It is surprisingly easy to not order things off of Amazon, too.
Frugal
Discuss how to save money.
True, you do have to be wary of drop shippers on eBay though. A handful of times down I order something on eBay only to get it in Amazon packaging and with an Amazon gift packing slip - then I look up the item name on the gift receipt and find that the Amazon listing was cheaper and the eBay seller just skimmed off the top.
It helps to not click sponsored listings, and avoid listings with expedited shipping for free + free returns. Also if you do get drop shipped, mention it in your buyer feedback so others can search for it.
I really wish there was a non-profit or coop or public utility like replacement for amazon and ebay. Yeah you need a website and infrastructure and warehouses but this is becoming so fundamental to our economy that it's not good to let this "rent seeking" to continue. Make it a fair marketplace that is democratically controlled and optimizes for customers and sellers and workers instead of for shareholders. There is no need for amazon or ebay to exist.
Similar to paypal, all they did was make wire transfers easy. At least I can finally wire money immediately in the EU without extra costs making paypal and their tax on the internet economy superfluous (damn lazy banks!).
Governments ignoring ecommerce as a vital infrastructure has created these completely useless plutocrats.
PS: Sorry for the tangential rant lol
The idea that people think it would be difficult to live without an Amazon Prime subscription absolutely blows my mind. Are y'all really that hooked on buying stupid shit and getting it as fast as possible?
I don't understand some people who swear by it. If there's really something I need by the next day, I probably need it the same day and will just get it myself at a store.
I stopped Amazon Prime because it when from being "your package will be at your house in two days" to "your package might leave our facility in two days and arrive to you some indeterminate time later."
I also feel like anytime I get on Amazon now, I might as well be on Alibaba, but it's 10x the price. It's hard to find good things because there are so many cheap factory direct products with smashed-my-face-against-the-keyboard brand names. There's a Jansport backpack for sale, but you have to sort through all the bags from JDOEBG, AHIXBX, and PRJAGG first.
Amazon: the dropshipping website white people named.
Since they added commercials to prime video we have been considering dropping prime. Video was really the only thing keeping us lately.
Was one of the people who dropped it after the commercials were added. Started using our library instead and haven’t really missed the video streaming. I’ll log in via a browser every so often and get offered a free month or week of prime and immediately cancel. Was able to access prime day deals without paying for anything.
I use Kanopy through my library for free streaming. They have quite a bit of a selection too! Also there's Freegal music streaming, like Spotify, but free through the library.
OMG YES. I canceled my subscription 2-3 years ago and I've never once thought about resubscribing!!! Highly recommend. 99% of the time I still get free shipping because I exceed the $30 threshold. If I don't, then I'll just add an item to the cart and wait until I need something else. If it's something urgent, then I do pay for the shipping, but it's still way cheaper than $139 per year. Bro, it's fine.
I don't care about Prime Video or Music, so for me it 1000000% made sense to cancel.
I hate that Amazon tries to trick me into signing up for Prime on every purchase, but that just pisses me off even more and makes it less likely for me to consider signing up.
Killed my Amazon account last decade. Shitty company that mistreats workers, sells crap.
Every dollar they get does damage.
Amazon prime forcing ads was my final straw.
Before that, two day shipping became six day shipping became two month shipping became fuck you it's lost forever shipping while the US patent office slowly burnt to the ground via the tens of thousands of gibberish brand names sellers were using to pedal their counterfeit child slave labor fell off a truck shitty fall apart in one day products.
Lack of Amazon has done wonders for preventing me from impulse purchases as well. Win/win.
I thought I cancelled 2 months ago and I was billed this week. I went through the same steps and when I got to a page that said something like “confirm cancel” I hit it again.
The top of the page said “you have 364 days left to enjoy prime benefits”
This time I scrolled down and there was another box to click. A second confirmation. Such bs
This is an example of dark patterns. It can also include multiple steps to 'confirm' a decision, where the confirm button is beneath the decline button, only for the final step to have the button locations (or colours, shapes, etc) reversed. It's done on purpose to confuse people into giving up. Unfortunately, even if it works one time, it's justifiable for the company to continue the practice.
Reach out to their customer support and get a refund.
If you haven't used any of the benefits since its renewal, you can call to get a full refund. It did the same to me, and I was able to get the newest renewal fee back.
Is this satire?
I think most people think you NEED the Prime subscription to use Amazon and that's false.
Though I've never used it myself, my understanding is that a subscription is actually less expensive than paying the shipping directly for lots of things.
You can get free shipping without the subscription if you spend over $35.
