Now granted, I don’t live in America, but I have never even considered using Amazon, and I don’t understand why anyone would…
Same here. Never ordered anything off Amazon. Not sure about the U.S., but I’ve never had trouble finding anything in other places, so I never had to resort to Amazon. Maybe certain things are harder to get in the U.S. except on Amazon? Some kind of monopoly thing?
I can order stuff from Amazon and ship them to my house for cheaper than walking 100m to a store. During COVID this was a game-changer, post-covid it’s still super convenient.
I’m not even talking about the Amazon drop point that’s across the street from the store. I mean to the 24-hour BlueBox drop in my building for no-contact deliveries I can pick up any time.
Sort of. For me, it is the trouble finding things elsewhere part, but maybe not quite how you’re thinking.
There are all sorts of stores, way too many stores, stores in all directions, stores of all sizes, but especially really big. If I want to get something, I need to go to one of these stores, more likely multiple of these stores. Even the biggest store will only have a limited selection and only at a specific price. Back in the old days, I might spend a day shopping to find what I wanted, I might look for it many weekends in a row, I might pay attention to sales so I can get a better price, then go in as the store opened so I could get it before it sold out. Why do that to myself? Why waste so much of my time and attention? Why drive around so much? It doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile Amazon has it, every brand and variation (even if most are identical), usually to be delivered in a couple days. If it’s not a good price point, I don’t have to click on it.
Amazon has made my life much easier by reducing the time and travel I spend on various necessities. Now in a typical week, my only “chore” driving might be to goto the grocery
Oh, right. I completely understand. Shopping sucks. I always order everything online too, because I hate shopping. But I’ve just never needed Amazon for it. Pretty much every store delivers and if you don’t want to pay for delivery, you can just order and pick up at the store. This way you don’t have to physically ‘shop around’ and you don’t run the risk of something being sold out. Kinda like take-out.
Absolutely not against ordering stuff online, it’s a time-saver. It’s just… Amazon in particular. I prefer not condoning their terrible employee treatment.
Amazon was really great when it started out, you’d find what you were looking for, at correct/very good prices, fast shipping and good service if something was lost or broken. The whole experience was top notch.
But that was over ten years ago.
I did stop using it when it was still very good but all the abuse popped up on media.
I’m in the EU BTW.
The only reason is not having to register to thousands of crappy webshops that don’t know shit about itsec and get data leaks all the time. There are other platforms than Amazon but I don’t think their business practices are significantly more ethical.
I miss those Sears outlets, mere kiosk windows on the sides of warehouses where you pick up your catalogue selections.
If Sears could have held on for just a bit and gotten on that Internet ordering wave, its presence in every town across 5 time zones would give it a massive head start.
Maybe they woulda had to up-armour the wickets like a NJ white castle drive-through but even a “go pick it up” workflow would have been great.
There was a time in the long ago times when it was a really good, customer focused service that didn’t have all of the issues it has today. It then of course got worse every year like everything else but now many people use it out of habit or addiction.
Mail order has historically been a large part of US consumer buying. This is due to the number of people that lived in remote rural areas for most of this countries history. Access to goods was severely restricted due to that problem. And didn’t really start changing much until post WW2 and the growth of urbanization. Mailing a cheap catalog to everyone was the best way to show off your goods and get necessary goods to those who wanted them and would have no access otherwise.
Amazon is merely the latest in a very long line of those businesses that developed that marketing stratagem. And since I live in one of those remote areas, Amazon does provide me with easy, fast, and generally competitive priced goods that I would simply never be able to access without making a 600 mile round trip to get. But if you live a large dense city, there is little need for Amazon. But then, people order uber eats or whatever it’s called to get supper when they could cook something to eat cheaper instead.
I could spend hours googling for items from small and possibly sketchy websites and wait times than can stretch to several weeks or more, and sometimes I do out of boredom, but time is money as they say, and I do have other things to do.
As someone else who lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, I use Amazon for stuff I can’t find locally. Our local (and family owned) grocery & hardware stores are not much more expensive, so I tend to buy essentials there and save Amazon as a last resort. Amazon’s pricing isn’t anything special, and being able to talk to a knowledgeable shop owner is more than worth the extra few cents in price.
