Hacker News Reader

Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

I have a Prime account, but I'll soon be cancelling it I feel. The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added.

Prime video is quite unique, but I'm very much past them putting pre-roll ads on the content I want to watch. It's universally an advert for their own craptastic, homegrown version of an existing well-defined format. If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start from Season 1, not from their knockoff version of it.

Amazon Music would be another great service I'd be willing to pay for, but all the available clients are so buggy it's an impediment to me using it.

View on HN

I dropped Prime for the first time in many years just last month. 2-day shipping is pretty much standard now at Target and Walmart, there was nothing terribly compelling on Prime Video, and I never even used any other services. Why again have I been shoveling ~$12/month in perpetuity to Amazon?

Prime shipping for me is now a week or two! It's not uncommon to wait 12 days for an order that's Prime from the Amazon warehouse to arrive at my house, and I don't exactly live in a super rural area. It's ludicrous IMHO to pay for prime now when we barely use prime video and super saver shipping wouldn't take much longer than prime.

Whoa, that's unbelievably long if you're a Prime subscriber. I pretty much assumed 2-day shipping was standard for every single Prime member in the US. Do you live elsewhere? And how urban is your area if I may ask (approx. population)?

Yes, I live in Eastern Idaho, area population about 200,000 people.

> The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added.

eBay sellers also tend to ship promptly, which used to be one of the main reasons to use Amazon/Prime. The latter's shipping speeds have increased by orders of magnitude in some parts of the country over the last couple years. It's not uncommon these days for a Prime order to sit in limbo for 3-4 days before being shipped, while the same order to the same city shipped instantly in 2018.

Prime delivery was a once a week thing in a remote town in Utah several years ago. On the other hand, my parents live in a rural area in the midwest and frequently get packages next day or two day. I'm guessing the difference is down to distribution centers.

Interestingly, I haven't had Prime since maybe 2016, and my experience was that Amazon is only capable of two day shipping, but if you don't pay for it, the item just sits on the shelf for three days, then ships.

> If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start from Season 1, not from their knockoff version of it.

Actually you cannot. Only Law & Order SVU is available on streaming. The original series and the other spinoffs only have the most recent season available online.

Actually, you CAN. It's all over bittorrent, therefore it is available online. Which brings us back to the title question, how many of you are open to piracy again?

yeah, I canceled Prime a few years ago. I reasoned that if I needed the product fast then it would be faster to physically go to target or walmart. And if I didn't need it fast, then the default shipping would be fine.

Their add-on services all felt lackluster too. Most of the prime video content is not well-rated.

It doesn't matter as much to me now but when I was traveling a lot some determinism in the shipping time was worth a lot to me. And even now, there's a category of things that I don't need right now but I want soonish and probably won't get to the store for a day or two anyway.

It's still a decent value to me overall--especially throwing in video.

What do they charge in the US? It costs me 3 EUR / month here in NL which is worth it. Amazon regularly either undercut or price-match other stores and for 36 EUR a year I get enough entertainment from Prime alone.

Netflix is 15 EUR / month and I honestly just keep it for the kids + my wife..

In the US Prime Video is $9/month, full Prime is $15/month. I think it's half price for students.

Student discount is now time limited iirc!

I just cancelled Prime for the same reason.

If you can wait, most Amazon products are on Aliexpress for much less, sometimes 50% less, up to 90% for electronic components.

I return a lot of products bought from Amazon. How is the return policy and cost with Aliexpress?

It sucks.

In my case I got a dysfunctional cell phone LCD assembly and seller said I could either ship it back (would cost like half the cost I bought it for) or they would refund me 40% of what I paid. The system to contact the seller has technical measures to prevent you from conversing in Chinese even though that is obviously what the seller is most comfortable with.

I think it's fine if you're either buying nonelectronics or buying in bulk but I will not use it for purchasing electronics again.

When do you return Amazon stuff? I have returned online clothes purchases from other stores but I'm pretty sure I've never returned anything I bought from Amazon. Basically because I buy "things" from it, and I end up doing so much research before buying that I'm always happy with the purchase.

I buy and research multiple products in parallel. You can’t beat my system. Jeff Bezos hates me.

Jeff Bezos loves you, because he makes money each way. It's the third party sellers who are footing the bills.

You make think that you're sticking it to the man, but you're actually screwing the little guys.

Never tried it; I don't think it works too well. Amazon is probably better in that case.

Far be it from me to shill for Amazon, but I find that I can't go without 2-day shipping.

Ebay is fine I guess, but I'd lose my mind if I had to wait a week for something. That makes the $140/yr worth it to me.

Prime is still useful outside of the US. EBay shipping feels in that case can be exorbitant.

You can turn off the previews in account settings. Still annoying though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com