- 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
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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.
I barely manage, but I suvive.
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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Buying anything on Amazon hardly seems viable anymore. There’s so much counterfeit crap there, and a million low-effort rebrandings of the same stuff you can get on AliExpress for cheaper.
Shop local when you can, and at least shop not-Amazon for the rest.
Shop local when you can
Not sustainable for me, I price it from time to time and local stores are usually, at best, double what Amazon or even Walmart has it for and that’s if the local store even has what I’m looking for to begin with
So my choices are Amazon or Walmart (or similar big name stores) and going to Walmart…yea fuck that it’s a last resort for everything but groceries…
There’s so much counterfeit crap there, and a million low-effort rebrandings of the same stuff you can get on AliExpress for cheaper.
I keep seeing this over and over, but I order a lot off Amazon and I’ve never had a problem with it. Don’t know if I’m just incredibly lucky or what, but the only times I get counterfeit / cheap Chinese crap is when I order it on purpose.
Ofc, those things I can just get off AliExpress too and sometimes I do when I don’t mind waiting which is the biggest issue with AliExpress, the waiting
I, and probably millions of others, are shopping where the best price/value is and nothing else because we can’t afford not to. I wouldn’t mind shopping locally owned and paying the premium…if I could afford it. Stop pushing for expensive alternatives people can’t afford and push for regulations instead.
Ya simple solution: don’t buy no-name chinesium crap regardless of the storefront and you won’t be disappointed
Search for a desk mounted USB hub. They’re all cheap junk and none are to spec. I looked at well over 200 listings and most were white label.
So it like, screws to your desk? I too am in search of a quality high powered fast data transfer USB hub that does not cost a kidney, and have not had any luck yet
Yeah it had little screw holes on the back like a router or power strip
And if you go to Best Buy, staples, Walmart, target… what is different? I’m actually close to a microcenter and they’re also no different.
Where do you go for a desk mounted USB hub?
Best buy had one that met the USB 3.1 spec
I can’t say that I have ever gotten anything counterfeit from Amazon. What I have been victim to is no name garbage that has 4.5 stars due to thousands of fake reviews. Generally it is stuff that is difficult to research good brands and the review websites often simply redirect back to Amazon. It’s also very little use leaving a bad review because Amazon will remove it. For an example, Louis Rossman bought some fuses on Amazon. The 2A fuse did not blow until 10A was passed through it. That was not a fluke either. He left bad ratings which were removed and those products continue to be sold on Amazon. That is shit easily that can start a fire. If there actually was blow back, the manufacturer would simply stop selling that named version but keep the half a dozen other identical ones up they use to flood the results. So while this may not have ever been an issue for you, it can easily get someone killed. Your conclusion is spot on. We need regulation for this garbage. While Walmart is generally seen as garbage, there is at least someone responsible for purchasing shit to put in the stores and they generally have it tested. That is not the case for Amazon or Walmart’s online marketplace or AliBaba.
And not only are there a lot of crappy products with inflated scores because fake reviews, there are also a lot of good products with low scores because of fake negative reviews but competitors. The reviews are pretty much useless now.
If I see something on Amazon that I want, I just go to the manufacturer’s website and order it directly from them. If they don’t have a site that sells it, then I try other online stores besides Amazon. If they only sell on Amazon, then I decide I just don’t need it.
Except a lot of times it’s cheaper on Amazon, with faster shipping, even without prime. Most recent example I ran into.
$75 direct
$65 Amazon
Only 50% risk of counterfeits, but you save $10!
Cheap items/electronics can be more expensive on Amazon than direct, though.
Amazon:
Direct:
Doubt that site has free shipping tho
It doesn’t, but shipping is $5, still way cheaper.
Also, free shipping only kicks in at $35, so technically this doesn’t either.
This is the way
I comparison shop almost religiously. Vendor sites are oftentimes more expensive and add shipping on top of that. BB, Walmart, etc. have similar prices but most times it’s actually third party marketplace bullshit using these big name sites as a shittier Amazon.
