music”…
When amazon says “it’s in stock and can be with you tomorrow if u order within 2hrs from now” then it is like this.
You get the gist…
So, on topic: i only buy prime when i plan to order a lot of stuff the coming month. For occasional orders i don’t need prime. Most of the time i can just use another free trial instead of actually paying.
On the contrary, during the great formula shortage of 2021/2022, Amazon Prime and the recurring delivery option was the only way I was able to get formula for my twins. Speed was important l, but so was Amazon’s huge supply chain.
Since then, we live in a remote place and getting some stuff just isn’t possible at the one store near us. Amazon is really one of the best ways to get things we need. Now, of course, I hate them, but I also hate Walmart and don’t really have choices beyond those or a gas station convenience store.
The practices of those businesses, and people choosing them over other options, is exactly why you don’t have other choices now
It’s an extreme-case prisoner’s dilemma. For shoppers to prevent a Walmart/Amazon monopoly, people would have to both give up convenience AND affordability in hope that everyone else had the same radical values. There were PLENTY of boycotters for both, but they just weren’t anywhere near enough.
At some point, when you’re starving and Sam Walton comes by and offers you food your family can afford, you pull the trigger. And I don’t fault someone who does that.
For real. It would obviously be better if they didn’t use such destructive and predatory practices, but “vote with your dollars” isn’t an option for a lot of the people these businesses earn most of their money from.
It turns out that there is, in fact, a case to be made for regulation and labor organizations in these situations.
And what should they do now? Protest it by not having any formula? Don’t victim blame
I agree. Buy formula, but not non-essential knick knacks that can be purchased for the same price on another website
And when the other website costs more, has worse return policies, slower shipping, and possibly is even a scam site? The problem with Amazon is how good it is even when it’s being evil.
As I said elswhere, I look EVERYWHERE before Amazon first. That involves me checking out BBB on mom&pop storefronts and trying to filter out the scam stores or the ones with significant issues. It involves me price-checking, coupon-checking, seeing if services like Rakuten can get the price to match Amazon’s. I don’t expect most people to do all those things and neither should you.
And even then, I end up buying from Amazon about 2/3 the time. Because I won’t pay 20% more in some meaningless protest that isn’t going anywhere.
I’m not blaming them. I acknowledged they may not have any other choice. Just pointing out the harms for the benefit of anyone with the option to do something about it
sorry twins – daddy isn’t a puppet of capitalism
Then imagine living without Amazon altogether… impossible
I thought this meant the writer is forgoing Amazon as a service completely.
Cause that would be something worth reading. Not these first world problems ffs
The crap people write nowadays.
It’s surprisingly easy to live without any subscription. I don’t have any. If you’re tech savvy you can either block most ads that subscriptions give you, or bypass the service entirely and get free premium or just dl videos/music etc.
And as the services get worse there’s little incentive to actually keep a subscription. Netflix is becoming pretty dogshit for example.
I’ll go further, I stopped using Amazon entirely and I don’t miss it.
The junky shopping experience is especially clear once you leave and come back.
I only ever order books from amazon anymore, and usually only when I get a gift card or a product isn’t for sale elsewhere.
The prices aren’t even that good anymore.
if you want to try an Amazon alternative of books, try ThrifBooks, they have new books as well as used ones
Most of the books I buy are reference books, that site actually has a decent stock, thanks!
There’s a great website called geizhals.de which gives you a price comparison for a lot of different online stores for each product and there are almost always multiple stores that sell it cheaper than Amazon.
Do you know an English version or alternative?
Don’t you have a local one where you live? Here, we have two good large (non English) comparison sites that everyone knows about.
Not that I know of, that’s why I was asking.
I thought those existed everywhere.
The more you know.
They probably do, but I don’t know about them.
Unfortunately not
The junky shopping experience is especially clear once you leave and come back.
I mean, the junky shopping experience isn’t unique to Amazon. You could find it in Walmart and TJ Maxx and any number of other low-income retailers a decade ago.
