Amazon Prime is a remarkable success but also dystopian. It has made convenience and speed the norm, habituating consumers to buy more products. Prime’s flywheel effect - where more customers lead to more data and scale which attracts more customers - has fueled Amazon’s dominance. Prime subscribers spend twice as much and Amazon’s value has multiplied 97 times since 2005. While canceling Prime may not hurt Amazon, it can benefit local businesses by gaining a new customer. However, Prime has rewired how people think about what is possible to obtain and how fast, making a Prime-free life unimaginable for many.
I bought in because of the free shipping, but I cancelled when the price went up.
Turns out, you can still get free shipping if you bundle your orders together and are willing to wait an extra day or two.
And at least in my case, shipping got faster once I canceled my prime. Lol. Fast shipping had been the only reason I had signed up in the first place.
I was the same. I don’t use it enough to make the cost worth it, and I can wait a few extra days for free shipping. It usually ends up arriving faster than predicted anyway.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English22•11 months ago
And buy from where? Retailers these days, insofar as they exist at all, have ridiculously limited inventory. If I want something that’s even slightly uncommon, the only place I can find it is online, and since there’s no telling whether any given website will steal from me, welp, Amazon it is.
You can still buy from Amazon as needed without Prime. The free shipping is still usually relatively fast, and they’ll give you a free or heavily discounted Prime trial fairly often. I try to avoid buying stuff on Amazon these days, but a lot of things simply aren’t available elsewhere or would be significantly more difficult to acquire. I haven’t had a steady Prime sub in at least a couple years, but they end up offering me a trial probably every few months. Hell, they gave me a full month for free a week ago (probably to try to drive up Prime Day sales).
This. Trying to find anything in a brick and mortar store in the last decade has been such a godawful experience that I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. Groceries are largely delivered (not using Instacart, but the store’s own delivery or pickup service), tech stuff is all aliexpress or amazon, clothing I still largely go in to buy, but don’t buy very often. Appliances? Research the shit out of it online and usually order online from a local retailer with a decent website. Heck, even hardware is online through Home Depot and auto stuff is either rockauto or similar.
The amount of times I’ve made the effort to look in a brick and mortar and not found the thing I’ve needed is too high.
Life is a parody
Now you are supposed to sacrifice your sleep for Amazon? No thanks!
I dislike most things I know about Amazon as a company. However, being disabled Prime isn’t just convenient it is a useful tool to make my life better.
Why not just use one of the many other delivery services?
Because that would be more work than I want to do, or maybe more work than I have energy for. I’m not defending Amazon but there are more concerning things in my life than always fighting the good fight for or with other people. This is just one of those areas I chose to make a small moral sacrifice to relieve a substantial physical burden.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English2•11 months ago
What makes you think they’re any more ethical?
See my other reply to your same question above. It isn’t hard to be better than the worst.
Here are the things that constantly bring me back to using prime.
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Customer service - I can get a rep on the phone quickly, and chat is actually functional. And rarely do i even need these because returns are super easy to self-service.
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Logistics - I do not live in a big city. Most things take a minimum of 2 days to get to me. Amazon included, because they have to always go through the larger city near me (a few hundred miles away) and then go through local sorting. That said Amazon, is about 85% on the 2 day delivery, where most others are…5-7 days, even if i do in store pickup for some of the big box stores that ARE in town.
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Site functionality - They 100% have dark patterns. And they 100% track what sells well and then copy it into their “amazon essentials” catalogue to siphon off profits from third parties. But their site is functional, search works, I can usually find what I need.
I still often seek out alternatives. Especially local and small shops. But when my choices become Amazon vs BestBuy or Amazon vs Cabelas/Academy/Dicks/Walmart or something similar, I usually choose based on ancillary policies like speed of delivery and least amount of time wasting with returns. Amazon often wins out there.
I live outside of a tiny country town in Australia, and local shops literally do not carry many of the sorts of items I need or, yes, want.
I work from home and rarely go into town, so paying twice as much and taking a day out of my life just isn’t my bag.
If I can get local and it’s not urgent, I will put together a consolidated list and go in some weekend when I have enough to make it worthwhile.
Sure, it probably makes me the devil, but unless I go move to a cabin in the woods and life a self-sustainable lifestyle, I can’t realistically avoid supporting some amount of evil just by existing under capitalism.
I try to make good choices where I can, and vote for people who, ideally, could effect real change.
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I support you doing this, but I have physical impairments and no car, so I’m choosing between dystopias already.
