Bye, Prime
tbray.org
tbray.org
1) My experience of shopping in either our small town or the major city nearby is that finding anything remotely out of the mainstream (eg hobby supplies, food ingredients that aren’t routine for a supermarket) is really difficult (like, hours can be spent scouring individual shops) and simple items are often priced much higher than the online cost (especially tech).
2) Failing the local option, shopping via third-party websites is often really frustrating, due to a combination of bad UX, individual signups per website, and high postage costs (€4.99 seems to be the minimum for even very small items, and €7+ is not at all uncommon).
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If you want to challenge Amazon, we need innovation:
- if local shops all used a single stock-taking system that also allowed live location-aware item searches, it would be a game changer. Imagine searching for an item you want and knowing, for sure, there was one in stock in a local shop, and the price. (My belief is many people would love to shop locally if it wasn’t such a PITA.)
- if online shops would collaborate on a system allowing a single user account to be used to buy items across multiple stores, it would massively lessen the friction. If they could also figure out a way to compete somewhat on the cost of shipping, that would also help.
It will point you to the most affordable site for your product.
The "problem" I have is that they will pretend to compete on price with what Amazon has to offer, except that they will then slap you with a shipping fee which bumps the price up by 10%, compared to the Amazon offer that will ship for free (above a certain price).
And that I find simply disingenuous.
This is basically how Allegro and Erli work in Poland. It's a platform that arranges the catalogue, shipping, payment, returns, etc. but (most[1]) items are listed and sold by individual companies that manage their own stocks in their own storage. Of course they take a cut for every purchase. For consumers there's a yearly sub that's priced just like Prime and makes most shipping free.
[1] Allegro has their own stocks that are promoted in a bit trust-y way but I digress.
They kind of made something similar in France with a network of independent libraries. It's still a far cry from the Amazon UX because for the ~6 physical books a year I buy, there's an issue half of the times. Like, it says on the portal that it's in stock in this library, you pay for it, then the next morning they send you an email telling you that they don't have it in stock actually. So you either have to wait at least a week for them to get it in stock, or you have to cancel the order and go in another library where it's actually in stock, after they checked by directly contacting them by phone...
> - If they could also figure out a way to compete somewhat on the cost of shipping, that would also help.
Despite their huge bargain power, Amazon still prefered to create their own shipping service, so there's no way smaller companies could pressure enough on existing shipping services to reduce shipping cost
But they use some sort of inventory system which hooks into international publishers' stocks, and when you want to order a book from some of those, the system will cheerfully sell it to you, only for the bookshop to contact you a few days later that that book cannot be ordered.
I've had a few cases where the only way to get a certain book was through Amazon (e.g., the mass market paperback editions of Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive).
With Amazon however, they probably have an ironclad contract, which they never break. If it says it will be delivered on a specific day, it will also happen
In The Netherlands and we have a healthy ecosystem of larger retailers (Bol.com, CoolBlue, etc.) and smaller local shops. Everyone uses the same frictionless payment system (iDEAL) that just works with your bank account and is supported by all Dutch banks. Most companies have next-day delivery, many companies do so if you order between something before 22:00 or 23:00. Bol.com has same-day delivery for some products when you order before 12:00. Some shipping companies also deliver on Sundays, etc.
The conservativeness in Germany really jumped out at me: people still prefer paying cash (can't remember the last time I used cash outside Germany), lot of people hated internet banking (not sure if it's still the case now, but certainly was in 2018 when we left Germany), there are no store openings on Sundays, etc.
(Disclaimer: I lived in Germany)
And another thing is credit cards in restaurants. We just had a big dinner with friends, were the last ones to leave from the restaurant. They advertised credit card payment, but for some reason the machine was not working when we needed to pay and we went to the ATM to get a pile of cash. It's not the first time this happens and not the first restaurant either. I've never had issues paying with card in any other country.
In 2027 all cash purchases above 10k€ are forbidden due to EU law and purchases above 3k€ have to be documented.
And no store openings on sunday is one person's consoomerist nuisance and another's day off. And before you say, they'll get another day off, consider the value of having synchronized leisure time.
I quit using Amazon a few years ago. For almost all goods, there are other German online retailers that are as convenient, for the same or better prices. Having to sign up for them is a small price to pay for not having to deal with Amazon's "search" function. Plus, many stores implement account-less Paypal/GPay/APay checkout.
The only thing I use Amazon for these days, is weird Alibaba imports that are not available from reputable stores. But even there, Ebay or Alibaba itself are usually more convenient.