But that’s largely a result of the pivot to Planned Obsolescence as a universal standard for consumer products. Things are junk because if they don’t degrade in quality you won’t be inclined to buy new ones. Your shoddy kitchen appliances break after a couple of years. Your electronics die just in time for a new release. Your IKEA furniture can’t be disassembled without destroying the particle board its made from, so you need something new every time you change residences. Everything from your AC unit to your car radio to your dishwasher is designed to fail inside ten years, because that’s how business gets you back in line to shop.
The prices aren’t even that good anymore.
Greedflation, baby. Everyone’s got to justify their existence with steadily increasing profits.
The prices aren’t even that good anymore.
That’s because they have been forcing suppliers/sellers to raise their prices.
How so?
Amazons average take is over 50%, so naturally it’s not cheap to sell on.
How nice for you. you must live near a metropolis and have much time on your hands and not living with something impacting your ability to leave the house. You must have multiple sources for products are already in your area because in many parts of the world amazon is supplying many things that are not sold even at local brick and mortars. And many people who live in disabilities/injuries/disease to not be able to go very far without passing out while they receive home treatment.
Jesus, they were just saying that they themselves don’t miss it, not that no one should ever use it, no need for all the snarky sarcasm.
I will remind you the title of the post ‘it’s surprisingly easy to live’ - no. It isn’t. Representation matters. when people start speaking their experiences for application: Other experiences should count too. You don’t silence me just on unapproval or ‘not shared experiences’ alone. Stop the ableism.
I agree with you that those with disabilities and those in isolated areas rely on it, but you didn’t reply to the post - you replied to that comment. I’m not being ableist, but pointing out that you replied to a person who was just stating that they themselves can live without it. The person you replied to wasn’t being ableist either.
don’t tell me what to do. That’s all.
I never gave you a directive, just pointed out that there is no need for the snarky sarcasm.
Lmao it’s surprisingly easy to live without AMAZON.
Eh. I live in the middle of nowhere. It’s fucking awesome cat litter comes delivered cheaper than the store 40 miles away.
Good luck using the internet without using AWS.
This may be true at the moment, but Amazon can control how shitty the non-prime experience is.
Personally, I’m trying to avoid Amazon altogether. It’s much worse now, and flooded with cheap defective shit. I’ve also been noticing that a lot of manufacturers don’t sell on Amazon (guessing Amazon takes a big cut).
My retired mother was trying to look for a new Nintendo Switch dock for my niece. She asked me if she was looking at the right one on Amazon and showed me one with a picture of a real looking Nintendo Switch dock except the logo was blurred out.
I scrolled through the Amazon results and was having trouble figuring which was the real one. instead I went to the official Nintendo store and sent her the link to the switch dock from there.
Amazon is really a horrible user experience for buying anything that isn’t cheap junk.
Your retired mother is the ultimate Amazon mark. Like you said, Amazon is full of sellers with photoshopped images of shitty Chinese knock offs. Regular people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You basically have to be a forensic expert in your chosen field to have any luck on Amazon.
The main trick is checking the seller. Certain ones are very reliable for used-but-good things like dvds/books. And you just use amazon for the shipping part.
But even these days they use another shipping company.
For your used things for sure, the seller being reputable and the items being less common works well. Common items (like that knock off Switch dock above) that can be faked are tough because even if you buy product X from seller A, all product Xs can be in the same bin at the warehouse and Amazon just grabs one and ships. if Seller B is pushing a hard-to-distinguish knock off that Amazon believes is product X, then one might end up with that one and think seller A is to blame. That sort of mistake is definitely Amazon’s fault in my view. You can end up with knock off stuff when buying from the official brand’s store on Amazon for crying out loud.
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The quality of good is the big thing for me, and you can’t discriminate through the reviews. They are all astroturfed.