I seldom need to talk to a shop owner unless I want to talk about the fishing or weather. The price difference between items in local stores and amazon is generally measured in whole dollars. And I always balance the cost to buy on line vs the cost of gas money, (when the nearest real grocery store is a 100 mile round trip and still is limited in choice and availability and the local one sells milk, some bread, a few canned goods and such), also gets considered. Amazon almost always wins on price if I can wait the week it takes to get an item.
This next week I need to pull and test some ice cube relays in my tractor. I hope the blower fans stopped working because of a bad relay. If not, I will need to pull to roof off the cab to get at the blower motors. I already know I will need to order any parts. I could have the local John Deere dealer get them for me, but the price will be outrageous. The relays should be available from amazon, not sure about the blower motors though.
As someone who lives in a major US metro, I order online because I’d rather have a truck that’s already on the road make an extra stop at my house than drive a single passenger vehicle 20 minutes each way to get it. Put stuff in the shopping cart, wait for it to hit the free shipping threshold, order. May cost slightly more than stores, but I save on gas and CO2. Groceries, definite go to the store.
Since they added commercials to prime video we have been considering dropping prime. Video was really the only thing keeping us lately.
I can never find anything to watch on Prime Video. My subscription is any to renew in September and I’m about to turn off auto renew. I’ll still order my regular things from Amazon but now I’ll wait until my cart has $35+ in it for free shipping.
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Was one of the people who dropped it after the commercials were added. Started using our library instead and haven’t really missed the video streaming. I’ll log in via a browser every so often and get offered a free month or week of prime and immediately cancel. Was able to access prime day deals without paying for anything.
I use Kanopy through my library for free streaming. They have quite a bit of a selection too! Also there’s Freegal music streaming, like Spotify, but free through the library.
Hey OP I did not know we had a frugal community. Thank you for your post now I can post there. …no sarcasm.
Enjoy!
What is Video? Prime member asking…
Amazon Prime is also a video streaming service like Netflix. It is included with your Prime shipping subscription but they recently started showing ads.
I had been considering getting rid of prime. The commercials were the last straw. I haven’t had it for 3 months now and haven’t cared at all.
That’s when I dropped prime. It’s been just fine.
I really need to cancel my membership. Most things I really want can be bought on Ebay open-box for cheaper. Any daily essentials I just go to Sam’s Club or Aldi.
I thought I cancelled 2 months ago and I was billed this week. I went through the same steps and when I got to a page that said something like “confirm cancel” I hit it again.
The top of the page said “you have 364 days left to enjoy prime benefits”
This time I scrolled down and there was another box to click. A second confirmation. Such bs
I cancelled two years ago and they renewed it somehow.
Then this year I let it use a cancelled card as the default and my one working card was on a list of 20 or so cards. It kept warning me that my card would not renew my prime subscription. Nah, they just ran an if statement over my cards to renew it.
I didn’t really fight it because my family uses my prime video which has ads but I’m prepping them that it’s not gonna be there next year.
If you haven’t used any of the benefits since its renewal, you can call to get a full refund. It did the same to me, and I was able to get the newest renewal fee back.
Reach out to their customer support and get a refund.
This is an example of dark patterns. It can also include multiple steps to ‘confirm’ a decision, where the confirm button is beneath the decline button, only for the final step to have the button locations (or colours, shapes, etc) reversed. It’s done on purpose to confuse people into giving up. Unfortunately, even if it works one time, it’s justifiable for the company to continue the practice.
Canned mine the day they announced ads in Prime Video.
They’d already ruined the music service earlier in the year.
It is surprisingly easy to not order things off of Amazon, too.
True, you do have to be wary of drop shippers on eBay though. A handful of times down I order something on eBay only to get it in Amazon packaging and with an Amazon gift packing slip - then I look up the item name on the gift receipt and find that the Amazon listing was cheaper and the eBay seller just skimmed off the top.
It helps to not click sponsored listings, and avoid listings with expedited shipping for free + free returns. Also if you do get drop shipped, mention it in your buyer feedback so others can search for it.