In a chat.
In many languages if needed.
My experience is totally opposite. I use Idealo to compare different prices for any purchase over €50, and 90% of the time it shows that Amazon has the best offer.
The seller may not always be Amazon, often it's someone else, but if something goes wrong I'd rather deal with Amazon's 24/7 support than a small shop. Amazon's support has helped me resolve my issues in just 5 minutes or less multiple times, and with small shops — I encountered a few of them that only reply to one email per week, they simply aren't competitive.
It's odd to argue that, despite all of this relative challenges being pretty objective, you find this approach "as convenient".
(And I never said Amazon is cheaper, although as noted elsewhere, it's often very competitive.)
While it might be a stretch trying to bring local shop inventories online it might be a first step to at least make their stocked brands / product categories accessible. That's much less data to manage and would already provide a first way to narrow down the options if you need something quick. Google could just ask for that data in its Maps Business Profile metadata, for example.
Shop Pay provides a common set of login, payment and package tracking services for stores on the Shopify platform. This is great for small stores that don't want to implement Apple or Google Pay.
I have been buying direct from the manufacturer or from small shops since I cancelled my Prime subscription in 2023 [0]. Many of them use Shopify with Shop Pay enabled. It's great. The only negative about it (which I knew going in) was that next-day shipping is (rightfully) much more expensive, if they offer it at all.
As far as postage goes, you're out of luck there. Amazon runs their own logistics and shipping network. They can afford to offer next day delivery at deep discounts no-one else can match.
[0] I cancelled it but apparently still have it, and going to the Prime management page throws an error.
(You can also stream through their site and app, and I think they have all sorts of social features... but you can ignore the hell out of it and just get tunes for money. Really one of my top 5 sites, Bandcamp, though I wish they were still independent.)
Be warned though, the artist/label can decide for whatever reason to take the music they have listed on the website down, which includes what you’ve purchased, so while it’s rare, it’s possible for things to just disappear, so make sure you download before then.
The tool I use is: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader
I just create a tmux session on my proxmox homeserver and copy+paste a command whenever I make purchases. I can paste the command I use tomorrow if anyone likes.
I recently learned that foobar2000 can load the zip files of songs directly without having to unpack them, which is nice.
- think it's a subscription (q: is it monthly or yearly subscription?),
- would prefer it be a subscription (q: I don't want to pay a full price of I don't know if I will use it for life),
- or sometimes demand a subscription so that they can try the full functionality out without paying the full price
And then there are those who pay one-time and are angry they don't get all newest upgrades for free.
My next product will be a subscription for sure.
I've heard from a friend that some of his customers complain that his one off cost is more than the monthly subscription of one of his competitors. If you aren't serving consumers you might be surprised by how financially illiterate the average person is.
If I decide I don't want the subscription with updates I can just cancel and fall back to that version.
Otherwise the subscription ensures that there will be a new version coming along and that the users are the customers.
It feels fair to me as a customer.
Basically, what you mentioned—' I don't want to pay a full price' and 'try the full functionality out without paying the full price'—are the primary drivers behind customers' preference for a subscription-based model.
Or a third driver, somewhat related to the first two: the customer is simply priced out of the product in question as a one-time payment.
Part of the reason Adobe makes the killing it does off CC is because it's $55/mo and not $500-$600 or whatever. It doesn't require a consumer to have a chunk of money in their bank account all at once just sitting around, which especially in the case of students and art folks is money they may not have.
I don't mind buying major updates for the software I'm using. The issue with software subs is that the moment I stop it, I don't have access to it anymore. But that's not what I want. I want to pay once and be able to use it as long as I want. It should not be different from buying... a bicycle for example. But that's me, as you said.
But a bicycle is a physical object that can't be replicated at no cost. Digital representations of songs can.
A world where music can be purchased once is a world where piracy obliterates that business model. Piracy will unfortunately always be easier than buying the song. You lose the song? You pirate it again. If you buy it, you need log in to some website and download the song. If you lose the creds, you need to reset, log in and download the song. Lost your email account? Now you need to liase with a human on the customer service team. With piracy, the answer is always "just download the file.".
Streaming simplifies this and adds additional functionality that makes it much easier than piracy by allowing you to search for songs easily, suggesting songs to you, letting you make playlists and adding the social element.
Mainstream movies and music are fast food. Made fast and consumed fast. They have a very short shelf life and new songs/movies come out every 2 weeks or so which is an order of magnitude faster than games. Games take longer to play and many have a high replayability factor so you can justify a one off pay.