I was a buyer for a chain of high end bike shops for many years. Amazon really only sells junk products. Any real quality brands of niche products can’t support amazon and the typical brick and mortar business inventory structure. Like, I spent between $100k-$500k in preseason bike brand commitments for 3 stores. If any of those brands decided to allow sales on Amazon I would drop them immediately. Multiply this by every bike shop that exists. This is more than Amazon could compete with by a long shot. The issue is that every Buyer in a shop knows what they are able to sell effectively and buys accordingly. I tailored my orders for every shop independently. It would be impossible for Amazon to predict and fund high end bikes at this scale.
“So what,” you say, “it’s just bikes.” No it is not. The bike brands are usually part of a group of brands that include several parts, clothing, and accessory products. These are part of preseason commitments with the bike brands too. So all of these are not sold on Amazon either. This is the case with most things, the best or even decent stuff is not sold on Amazon.
The worst thing with amazon is that they aggregate all identical products in their warehouses. This makes it trivial for a seller to insert fake goods into a product pool and it is completely untraceable back to them.
Gave up years ago. There are alternative suppliers for most things, that actually pay tax in the UK.
Not happening. The returns process is the best thing about buying from Amazon. No need to deal with restocking fees or things breaking after 3 months either.
I live in a state where it’s hard to find what you need. Amazon is often the only place to find what I need like computer parts or electronics. Prime is too valuable to cancel.
i haven’t had prime in years and am doing just fine. spoiler alert: you still get free shipping from amazon without prime. you just don’t get 2 day shipping, which is an unnecessary luxury.
One day
I cancelled Prime around that time and my Amazon spending dropped significantly. I still shop there occasionally when I need something, but I’ll usually throw the stuff I need, but not immediately in my cart and wait until I qualify for free shipping. Also, they’ve given me like 5 free month trials, which I use when I DO need something ASAP. Just gotta be sure to cancel before it auto-renews.
Less consumerism is always better.
I only have prime because it’s VERY cheap in poland - it costs ~ $10/YEAR. I don’t even really buy stuff on amazon, it’s just for prime video and the gaming rewards.
Wow, the half off student price ten years ago was $50/year in the US. You get it incredibly cheap!
Nah, it’s too convenient and I don’t live in a big city so the things I need aren’t sold here.
Do you need Prime for that? I’m not in your same situation, but I used to be very reliant on Prime shipping. Since I cancelled Prime, I still sometimes buy stuff from Amazon, but I realized I don’t have a need to get things so rapidly. Free shipping is still an option on most items, it just takes a few more days. When they’re small items that don’t qualify for free shipping, then I just add it to my cart and wait until I have something else to add that makes it cross that free shipping threshold. And I also generally don’t feel the need to use Amazon as much since so many other companies offer free shipping these days.
In my circle, I’ve seen that people are just so expectant of rapid shipping, but they don’t actually need it. I’ve learned how instant gratification isn’t actually valuable to me, but I know that’s difficult for a lot of people to accept.
Our conversation on a different post made me check your post history. And now this post has me considering canceling Amazon Prime. Ripple effects are weird.
Haha, that’s a fun little coincidence. Benefits of the federated communities being smaller for the time being.
I mean, I don’t order stuff every day but when I do it’s cos I need it fast. I use Prime for games and videos too. I dunno about the rest of the planet but here in Italy, especially in a small 65k souls town, the situation is not so good.
I live in a rural area and gave up Amazon shortly before the pandemic. I switched to ordering items directly from the manufacturers’ websites. Giving up Amazon doesn’t mean giving up the rest of the internet, though admittedly some manufacturers link you right back to Amazon instead of running their own separate storefront, so I have to look for another.
All considered with Prime I end up saving money. Not considering their Video and Games services. I have no brand loyalty, if someone comes around with a better value proposition I’d take it but for now Amazon is where I prefer to buy. Oh, I forgot to mention their return and refund policies. Just great
Bundled with my phone plan.
Buying stuff online is just modern life. Might as well get fast shipping and discounts. Prime is no different than any other pay-to-join shopping club.
You can order from somewhere else online. Most of Amazon is cheap crap from aliexpress now anyway. They don’t even have the best prices most of the time anymore.
Sure, if I can wait 2-5 weeks I’ll check AliExpress.
My point was not to buy things that are just shitty crap from aliexpress. Or that cheap crap from aliexpress is unappealing junk that nobody would want to buy, the equivalent of email spam. In fact, the complaint I tend to hear people make the most often about Amazon is how hard it is to find anything on there that isn’t cheap chinese junk from AliExpress.
Perhaps people use Amazon differently than I do. I mostly buy niche items that you simply can’t buy at stores, or if you do find them at stores they are astronomically expensive.
Which is not to say I don’t switch things up. I order from Best Buy, Walmart, a whole bunch of different places. But on balance, I’m happy with the Prime subscription and use it frequently.