Prime doesn’t matter so much for me, but 5% on all of my purchases with the Amazon credit card is definitely worth it.
damn right
every time i’ve intentionally picked the ASNDSZYY brand i’ve been disappointed in the thing and in myself. now i’d rather just spend up front for something actually good rather than waste time and effort going back and forth returning things
I think people who see countfeit stuff don’t know what they are buying before they go on Amazon and order from Chinese brands. I know what I’m going to buy before I go on Amazon so I never have the issue. I just use it to check prices and buy if it’s a good enough discount.
It’s getting to the point where even searching for specific products is almost pointless. I did a search for a specific phone model recently and the phone showed up as the fifth result after four prompted results and several ads. When it becomes a chore to even track down a very specific thing you want, why would I keep going back?
The only search worse than Amazon is probably Wayfair.
Amazon hardly seems viable anymore. There’s so much counterfeit crap there, and a million low-effort rebrandings of the same stuff you can get on AliExpress for cheaper.
What do you mean? You don’t want to buy PRAZO USB-C CABLE FOR DATA TRANSFER AND CHARGING, 3M LENGHTH, COMPATIBLE WITH LAPTOP, DESKTOP, IPHONE, ANDROID?
I love these.
EXTRA HIGH QUALITY PREMIUM KNIFE AND FORK AND SPOON CUTLERY EATING SET COMPATIBLE WITH RICE DISHES, ASIAN FOOD, CHIPS, SAUSAGES, CHICKEN, GALAXY S24+, SALAD.
plus i have gotten several obviously used items when it wasn’t even available as used and cost full price.
I got a motherboard once where it was obvious that someone bent the pins then returned it. I had purchased new item though
Every trip to Amazon overwhelms me with choice, then I realize it’s all from Ali, then I close the tab.
I really only buy things from it now if I know what I’m looking for already
Plus their search algorithm, which used to be amazing, now pushes so much crap because the companies pay them to be at the top that the results are horrible now.
Shop local when you can,
So local strangers working to support some local guy’s Maui beach house need our support instead of local strangers working to support some faraway guy’s Maui Beach House?
It’s all local business when their main cost is the employment of locals. Don’t be a snob.
Anybody know more about this?:
I’ve heard the following sentiment & a similar stat over the years:
When you spend money locally, those dollars don’t just evaporate to some corporate headquarters across the country or around the world. Instead, they tend to stay in the community, where they’re reinvested between three and six more times. When consumers spend $100 at a chain store, only $13 stays in the local community, on average. At a local business, that number rises to a healthier $48.
I can imagine a local shop owner sponsoring the local little league team… and I know the average hole-in-the-wall donut or phở restaurant owner won’t have a beach home, and I like they have the potential to make a decent bit of dough without college degrees… but perhaps somebody’s actually analyzed this?
This is my main point of conflict with shopping strictly on price. I do try to support local when possible. I’m price conscious of course, but community support is also important. Not all (or even many it seems) local businesses do support their communities but when I see it I make a note that they’re one of the local B&Ms I will buy from.
In summary, I think the statement is untestable because it’s so poorly confined. Basically it’s something that grumpy local business owners with poor value-propositions tend to say. One of those things that sounds like it ought to be true but doesn’t stand analysis.
For example, there might be a “local” store which doesn’t need many employees but sells products manufatured elsewhere. It’s a local store but most of your money is going elsewhere.
OTOH there might be a chain store that employs 100s of local people, and buys fresh produce from local farms. Not a local business owner but most of the money is benefiting your local community.
Additionally, local people own just as many shares in large chains as anyone else.
What an excellent point.
Have to get to know the business owners in your own community and figure it out yourself perhaps!
I suppose a study could figure out average impacts though, via random sampling? Not sure how my source had calculated it.
Additionally, local people own just as many shares in large chains as anyone else.
You mean our neighbors own stock of Wal-Mart so shopping there is beneficial that way?
Yeah, I think that saying shopping at Wal-Mart is “beneficial” might be a bit of a stretch, I just mean to say that when someone says “shop at a locally owned store so your money stays local” they’re really saying “shop in my store so I get your money”. What most people don’t realise is that their pension plan (called super in Australia, 401k or something in US?) probably owns a bunch of shares in Wal-Mart, so you may as well shop there if you’re a part owner.