Essentially you are buying hundreds of hours of experience vs 2 hours of experience watching a movie or 3 minutes listening to a song. And unlike games, movies and songs are literally the same no matter how many times you play them. If you look at games that can be completed in a few hours by casual players, you will see that the pay is extremely low.
It's more like the market pushed and pushed and pushed until it was close to the only option available and consumers passively forgot that it could and used to be different.
Now everybody is on the quick-buck wagon, and will come with an entire collection of convoluted reasons why it is perfectly normal to have a subscription-based model for everything, especially software.
a) let's you stream music on any device that is desktop/mobile/watch or has a browser. It's frictionless and uptime is as good as it gets based on my more than a decade of continuous use (over 8 hours daily)
b) lets you search for artists directly (search artist, song, lyrics) or indirectly (similarity engine by way of radio or automatic playlist generation)
c) let's you share your listening habits with friends
d) let's you make friend playlists
The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. None of these services have target those 3 areas anywhere near as good as Spotify has.
While I could see myself buying albums from bandcamp, the lack of advanced music search or recommendation functionality as well as the inability to make playlists is just a deal breaker for me. The days where music listening was just playing an album on a loop are long gone just like the days where listening to music meant exclusively live music. In 2025, music discovery and music tagging (as in making playlists) is part of the music listening experience and any service that does not let me make that is sadly not going to make it.
In addition to this, I feel that due to the way music is experience today but many young people means that music discovery and social sharing needs to be at heart of any service that aims for mass appeal. If your business model does not address social sharing or discovery as part of its listening experience, it is unlikely to succeed in my opinion.
People listening to albums on repeat, people buying single albums, people not sharing their listening habits directly (i.e not by just mentioning the artist/song/album) are the minority. The future of popular music at least short terms leans heavily towards single songs over albums, streaming over downloads, subscription over purchases, social listening over individual listening.
It's like people complaining of the inability of popular artits to project their voices without using amplifiers. Artists complaining about electrical instruments over acoustic ones. The wave is here to stay, you can ride with it or end up at the bottom of it never to be seen again.
For regular people, the #1 reason they can't use Bandcamp is it doesn't have mainstream artists on the Big 3 Record Labels like Universal+Sony+Warner. In contrast, Bandcamp is deliberately designed for the smaller independent artists to upload and sell their music.
If people want to listen to today's Taylor Swift or yesterday's Beatles and Led Zeppelin, that music is only (legally) found on the major subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. A very small hardcore subset buy Big Label artists music from HDTracks but that site doesn't have the selection of Spotify and it's a lot more expensive.
I would be surprised if most non-techy folks know about bandcamp. Especially, the older generation who are often not very computer literate and will default to the mainstream option (windows for os, gmail/outlook for email, spotify/radio for music, google for search engine, etc).
Young tech-savvy audiophiles, yes. But everyone else, most likely not.
SoundCloud was more popular with younger folks. "SoundCloud rapper".
A small demographic intersection likely made of old millenials and young Gen Xers. Music leaning heavily towards alternative, and away from edm and mainstream.
All sales go straight to the artists today. Bandcamp takes no cut.
The problem of subscription world is that it fucks you over in various ways, makes you spend more and more money and attention on stuff you don't really need or need in a much lower scale than your are forced to consume. It's a much deeper and bigger problem than just the social aspect or the aspect of convenience.
And you simply don't own anything. It's like renting an apartment/house for life instead of buying one. And your rent service can be shut down at any time. I'm just not ok with this. It may be fine with young people, but the moment you start taking life seriously it becomes obvious how wrong everything is.
Regarding your "you simply don't own anything". Leaving aside the financial aspect of it, this is a purely philosophical matter. You could say that owning and streaming are means to experiences. You have more individual control over one than the other. But at the end of the day, for most people, not being able to have a say on whether they can access a given movie or song is not a big deal. Mass media is mostly a commodity. And especifically a commodity they are happy to pay someone else to manage. Sure, a pop artist might remove her music but there is thousands of other pop artists there. You can replace pop for any niche style you might fancy. If you are one of those who finds a specific media artifact not a commodity, then you have the ability to acquire and preserve a copy of that artifact. That carries its own problems of course (loss, corruption, access issues, reliability, etc).
In the age of internet, if Spotify collapses, a competitor will fill the market with pretty much the same functionality. Makes no difference to you. A company removing a song or a movie from your service means you have to search for it in the bay of the pirates instead of your favourite streaming service. Either way, you will have access to it.
