Hate Amazon? Try Living Without It
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Rules: I only buy it if it’s Prime eligible, otherwise it’s skipped. If I bought something because it’s on sale, I take the lowest price amazon ever offered for that item (with prime). Otherwise, I take the price of the item on the same day.
Results: https://i.imgur.com/kDeM2pM.jpg I saved about $330 by not having a prime membership and buying stuff only from prime eligible stores. However I spent at most 27 more days waiting for items (in reality a lot of these shipping times overlapped).
So the takeaway is that amazon made things easier and faster but not cheaper. I know a lot of people still think amazon is the cheapest place to get things but that hasn’t been true for a while.
The reason you go is for the vast variety of stuff, and the ability to buy things you can't get anywhere else all in one place.
This is how Amazon conquered large-scale retail: by out department-storing the department stores. When the stores cut back ("laser focused!") inventory in response to Amazon's pressure, Amazon expanded further, bringing in even more people and sending the big stores into a death spiral.
I did all of my online Christmas shopping through Amazon Global, and Marks and Spencer. Both ship things to my country that I wouldn't be able to get any other way.
That's the value of Amazon to me.
Much like your experience, eBay (and NewEgg) has filled the general consumer electronics hole created by allowing my Prime account to lapse in 2016. I started seriously noticing diminished value mid-2014 while tracking prices for a personal workstation build during the 6 months leading up to Black Friday that year. For shits and grins, I did the same analysis again in 2017 for a second build; Amazon didn't come through for a single component even when Prime benefits were assumed.
Increased annual fee, state sales tax, proliferation of marketplace garbage, workplace stories on HN, gamed product review system...a part of me wants to see Amazon win a few shots just to keep the competition in check, but dropping Prime after 10 years of patronage wasn't particularly difficult and I haven't regretted the decision since.
But more importantly, without 1 day delivery on tap it makes you think harder whether you really need to waste your money on yet more junk or if you can live without it. Unsurprisingly, you don't really need it most of the time.
And if you're not buying from Amazon, you're not complicit in the company abysmal treatment of its employees, or total disregard for intellectual property laws (fake items are everywhere on amazon)
At a big box, I don't have to wait for the delivery company to fail me, I'm not lining amazon's pockets, and if it's cheaper on Amazon most stores will price match anyway.
Which means if you reserve a new release, be prepared to wait. Even with 17 copies of a particular newish book, the wait for it from my local library system is in excess of eight months.
Wait eight months, or drop $11.95 at Amazon? Easy choice.
Except we wait 2 or 3 years for the damn thing to be written; a little delayed gratification until your hold comes up is such a minor, first-world problem.
Popular public libraries are most definitely better than the alternative. They can justify better funding and bigger budgets, improve physical facilities and move into new service areas.
Yes, Amazon has ethical/moral/UX/etc... issues. Be critical of its actual sins, not imagined ones.
By not being required to pay taxes for a very long time, causing all of your local retail possibilities without that state benefit to close.
I'm not talking about places where bookstores, electronics stores, etc... closed because of Amazon. I'm talking about the vast majority of places that never had bookstores, electronics stores, etc... in the first place.
I go there for my used books now and rarely can't find what I need.
The Aliexpress deals are likely over, since they were being subsidized by the US postal service who have pulled out of the treaty that encouraged it.
https://hackaday.com/2018/10/17/us-announces-withdraw-from-p...
If you're a politician and you want to keep those private insurance lobbying checks coming, all you have to do is tell your constituents that public healthcare would take away freedoms.
Repeat for public transit, reducing the defense budget ("they're fighting for our freedom" is an extremely common refrain), offering even basic human care for migrants, etc, ad nauseum, etc.
That's modern slavery for you: you give away your most precious, limited resource - your time. In return you get the illusion of wealth, in the form of money, only you have to spend it all just to stay afloat until the next payday.
"Sharing benefits through Amazon Household requires both adults to link their accounts in an Amazon Household and agree to share payment methods. Each adult keeps their personal account while sharing those benefits at no additional cost."[1]
It's limited to two adults (plus teens), so not a solution for all cases.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...
Just because OP themselves cannot fathom checking other (more appropriate) vendors first or doing independent product research, does not mean that it's impossible. If I had family members addicted to Amazon in this way, I'd be worried about them being blatantly ripped off from Amazon's dark patterns, or being harmed from co-mingled counterfeit goods. Somehow Amazon has built a business around people just accepting these pitfalls, and I still can't understand how. That sunk cost of "Prime" must be a hell of a drug.
Granted, I was in Portugal at the time which doesn't get great shipping apparently? Not that I was going to order anything, I had trouble enough getting my luggage back as it was!
That being said, I'd been pretty turned off by the articles about their workforce at their warehouses, and also this recent development with their headquarters initiative.
In my opinion NYC should have come up with a package to present to Amazon and then turned around and used it to benefit small businesses. Why we're throwing money at one of the world's largest corporations by revenue is quite beyond me, especially for a city like NYC which could use that money for their subways and already is incredibly vibrant economically.
I enjoy going to the stores, chatting with people, touching products, and trying things on. It's mild exercise, it's social, it's something to do, so for me it's pleasant, and I'll pay a premium if I have to because of that.
The one thing I do like about Amazon is that I've heard it's more energy efficient for products to be sold that way as opposed to in individual brick and mortar stores which need heat and electricity.
Finally, I really enjoy putzing around on AWS and feel less conflicted about using that (especially since my personal use is all on the free tier) since their engineers and tech teams are well compensated (although I've heard and have no idea if this is true, worked hard).
All that being said, if I was in any of the articles situations or lived in a less dense locale shopping wise, I'm sure I'd use it or similar services. It is certainly true that there is a ton better variety online for a lot of items.
I also started shopping books at Barnes & Noble primarily, although it is less convenient, I feel better to keep supporting alternatives.
At Amazon, I might get a co-mingled knock-off. But at least I'll get something, and not six weeks of shipping excuses followed by radio silence.
I can do this because unlike Amazon eBay doesn't pressure me with incentives and sunk costs to only shop there.
eBay's rating system for buyers/sellers
What sorcery is this?
How would you know? Any company of any size is going to use AWS directly or indirectly. The HR people won't know that some contracted vendor uses it for their API.