Amazon has free shipping on almost everything if you spend over $35 on the order. If I need to increase how much I'm spending I add some hand soap or some kind of dry grocery item.
It's pretty wild how deeply some people integrate products into their lives.
Now granted, I don't live in America, but I have never even considered using Amazon, and I don't understand why anyone would..
Amazon was really great when it started out, you'd find what you were looking for, at correct/very good prices, fast shipping and good service if something was lost or broken. The whole experience was top notch.
But that was over ten years ago.
I did stop using it when it was still very good but all the abuse popped up on media.
I'm in the EU BTW.
Mail order has historically been a large part of US consumer buying. This is due to the number of people that lived in remote rural areas for most of this countries history. Access to goods was severely restricted due to that problem. And didn't really start changing much until post WW2 and the growth of urbanization. Mailing a cheap catalog to everyone was the best way to show off your goods and get necessary goods to those who wanted them and would have no access otherwise.
Amazon is merely the latest in a very long line of those businesses that developed that marketing stratagem. And since I live in one of those remote areas, Amazon does provide me with easy, fast, and generally competitive priced goods that I would simply never be able to access without making a 600 mile round trip to get. But if you live a large dense city, there is little need for Amazon. But then, people order uber eats or whatever it's called to get supper when they could cook something to eat cheaper instead.
I could spend hours googling for items from small and possibly sketchy websites and wait times than can stretch to several weeks or more, and sometimes I do out of boredom, but time is money as they say, and I do have other things to do.
Duh?
I dropped it months ago. Only had it for 2 shows and you can get free shipping if you look elsewhere. Plus got tired of being ripped off with fake clothes and junk. The time for Amazon has passed.
Canned mine the day they announced ads in Prime Video.
They'd already ruined the music service earlier in the year.
I have my amazon account since 2005 and i've been fine without prime ever since.
Guess I just never really bought something thats so critical to have asap ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Living without amazon prime is easy; living without amazon at all is more challenging with various manufacturers using amazon as their only storefront
Is no one else using Prime for unlimited, uncompressed photo storage? I feel like it's a big thing and I'm not even a photographer. It's basically the same as Google had before they have decided to get rid of that feature on the free 15GB accounts.
I don't want Amazon or Google using ai to harvest my family's photo data and likeness so it's not worth it. You pay and still are the product
I've been doing it my whole life
And in other news: the sea is wet and the sky is blue.
The last straw for me was that Amazon drivers always seem to have some kind of problem finding my apartment. So even though instructions say "leave at my door," it always ends up in Parcel Pending on the other side of my complex.
NOBODY ELSE has an issue finding my apartment: UPS, USPS, Uber Eats, even fucking Door Dash! But I might as well be living in the Bermuda Triangle to Amazon, so WTF was I paying for Prime for?
And honestly, like so many others, I've found it not even the least bit tempting to go back. Ebay has been a reliable alternative.
I bought a car stereo last Friday with Prime. It said next day delivery by 11am. At 11am I check and it says it'll be here this coming Friday.... I cancelled it because crap like this keeps happening. (about 75% of my orders) I live within two miles of a giant distribution center. I looked at other places for the same radio and Walmart had it (not a fan of them either but same price, same day shipping for free) so I ordered it. It was at my door four hours later.
I'm done with Amazon.
Yeah I cancelled my Prime that I had for about 7 years a few months ago and... Its fine. Better maybe cause I don't buy something stupid online I didn't need. I try to find stuff locally first and free shipping makes me able to just buy something if I need to but haven't found anything I NEED to buy from them.
I missed Prime Video but honestly with ads I can also just use Tubi and it's the same jank cheap movie experience without supporting Bezos.
I do think it's funny that I know some people who did the whole prime day this year and complained they bought garbage and that the prces were the same when they had to return the items and buy a new one but also the waste still hurts me
After canceling Prime, I’ve been able to reevaluate the necessity of that ultra-fast, always-free shipping and have found it mostly unneeded. Amazon still ships free when your cart is above $35, albeit a few days slower. After leaving Prime, I’ve been happy to wait. The products still arrive relatively fast, and the selection is still excellent. I’m also less inclined to make impulse purchases. If the tech giants can have their years of cost-efficiency, I guess I can too.
I mostly buy on ebay now and sometimes the main store. If I have no resort but to use amazon then I use someone else's account but that hasn't had to happen yet in a while (wanted to get the new pixel 8a and amazon had a promotion with a free $100 gift card)
I've never had one nor would I even consider it.
I've never had one, other than their free trials. Only then it was to make use of the next day delivery.