When folks talk about owning your email server or having your own customised OS. Most people are not interest in the benefits that the ownership entails and are happy to pay directly or indirectly for a third party to manage it for them. The things people care about are the same as 2000 years ago. Their friends, their family, their love life, their work. The consequences of ownership of media ranks very low in the vast majority of the population.
As for the rest. The issue I see with the subscription approach is exactly what you described. People start getting used to it in other domains other than media consumption. Like cars for example, car brands introducing subs to enable your seat warmers or whatever that technically is already there, but for you to use it you have to subscribe. It's a matter of time this starts spread everywhere. And when it does there will be people who will come up with a number or reasons why it is actually fine and everybody should just go with it.
You're repeating this benefit -- and it is an undeniable benefit -- but the other issue you're not giving any weight is that other people have other priorities that can be more important than ownership -- such as a finite amount of money to spend.
Of course, ownership is wonderful -- IF it doesn't cost more, and IF it doesn't cause more inconvenience, an IF it's even available. In other words, the concept of ownership can't be considered only in isolation.
I know all about ownership as I have over 2000 CDs that I legally purchased and ripped losslessly to FLAC files using custom scripts. Would I recommend "music ownership" like that to most others who have a casual relationship with music? No. The Spotify subscription with access to 100 million songs is much cheaper and a better financial deal for most regular listeners than buying individual CDs or individual songs at 99 cents at a time from the iTunes store.
Does my 4TB harddrive of full of *.flac files that I own let me "do whatever I want with it?!?" Well... it's not a simple "yes". E.g. My friend's music streaming subscription lets her instantly load up any of the 100 million songs to listen at the gym. On the other hand, my iPhone doesn't have access to my entire music library because it only has 256 GB of space. I guess I could somewhat duplicate the "streaming" aspect if I go through the trouble to set up some Plex media server with a vpn TailScale or Cloudflare Tunnel back to my home computer. But now I get into the realm of "my music CDs owning me" instead of the other way around. I have paid over $20k in music CDs ownership to have less convenience and usability. So others paying $11.99/month for more music than my personal library with more convenience to play on any device doesn't seem so ridiculous.
But can't Spotify raise the subscription from $11.99 to $13.99 on a whim? And can't they remove Taylor Swift from their catalog without warning because of a licensing dispute?!? All true. But those negatives are outweighed by the positives of cheaper price, more music, more convenience.
Ownership is not the be-all-end-all. It's only one aspect of experiencing music.
I have conflicted feelings about all the money I spent on owning CDs and vinyl records. But then again, I didn't consider other options as I did all that ripping 20 years ago before the existence of Spotify and mobile phones.
Btw, I actually set up a server using Raspberry Pi with 1TB of storage for my music collection to be able to access it from anywhere. Funny that you mentioned exactly this case.
As for the recommendations, occasionally I listen to the bandcamp feed. Not even sure if it's based on my followings. And before that I was using one specific forum to learn about new stuff. It's not there anymore. And I don't like the idea of algorithms telling me what to listen to.
If you were a writer, then books might be different to you. Or if you were a record collector, records might be a different.
Yes, it becomes problematic when people apply that attitude everywhere but sadly it is likely where we are heading with all the consequences it will carry. Most people are addicted to convenience and will sell everything to attain it
I actually think the incentives are aligned better with a subscription than with a one-off sale. With a subscription, the companies have to work to keep you a member. (Having said that, I still prefer open source software or commodity services since I don't like being rugpulled.)
Any other delivery service just causes way more stress.
Feel like this article is downplaying which was the real reason because it's definitely only one of the three things listed and we can rule out ethics if you happily used it for decades you didn't suddenly start caring about that out of nowhere.
I found when we lived in a flat it was a total write off, things never went in the right place.
It's hard to tell who's responsible though, it's like shell corporations all the way down. I remember talking to one delivery driver and even though the van said their name, they were a private contractor and the van wasn't owned by the company.
The retail site is drowning under a wave of off brand no name muck. Even buying a brand name (say, Oxo kitchen tools) gives one no comfort that what arrives wont be a knockoff.
The purchase experience, once world beating, remains excellent, but not especially different from other stores. That leaves delivery, which with Prime is still a differentiator, but then again when it asks me to defer shipping for a few days to save boxes, which I do, I start to wonder why I'm paying for fast shipping only to pick slower shipping when I check out.
