And wait a few weeks to get replies, and annoy the authors by having to ask repeatedly, ... Yes it works, no it's not a great mechanism to entirely rely on. In comparison, Sci-Hub beats the official journal websites in convenience.
It's not about convenience it's about how some of us things should be. Which is that (at the very least scientific) knowledge should be free and open and accessible and we don't see why a private company should be making huge profits (and even worse influence the direction of science) while they are offering almost nothing in return.
But it is. You just have to email the authors and wait a bit.