I think I might cancel. I'm not watching ads and I'm not going to pay the extra $3/mo to opt out. I don't know if I'd end up paying more than the subscription cost in shipping though....
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Are other online retailers so hopelessly sucky that you can't live without Amazon over in the states? It just blows my mind because Amazon honestly sucks compared to the more local stores where I'm at in the Nordics.
For me it’s the fast shipping I can’t live without.
I recently moved into a new apartment and needed to run a network cord from our router to the other side of the apartment to put an access point so we’d have good WiFi coverage. I went online to several other retailers for the few things I needed (cat6, crimp tool, and a few other things), but all of them wanted me to pay ~$25 or more for their slowest shipping option of 5-7 business days.
Meanwhile, Amazon had everything at my door the next day with free shipping. I tried to avoid Bezos, but I couldn’t. :(
But it's not complely free shipping. It's $140/year free shipping. So depending on how often you need something tomorrow, you could come out ahead even without Prime. That's what I'm weighing now. Streaming is close to a solved problem, it's the shipping I'm on the fence about.
This is also a fair point, but it only takes a handful of one-day deliveries to “cover” the cost of prime with what most places are charging for fast shipping. And then that’s not including the many products I’ve never found a decent alternative seller for.
I haven't had Prime for years but still shop on Amazon a bit. You get free shipping on orders over... $25 or $35? So group a few non urgent things and you're good to go. I pay for quicker shipping maybe once or twice a year, and pay for shipping in other sites maybe a half dozen times a year.
I quit Prime a while ago. Since then, most of the time I pay for next day, they miss the window and I get a refund for the full shipping fee. Yeah, it means I got my stuff a day "late" but I ended up with free 2 day shipping.
You bring up good point. But, for example, I tried another company for pieces and parts for several projects. The only other US alternative to Amazon for such things is NewEgg. Where items cost nearly quadruple what they are on Amazon. Not including the shipping times (24 hours instead of 5-7 days).
I guess what I'm getting at, is Amazon is the largest monopoly in history, IMO. There's no way for anyone to compete. Even the $140 a year is pennies in the grand scheme of things. If you require items that can't be acquired locally...
You can still get free Amazon shipping without Prime, and they generally beat the week or so that they say they'll do for me.
And I frequently find that items with Prime shipping cost a bit more. At least on the amazon.ca site I use.
I never pay for faster shipping for other online retailers. That was one reason why I stopped paying for Prime years ago and that was the only perk I was really using.
That's the thing. The more expensive Prime gets the more people who do pay for it feel locked in.
People end up feeling like they need to do more and more shopping on Amazon in order to justify that steep yearly subscription cost. Dumping Amazon completely is more effort than simply shifting more of your shopping over to Amazon. This causes people to get more and more locked in and comfortable with using Amazon for the vast majority of their online shopping.
The other side of that coin is once you do drop Amazon Prime you realize that Amazon isn't irreplaceable. It's fairly easy to avoid them if you are willing to compromise a little.
"Couldn't"
It's very obvious that consumers are completely unable to "vote with their wallets" for anything but convenience and low prices. Workers rights, equality, morals you name it are for the vast majority waaaaaay down the scale compared to price and convenience.
This is a case study on why regulation is very much needed, even though we really should be able to do with out.
I mean fine; you’re right. I could have sat on my thumbs for 5 days with no WiFi in my living room while I waited for someone else to send what I needed, but why should I have to? Is it completely impossible for a company to provide that convenience without also being a bag of dicks? (Or is that what you meant by regulation?)
Yes it absolutely is impossible (even though it shouldn't be) so regulation is needed to make being a bag of dicks illegal or disadvantaged (like say the safety labeling on cigarettes, they're legal if they're labeled but no company would willingly label out that their product is dangerous).
Amazon can provide better prices and fuck over their sellers because they're being major douchebags in ways that shouldn't be legal and if it wasn't competing with them would be much more feasible because you wouldn't have to be just as much of a shitstain to compete.
But. Around the world people aren't really voting for regulations either, it's generally neck and neck between forces that wants far less regulation and more power to business and the ones that want more regulation and to reign in companies. So what I state here as obvious and needed is a hot topic for debate which blows my mind. We're callous fucking beings.
EDIT:
To answer your initial question, because it's the morally right thing to do to show solidarity with people that are effectively forced to work in shitty conditions in Amazon warehouses and to stop them killing smaller stores and retailers that provide far more jobs, spread wealth far more evenly and generally is vastly better for both the country and the world even though it might cost you 10-60% more on average and will be less convenient to you.
EDIT2 electric bugallo:
Also to clarify I'm not saying you're a bad person, you're absolutely not from what I can tell. You're just human like everyone. I'm not without fault and buy shit I really shouldn't as well, like stuff out of china when bespoke alternatives exist far closer. It's just painfully obvious with your story that we, the people, can't self regulate for the benefit of our fellow humans and the planet we all depend upon. Sorry for ranting towards you, and for any ill feelings I bestowed upon you.
Not at all! I’ve enjoyed the conversation!
What about going to brick and mortar to make your purchase?
I couldn’t find anywhere within an hour’s commute of me that sold what I needed at reasonable prices.
I mean, usually when I need something immediately I just walk 5 minutes to the physical store and buy it.
I don't even remember a time where I needed to get something I needed immediately from Amazon. In fact, if I am getting anything from amazon it's probably because it wasn't possible to find it elsewhere and that's usually not something so important it needs same/next-day delivery.
No Home Depot or similar near you? You could have got same day service.
Home Depot prices were 5x the online retailers for the cat6 cabling. (Not an exaggeration. They wanted over $100 for 250ft vs the ~$35 I paid online.)
Also, fuck Bernie Marcus, trumpist shithead. He doesn’t need my money.
Have you seen the price of data related items at HD?
Marked up to wazoo; the only people buying them are stupid contractors.
I can't live without a crimp tool either, oh the humanity