As for the TV, it has an uncanny valley feel for me. The documentaries, for example, seem like the kind of low grade filler you get on inflight TV. A few talking heads, voiceovers over still images, etc.
if they have a name, it is ALLUPPERCASENONSENSE and the images look exactly like UPPERCASEOTHERGUY but 1 cent cheaper.
I really hate what amazon is doing to brands. Brands can be abused, but sometimes they actually stand for engineering, design, reliability and trust.
I've had Prime every now and then to watch some shows. I've now stopped using it entirely because I don't want to support the company. Unsubscribing within the Prime Video app was a horrendous experience where I got stuck in a loop. I've also been re-subscribed without my knowledge and the only reason I can find to explain this is that opening the app on my TV and clicking "ok" once re-subscribes me. I have since removed my payment methods from the site.
As an e-commerce platform, it's been going downhill for a long time. Now it just feel like a more expensive Temu/Wish.com. Full of dark patterns, low quality items, and cheating 3rd party resellers.
I also tested it. The cable was faulty and wasn't the HDMI standard we ordered.
Both are pretty good indicators that it's a counterfeit product.
Amazon co-mingles all their goods. So the likelihood of counterfeits, even in amazon basics products, is high.
For example, an RTX 3050 probably had thing margins when it came out (or some equivalent GPU with low margins).
But! You can still counterfeit it and put in a GT 430 and have the same shroud - and people do just that.
Amazon HDMI cables are cheap, I’m sure, but an older spec HDMI cable with no HDCP is probably even cheaper. And you can’t really tell the difference… until everything is streaming at 480p.
I kind of wonder if they suck, because some physical amazonbasics things I've bought were actually not great.
I dumped prime when they added adverts.
Comments mention The Expanse, and they're right. I'm currently watching it, on Blueray. It's not the price I find objectional, it's the adverts.
(I actually went to resubscribe to prime when Clarksons Farm season 3 came out, but there was no option to subscribe on my tv without adverts)
And of course a hierarchy of piracy that Louis Rossman came up with
I pay for the hardware to self host. Even pay for a private torrent tracker and usenet.
It's not the cost. It's the horrible experience and changing of media. I want a copy of that media that won't change.
I'd love to know more!
I have a Beelink n100 device running linux. These lil beelinks are great devices. They can be picked up for ~$140. Then i just keep a look out for cheap 10+tb datacenter drives. For example, I snagged a 12tb one for $75 the other day. Toss those into my raid array.
I self host plex, web servers, samba, etc. Right now I have ~100tb of space. I even self-host a great google images alternative called Immich.
I use a private torrent tracker and usenet to acquire most of my media. I do those because they're just so easy. It's pretty rare I can't find something within a minute or two.
If there is a legal way of obtaining a real copy of media I'll usually do that. Most of my music library is legal, purchased directly from artists, bandcamp or soundcloud.
I also have 2gb fiber internet which is helpful in all this. I wouldn't be able to get away with some of the stuff without the upload bandwidth of fiber.
There's also the issue of older stuff not always being available on streaming sites - IIRC 28 Days Later wasn't available until the new film made it popular enough). Similarly, the BBC Oppenheimer series didn't get put onto their iPlayer service until 2023.
In fact nowadays the biggest competitor to Amazon is Aliexpress. Extremely reliable, free shipping for orders > €10, and prices often 50-60% less than on Amazon, for exactly the same products. The only drawbacks are 1/ shipping takes 10 days and 2/ returns are complicated. But for less than half the price it's worth it.
The main problem with Prime is that Amazon tries to justify its super high cost with Amazon Video, which nobody asked for, and nobody wants because of the incredibly low quality of the catalog.
I'm not sure I even understand the strategy. Is it working? Do people actually like Amazon Video Prime and watch it, rather than the myriad other streaming services they're probably also subscribed to? Or is it still an experiment for Amazon?
But then they put ads during the episodes.
Back to torrenting then.
It depends on what you buy but in general, the manufacturer's website will often cost more than Amazon. E.g. In the USA, Apple Watch 46mm GPS+Cellular is currently $429 on amazon.com but $529 on apple.com
Also, manufacturers are often contractually required to have higher prices (i.e. MSRP) than the retailers that sell their products. So getting a discount from Amazon is more realistic than the manufacturer's official website. Another example is buying TurboTax software on Amazon ($55.99) costs less than Intuit's website ($80)
>Third, Amazon’s prices aren’t notably cheaper than the alternatives.