I really wish there was a non-profit or coop or public utility like replacement for amazon and ebay. Yeah you need a website and infrastructure and warehouses but this is becoming so fundamental to our economy that it’s not good to let this “rent seeking” to continue. Make it a fair marketplace that is democratically controlled and optimizes for customers and sellers and workers instead of for shareholders. There is no need for amazon or ebay to exist.
Similar to paypal, all they did was make wire transfers easy. At least I can finally wire money immediately in the EU without extra costs making paypal and their tax on the internet economy superfluous (damn lazy banks!).
Governments ignoring ecommerce as a vital infrastructure has created these completely useless plutocrats.
PS: Sorry for the tangential rant lol
Ignoring the other benefits to prime outside of shipping, this is a major caveat:
"Amazon still ships free when your cart is above $35, albeit a few days slower. "
Most people are fine with slower, but if you’re forced to make your order $35 to get free shipping, you’re likely buying stuff you don’t want/need just to get to that amount.
Just to save like $10 a month?
I don’t think you save money by cancelling, unless you actually don’t buy stuff from Amazon to begin with.
For me, having Prime is still worth it. Several grocery items are still cheaper from Amazon, and ordering for same/next day means I don’t have to waste time/money/energy going to a store to get that same item.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t cancel the moment Prime stops being a good value.
I’ve posted this elsewhere in similar comments. The value of Amazon has shifted from “buy anything” to “buy something that’s annoying to find”.
Unfortunately local brick and mortar stores are to blame as well.
Say you’re looking for a 3-ring binder. You likely know where to go for it at your local Walmart. You aren’t tied to a particular brand (or you are) and it doesn’t take you long to find it.
But now let’s say you’re looking for something small like car wax. You’re not sure what you need. You’d think it’s in the care care section but you’re not seeing it. The Walmart app says it’s in aisle K44 and your in, what the hell? Z4? Map does you no good. And when you get there there are so many small products that you can’t find it.
Amazon has done studies and the majority of shipped products weigh less than something like 5 pounds. People find Amazon search better than the in-store experience.
Walmart, and most B&M stores unfortunately have no incentive to change because they want you to browse. For Walmart, it’s basket size (items per cart) whereas Amazon is the speed of checkout.
We buy as little as possible from Amazon, though it sort of doesn’t matter because our choice is basically Amazon or Walmart (where we live there aren’t any other retailers).
Basically we buy as little from all of these shit companies as possible. We keep a running list of things we do need to buy from Amazon and when the tally is $35 or more, then we make the purchase. It doesn’t cost us anything extra because it’s stuff we can only get from Amazon and it’s all stuff we need.
I cancelled Prime about a year ago, and so far it has had zero affect on our lives. Sometimes I’ll put something in my cart that’s under $35 and just wait until I want something else that brings me over $35. Maybe I’m more disciplined than other people? If I need something urgently, I’m not ordering it online anyway.
Quite a few times, a long period of time goes by before I add something to my cart to get above $35, and in the meantime I decided I don’t even want the original thing. I’m ordering from Amazon a LOT less often, and it’s great.
If I need something urgently, I’m not ordering it online anyway.
Is that because you don’t have prime? I get same day, even overnight (literally 4 am delivery) from Prime, so it’s often faster to just order from Amazon than to schedule time to visit a local store. Obviously, if something is needed NOW, I’ll go to a local store. This happens maybe once or twice a year.
But what do you do? Go to a local store for semi-urgent things every time? How much time/energy/gas does that cost, and is it significantly less than $10 a month?
If I had to defer just three items to our local grocery store or Walmart, it would actually cost MORE in gas than the Prime fee.
For us, it saves money, which is why I’ll continue using it.
If it doesn’t for you, then cancelling was a good decision, and I would have done the same.
I honestly can’t think of the last time I needed something quickly. For example, I used to order electronic stuff from Amazon… stuff like Lolin D1 Mini’s and stuff. Now I order those things from Ali Express for 1/4 the cost, and wait an extra week for it to come from China.
Doesn’t 1-day shipping cost extra, even with Prime? There’s a warehouse a few hours away from us, but things still took forever with Prime.