Basically, if I can buy from anywhere else, then I will, but finding goods out there is harder now that web search is shit.
actually READ the reviews you can usually tell which ones are legit. and read the lowest ones first.
Amazon takes 50% on average now
They’re only cutting fees in categories competing with Shein
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-reduced-seller-fees-to-compete-with-shein-2023-12
They also halted doing returns when the product is faulty. I guess there was some sort of scam going on over Christmas where a bunch of shitheads claimed items didn’t arrive so they could get money back but it’s no reason for Amazon to take it out on legit customers when it’s a simple return entry. It’s like they suddenly forgot they were online and can simply remove a line of code to avoid the scam entirely.
I can’t imagine being such a simpleton that this is a revalation worthy of a write up
I’ve never had prime. Whenever I look at Amazon now it’s basically a local AliExpress with loads of cheaply made Chinese stuff. Amazon is not cheap anymore either. eBay is always cheaper.
Christ, we cancelled it a month ago and I feel so fucking stupid. Stupid that we had it for so long for… what? I don’t need anything so quickly that a couple of days delivery makes a difference. Food, water, heat, somewhere to sleep are things I need on a strict schedule. Knock off earbuds and some silicone molds for frozen shot glasses can absolutely wait. AND IT’S STILL FREE SHIPPING, you just add to cart and buy once you hit $35.
this wealth is controlled by a group so small, that they could fit on a single 747 airplane—with 260 seats left over
Honestly ridiculous state of things we have got to, that the majority of wealth in the world is owned by a group of people so small they can’t even fill a relatively small 2-aisle airplane
Wow, never thought I’d see a headline like this. I’ve never had Amazon prime except for the free month trial. I had no idea it was such a problem for others that there are articles written about it.
Prime is a waste of money.
I wait for “try prime for 30 days” offers. I’ll sign up for it, instantly cancel it to prevent recurring bills, and then order whatever it was I was thinking of over the last six months. Because once upon a time I’d be on Amazon all the time, browsing this and that, but it has become such a cesspool that I infrequently bother. If I wanted to wade through a sea of Chinese OEM crap and counterfeit products, then I might as well use Aliexpress and be done with it.
Is saving $6 on shipping really worth waiting 6 months to buy the thing?
depends on the thing, really
I just wouldn’t be able to wait that long for that little savings.
If you can wait 6mo you might not need it. Save all the money.
if I’m waiting for 6 months it’s for something that has no pressing need, but if I’m still thinking about it in 6 months will probably bring enough joy to my life that it’s worth the investment.
It’s a joke unless you need something overnighted or next day and as a bonus - it will usually be improperly packaged and delivered with malice.
Prime Video catalogue is a pale shadow of what it used to be. Exclusives have dwindled. Now they want 3 bucks for no ads on top of paying for Prime? Naw.
Counterfeits are everywhere. That’s what Aliexpress is for (half joking). Frequently have to check the manufacturer’s site when pricing or picture seems dubious.
One delivery driver commandeers our neighbors’ empty driveway, swings the back doors open and blasts shitty pop music at full volume while fumbling through deliveries for 30 minutes every other day.
Buying direct is now often the same price more or less and you can get in a week anyway for negligible shipping price. Or even free shipping if you spend x amount.
So we cancelled too.
Yup, it’s so easy now to buy direct. Same price, same shipping, no counterfeits. One of the things that was really annoying me about Amazon was how often my “new” item was so obviously already opened and returned, often with parts missing. I cancelled and haven’t looked back.
Amazon is bad at packaging books lately. I’d say 1/3 orders are damaged. My last one was both misprinted and the envelope was unsealed, so the book arrived bent, wet, and blurry.
Yep mine are always floating around in the boxes, dogeared and cosmetically damaged. They can’t even get their original core service right.
Edit: Just ordered a roofing tool. Was shipped the tool packaging and the pieces of the box from them tearing it open to steal. But it was carefully supported with packaging material this time. Hilarious.