Again, it depends on what types of products you're buying. For things like USB cables and rechargeable batteries, Amazon costs less than Best Buy. Buying a Fiskars garden shears cost $10 less at Amazon than Home Depot and Lowe's. What's happening is that those local stores are using price discrimination to upcharge the impatient walk-in customers who need "instant gratification". Home Depot charges $5 more for a toilet plumbing repair kit than Amazon because they know customers are likely making an emergency purchase. Yes, the local stores sometimes have a "match Amazon's price" policy but it's a hassle to hunt down a manager and get an override of the price at the cash register.
Where Amazon often costs more (often 2x because of shipping) is commodity household items like toothpaste and Windex glass cleaner. A local Walmart will have cheaper prices on those.
Lastly, I recently went through my 200+ accounts in my password manager to migrate my email address and the lesson I've learned is to avoid creating new accounts at more ecommerce websites. It's not worth it. Maybe I'll make an exception for Shopify in the future because a lot of sellers have consolidated there but I'm going to hold out as long as I can.
I really like having my orders history in one website instead of scattered across Newegg, ZipZoomFly, BHPhotoVideo, etc, etc.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Cellular-Smartwatch-Aluminium-A...
This pretty much, I do not buy from Amazon because of the experience but because of price. Like you said very often Amazon is significantly cheaper than local stores here in Europe, like I was buying woodworking tools and I could get same tool, same manufacturer warranty for 20 percent less. Apple devices cost even more than official Apple store in my country because Apple does have a first party store, meanwhile Amazon has below MSRP prices always. The only downside is that they dont have customization options.
Compare that to Amazon that will easily refund a purchase made 18 months earlier no questions asked.
I almost never buy from Amazon, but there's no denying I feel much safer ordering there than elsewhere. My last expensive non-Amazon purchase got me an opened box (either a return or plain used item). Even PayPal didn't care to do anything about it.
Law -> 14-day return policy, you pay for shipping, the shop will make it as difficult as possible to let you return the item (even if it's illegal), they don't have to take the item if you opened it (which makes no sense - how do I know I don't want it if I can't try it?)
Hell even Apple has been fined by Italy for not properly disclosing that customers have 2 years warranty from the seller. I even had to tell customer service about it just last year, who acted like they didn't even know.
Amazon has their chat, which replies immediately and you get your money back pretty easily.
That's just the usual experience of German customer service. The consumer is expected to quote the relevant paragraphs to explain customer service why they need to cover cost of return shipping or whatever and they will fight you every step of the way (or try to ignore you). It seems to be a cultural thing.
Edit: and what makes this so annoying is that I really want to be a nice guy for the customer service, not an asshole. And when they treat me like this, I turn into a monster and I'm not happy about it.
Have you considered not using Amazon, and giving up those slight conveniences, to not keep supporting such an unethical company?
It also depends on the items you're buying. Household goods, like laundry detergent and deodorant, are usually more expensive on Amazon, sometimes by a wide margin.
Really I want some user-representing local-first software that searches many stores with one query. Of course these sites fight tooth and nail to make that comparison harder (the main point of captchas). Still maybe we'll get there as the surveillance industry enters its screw-turning extractive phase.
As for (sub)Prime, it still boggles my mind that people pay for it as an ongoing subscription. I activate the free trials when they're conducive to some other goal (eg fixing/making something that's going to require a bunch of iterated rounds of parts). Between my account, my partner's account, and my "business" account (more price discrimination, hooray!), I'd say there's a free trial more than half the time. And the once or twice a year I need something quick and don't have a trial, there's always the $2 for one week option.
(Also, I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere in this thread - one of the "economic blackout" flyers has March 7-14 as Amazon-specific boycott. I don't think this kind of thing is going to move the needle on overall revenue any time soon, but rather it's about sending some kind of message to the neofascists and those who readily support them. Frankly we need many more of these days. And if that seems inconvenient, look at it as practice for when we're back to full blown Trumponomics with empty store shelves everywhere)
I don't think I order enough stuff via them to make the "free" deliveries really valuable to me (it varies from month to month). But I like the convenience of having just one place to order stuff.
Amazon Prime's video offerings are limited but they have a few nice things. I liked the Bosch series. I didn't mind the rings of power thing though it was a bit long winded. I guess if you are a Tolkien nerd, it might be a bit offensive to deal with all the creative liberties the plot takes.
They also have some alright movies; including some recent block busters. And there are some older classics.
The UI and search are a bit garbage indeed. They do a poor job of exposing the content they actually have. Unless you actively hunt for stuff, you could be missing out.
Also, I should mention I watch Amazon Prime via Firefox, which is really effective at blocking the ads they are now injecting. If they "break" that, I'd be more likely to cancel.