I didn’t know donut or pho restaurants made their own dough. It probably varies by location, though. I’ve seen some donut places where the boxes of shipped ready to make product were stored where customers could see it. It blew my mind how much they had on hand in order to not run out.
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?
I cancelled Prime late last year, and haven’t really missed it, either.
Leaving Prime also meant the end of free Amazon Prime Video (you can still rent or buy many movies without it), but I’ve been able to bear it.
While I had Prime, I think there was 1, maybe 2 instances where I wanted to watch something and it was actually included with Prime. Every other time, Amazon Video had the movie, but they wanted an additional fee to watch it, so this was absolutely no loss.
One thing to note: Every time I check out on Amazon, now, they offer me a reduced price 1-week “trial” of Prime, to get the expedited shipping, for like… $5 or so? If you cancel yours, and also see this offer: You can take the offer, submit your order (and get the free 2 day shipping), then once you get the shipping confirmation, go in and cancel the Prime subscription. Since you’ve had it for only a few hours, Amazon actually refunds the price you paid. In effect, you get the shipping benefits for free. We’ll see if they close this loophole, but for now, it works.
If you decline a few times they’ll eventually offer you an entire month of Prime for free. I’ve thus never paid for Prime, ever.
No gain or loss there. Amazon’s logistics are so grabasstic now that delivery lead times are about the same with or without Prime. So I don’t particularly care.
I only buy commodity bullshit on Amazon anymore, and sometimes not even then. If they have it for a good price I might get a pack of crimp connectors or a roll of 3D printer filament or nuts and bolts or something. Otherwise it’s just wall-to-wall Chinese word salad non-brand knockoff shit on there anymore. You may as well just shop on AliExpress since at least they’re honest about hawking tat from Shenzen and it’s cheaper to boot.
You might find this very interesting
He tests crimps and various Amazon electical products.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/B90_SNNbcoU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
There have been zero times Amazon video has had something I wanna watch
I canceled my prime subscription when it was announced they would be putting ads on prime video. I don’t even use prime video but I cancelled out of principle.
Same here. It’s a future that I don’t want. Ads everywhere and you cannot escape.
Same. Gonna have to find some way of pirating the shows I ‘purchased’ on prime so that I can still go back to them.
I think that you can still watch them.
If you link your account to Vudu, Google, and Movies Anywhere they should appear on the other platforms I believe?
Oooh, I did not know that!
Same. The shipping was still 2 days or more to my location. No point.
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
Prime used to mean something. Guaranteed 2 day shipping with no minimum for no extra charge. $5 for next day shipping. Then next day disappeared. Then the 2 day guarantee disappeared. Then delivery times were in the 3-5 day range for most things. Then, in my university town, around the time of students returning to school for terms it would be 1-2 weeks. I’m not paying an ever increasing annual fee for that.
Back then, Amazon was the shit. My GF at the time and I cancelled our Costco membership because shipping was good and selection was better.
Now, Amazon is shit. And now back to buying in-store whenever possible. And got a Costco membership again.
I have a running cart in my Amazon and about once every two weeks I’ll hit the purchase button.
Just not worth it anymore.
Yeah it has definitely gotten worse outside urban centers, but there it’s actually gotten better with same day shipping options on orders over $35. I can impulse buy shit at work and it’s there when I get home.
I literally had an Amazon CSR tell me “Prime” shipping was an estimate
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.
I dropped Scamazon Slime a long time ago when I figured out they were not meeting their 2 day shipping promise. I really have never missed it.
I hate Amazon for a variety of reasons, but I can’t you seriously after you said scamazon slime.
I can’t you either.
Twinklebreeze.
I can both of you.
The can is the seriously we along the way
I’ll beach you all off
Ooo, yes please
I accidentally the whole of you both…
they were not meeting their 2 day shipping promise
Oh. That’s like visiting Canada for a bit, where ‘prime’ usually feels like a week.
I’ve been living without it my whole life so I guess it’s possible
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.
I can’t imagine being such a simpleton that this is a revalation worthy of a write up
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.
Dude… We’re trying to live without Amazon and this guy is just giving up prime??? What a martyr…