I honestly can’t think of the last time I needed something quickly.
It depends on circumstances. I’ve got grandkids, pets, various hobbies, etc. Often times, I may need something within the next 24h, and Amazon is nearly always more convenient than going to a local store (which would take a minimum of 1 hour of my time).
I’ve had free same day/next day with Prime for years. I did a quick search just now and I’m seeing a lot (most?) items listed as : “FREE delivery Overnight 4 AM - 8 AM. Order within 6 hrs 30 mins. Details”, which would be approx. 8pm to get an item in less than 12 hours.
My wife often has me ordering stuff like at 11pm. And we’ll have before lunch the following day. I mean, it really is way more convenient than shopping local.
Plus, we do make use of other Prime perks like Prime video and music, so it’s still a good value for our home.
Go figure, I just ordered something on the 11th, and it was delivered today, the 13th. Non-prime shipping.
Non-prime shipping is usually 2 days, though, right? That’s not bad, either way.
It’s usually closer to a week.
if you’re forced to make your order $35 to get free shipping, you’re likely buying stuff you don’t want/need just to get to that amount.
Nnnnooo. I’m pretty sure I need toilet paper. My order was $33 for the main stuff I needed to buy and then I threw in toilet paper to push the order over $35. I needed that anyway.
Also, you could ask your spouse if anything else is needed around the house. Also, also, you could just wait until you need something else and batch the orders into 1 order over $35, instead of ordering a bunch of single $5 items.
If you really need something urgently, then it’s perfectly fine to pay for shipping. But this probably doesn’t happen very often.
It’s really not that hard. You should try it. Cancel Prime for 3 months. If you hate living without it after 3 months, then you can resubscribe. There’s no penalties.
I bought a car stereo last Friday with Prime. It said next day delivery by 11am. At 11am I check and it says it’ll be here this coming Friday… I cancelled it because crap like this keeps happening. (about 75% of my orders) I live within two miles of a giant distribution center. I looked at other places for the same radio and Walmart had it (not a fan of them either but same price, same day shipping for free) so I ordered it. It was at my door four hours later.
I’m done with Amazon.
Duh?
I dropped it months ago. Only had it for 2 shows and you can get free shipping if you look elsewhere. Plus got tired of being ripped off with fake clothes and junk. The time for Amazon has passed.
Is no one else using Prime for unlimited, uncompressed photo storage? I feel like it’s a big thing and I’m not even a photographer. It’s basically the same as Google had before they have decided to get rid of that feature on the free 15GB accounts.
That’s basically the only reason I have it. I almost never use Amazon for ordering something
I don’t want Amazon or Google using ai to harvest my family’s photo data and likeness so it’s not worth it. You pay and still are the product
And as soon as they’re done they’ll pull the rug out from under you just like Google did.
I have my amazon account since 2005 and i’ve been fine without prime ever since.
Guess I just never really bought something thats so critical to have asap ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They keep giving me a month of free prime, which I use and cancel before the first charge.
Amazon seems confident they’ll convert me eventually.Or that you’ll forget to cancel!
You can cancel 30 seconds after using it and keep your 30 day trial. Most services work this way. Take the trial, immediately cancel, and move on.
Living without amazon prime is easy; living without amazon at all is more challenging with various manufacturers using amazon as their only storefront
Then the eff with them. If something isn’t available retail, there’s a million other online retailers more local, more specialized, or just plain out of the manufacturer itself.
You can live without. Or you help them becoming even more dominant.
Fight it. Fight them.
We try to, but when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, trying to find solutions to the moving target that is your wife’s fibromyalgia, have a growing, energetic baby boy, sometimes you can’t afford paying twice as much or more for the product that isn’t sold on amazon, assuming such an alternative exists.
Unfortunately, lots of people can’t afford to shop with a conscience
Absolutely this. Blaming the consumer when the system has been rigged is a bad take
….so find different manufacturers. Why do you need those specific ones? Fuck Amazon, stop giving them money. What do they have to do to lose your business.
I’ve been doing it my whole life
the third party delivery companies using Amazon painted trucks is a new form of racketeering for organized crime.