Our system here has worked for many years and I much prefer it over people leaving packages at my doorstep.
(Incidentally, I think that line should let me skip the hiring screen Leadership Principles made-up anecdote STAR recital. :)
I make a lot of personal decisions on-principle, but Amazon is too essential for me to boycott it.
I also tolerate a number of practical non-customer-focused qualities of the company, of late, because of remaining utility.
Overall, I like that I have use of Amazon, even though in some ways it's not as good as it used to be, and there are obvious ways it could improve customer focus but doesn't seem like it's going to.
Though, I did cancel Amazon Prime awhile ago. The final nudge was that Prime Video seemed to be getting conspicuously customer-hostile, though I'd come to consider Prime Video to be part of the value for which I was paying. Also, Amazon no longer seemed to be taking 2-day shipping as seriously as they used to.
A side effect of canceling Prime is that I recently stopped using my Amazon credit card. Since I'm no longer getting 5% rewards at Amazon and WFM, my non-Amazon 2% cash rewards card is close enough. The last nudge was Chase switching to eight-unhyphenated-digits SMS 2FA, every time I checked my statement. It was a tiniest little customer-unfocused thing, but it annoyed me enough in the moment, on top of ongoing mixed feelings, to energize me to go to the trouble of switching.
Another side effect of canceling Prime is that I've been buying a lot less there, because I wait for $35+ orders, to get the free slow shipping, with the effect that I often end up buying the items elsewhere or not at all.
(Incidentally, Walmart.com had a chance tonight, to get more of my business, since I hate-hate-hate that Amazon commingles product with questionable third-party sellers. But Walmart.com's product search was was no longer filtering by "Retailer" like it used to, which led me to Web search and learn of a potential problem with their supply chain integrity in general, and I really didn't want to be spraying third-party-sourced counterfeit/returned/shoplifted Flonase up my nose.)
Or just too convenient?
You survived at some point without being dependent on Amazon. You really couldn't do so again?
I'm with you on the value of critical thinking skills.
But, before using this thread to call out anyone for a perceived lack of critical thinking skills, maybe first make a compelling argument that it's worth their time to even determine whether Amazon is "essential" rather than "convenient".
I suspect that you arrived to the thread with a belief that there's something like a moral imperative not to use Amazon. But you didn't articulate an argument for that, and it wasn't otherwise established in this context. So maybe that's why I think your approach in this thread was a bit aggressive or rough. Which is disincentive to invest critical thinking energy into the thread.
Was it not you above that said you make a lot of decisions on principal, but find Amazon too efficient to not use?
Is that not implying you see moral issues, but decide to use them anyway? If so, is it not fair to then question to what extent by efficient you really mean convenient?
I'm not interested in trying to argue a moral imperative here. People that don't see an issue are not going to be convinced by my arguments that I definitely would not be investing a lot of time in.
I am interested in questioning peoples given reasoning as to why they keep using it when they see a moral issue with doing so, though.
> So maybe that's why I think your approach in this thread was a bit aggressive or rough.
I don't think I was aggressive or rough on any individual. My above comment you quote is against an unnamed abstract group, and I wasn't rude or aggressive in my reply to anyone else by my view - I just asked a simple question.
No.
Edit: Right, done being discouraged from feeling like an equal participant on a gamified karma platform run by startup jerks.
Sure I don’t get it in 1 day. The common carriers are a hit or miss (FedEx straight up doesn’t deliver on weekends).
Sure, I may pay more. I’ll tank the cost if it’s a quality item.
Sure, shipping isn’t “free” and return shipping may have a cost. But as I have learned, free shipping and returns is usually built into the cost when most people may not use it.
I was also saving money for a family trip to the US in the coming years, but my kids now want to go to Australia instead as they hate everything about the current administration’s rhetoric.
It's not about 1-day delivery for me, or anything else. And £9.90 will not make any effect on my month expenses, not as much as the energy impact on my household, which doubled in one year.
- Good Omens
- The Expanse
Not for everyone, but I enjoyed:
- The Wheel of Time
- The Peripheral
- On Call
- The Boys
- The Rig
- Gen V
- The Power
- Night Sky
- Paper Girls
- The Rings of Power
- Bosch
- Outer Range
- The English
Apparently, they now own James Bond, as well: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2025/02/21/troubletown-u-...
My most important criteria is: What does my social circle use.
About once a year I try to cancel all subscriptions, and then resubscribe to those that I miss.
Yes, the search result page is truly horrendous. It shows many results, while most of them are not actually available.
Stuff isn't cheaper on Amazon, shipping is expensive as hell, delivery times is in weeks, not day, and the risk of getting scammed is up with about something like 800%. Much easier to just order from a local store, pay a little extra for the item, but less for shipping, and be sure that you get what you order.
Also Amazon search has been broke for a decade.
The only real downside is that I can't put in a $0.50 order without a shipping fee, I need a $25 minimum order for free shipping.
I can’t count the number of times it got almost bricked, either not turning on or being stuck on a loader forever, and I’ve had to somehow do a full reset (which loses reading progress on all books ofc). It’s happened many times over 3 different devices, every time I pick it up I don’t know if it’s going to work.
At least twice it refused to turn on _in the plane on my first day of holiday_, a day after I loaded new books. Useless for the whole trip. Inexcusable.
Would still pick it over kindle, but it’s out of hate for Amazon, not love for kobo.
> I think the pressures of 21st-century capitalism have put every large company into a place where they really can’t afford to be ethical or the financial sector will rip them to shreds then replace the CEO someone who will maximize shareholder return at all costs
I canceled my Prime and Subscribe and Save in 2023. I still order from Amazon from time to time, but they are a merchant of last resort for me now.
I know some people may not be in a position to walk down to the local supermarket and that's fair. An online service is life-saver then. But is the proportion of this demographic so large that offers like using prime becomes the default way of shopping? It must be because no doubt it is so popular. I'd just like to understand why.
Because it sounds like you assume everyone lives in the same sort of conditions you do, and that's just not the case. In most places in the US, you have to drive to make all of these purchases, and in many places you won't even find stores that have things you need and can find on Amazon.
It's a priority to me. It isn't really difficult to do, people just make excuses. I'd wager that the vast majority of Americans think biking 1 mile each way to the store is out of the question.
Im not saying everyone can/should live within a mile of their grocery store. I'm making the point that even if most Americans did live within walking/biking distance they would still drive.
I am reviewing all my spending to keep the bare necessary to don't go to the us, it's nothing compared to the greater thing but it makes me feel better and sleep at night
Which in my experience are ALL a combination of:
- More expensive,
- Very long shipping times,
- Paid shipping which removes the benefit of the lower price in the rare event they do exist,
- Abysmal customer guarantees and return policies.
I think the rest of the article is good but frankly there just isn't a real alternative to Amazon.
I left Amazon years ago because of endless counterfeit stuff, poor search, and prices that aren't actually better than you can get elsewhere. The fast delivery was not reliably fast anyway, and I can wait an extra day for things. I'm not usually in that much of a rush.
I have not found buying things from other places to be worse in general. Often cheaper, delivery is fine, and more confidence I'm getting the actual thing I wanted.
The only thing Amazon does better is simply that it's a one stop shop for almost everything. But given the other downsides, that is not enough.
EDIT: Also, the dark patterns they deploy to try to make people sign up to Prime makes me sick.
The author clearly states:
> I’m bailing out of Prime not to hurt Amazon, but because it doesn’t make commercial or emotional sense for me just now.
So, he doesn't doesn't get the ROI he needs, that's purely a financial transaction.
> Emotional? · Amazon is an US corporation and the US is now hostile to Canada, repeatedly threatening to annex us. So I’m routing my shopping dollars away from there generally and to Canadian suppliers specifically. Dumping Prime is an easy way to help that along. ¶
It's not like I don't buy things online, but I struggle to think of something I can't get somewhere else, be it computer accessories (any other online shop or directly from the retaler) or books (order it at a local book shop or buy from the publisher), which are actually the only physical items I order online.
The shopping experience on Amazon is meh, so I can't imagine that anyone enjoys using it for every day items, like groceries.
I wouldn't say it's especially good, but most others are worse. As a start, many online shops show me a captcha from Cloudflare before saying "You have been blocked" or refuse to show me anything altogether on Firefox with RFP. Amazon has never given me a captcha to buy something, at least.
It’s safer to buy direct than going through Amazon.
I bought something last week from an OEMs website. It showed up the next day in an Amazon envelope. Nowhere was it mentioned when I checked out.
[1] Numbers you've heard like 40,000, reflect only the absolute minimum number of people killed directly by Israel, and not those killed indirectly (running out of insulin, starving, etc). https://data.techforpalestine.org/updates/gaza-ministry-casu...
[2]
- https://www.972mag.com/cloud-israeli-army-gaza-amazon-google...
- https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/12/how-us-big-tech...
Insightful observation.