- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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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.
Where I live, getting anything at a store besides basic food isn’t a thing. You can’t find ANYTHING at Walmart. Hardware stores are the last semblance of being able to find stuff in a store in person like the olden days. If it wasn’t for the fact contractors buy entire houses worth of shit for “pro delivery” , even those would stop existing.
I think it’s also different internationally? For eg. in India, I already use credit cards, but there’s a lifetime free credit card for Amazon that allows you to earn up to 5%. But without Prime, I earn only 3%. Ofc, this is only worthwhile because I already shop from Amazon without Prime and without the credit card, admittedly, but in my scenario it’s far more worthwhile to have Prime than to not, because it pays for itself within a month or two even without me consuming a single piece of media from Amazon (whether it’s Prime Video or Prime Music or Audible, etc).
Idk if this exists in every country where Prime exists, but I assume they’re just trying to gain more market share in India so it’s an option here. 🤷🏾♂️ But it certainly makes it worthwhile for me in my specific case.
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.
This is the reason I hemmed over my subscription for a few years, and after they announced they were adding ads to Prime Video, that was the final straw. I’ve ordered maybe 1 or 2 things without a subscription since, but I’m really happy with how much I’m able to get much faster and better elsewhere.
This is so annoying cuz it happens to me as well, yea its 2 day shipping… . After it spends 4 or 5 days in processing
Duh?
It is surprisingly easy to not order things off of Amazon, too.
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
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.
Canned mine the day they announced ads in Prime Video.
They’d already ruined the music service earlier in the year.
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
And as soon as they’re done they’ll pull the rug out from under you just like Google did.
That’s basically the only reason I have it. I almost never use Amazon for ordering something
Killed my Amazon account last decade. Shitty company that mistreats workers, sells crap.
Every dollar they get does damage.
It’s filled with Temu level shit now as well.
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.
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.
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)_/¯
They keep giving me a month of free prime, which I use and cancel before the first charge.
Amazon seems confident they’ll convert me eventually.Or that you’ll forget to cancel!
You can cancel 30 seconds after using it and keep your 30 day trial. Most services work this way. Take the trial, immediately cancel, and move on.
Living without amazon prime is easy; living without amazon at all is more challenging with various manufacturers using amazon as their only storefront
….so find different manufacturers. Why do you need those specific ones? Fuck Amazon, stop giving them money. What do they have to do to lose your business.
Then the eff with them. If something isn’t available retail, there’s a million other online retailers more local, more specialized, or just plain out of the manufacturer itself.
You can live without. Or you help them becoming even more dominant.
Fight it. Fight them.
We try to, but when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, trying to find solutions to the moving target that is your wife’s fibromyalgia, have a growing, energetic baby boy, sometimes you can’t afford paying twice as much or more for the product that isn’t sold on amazon, assuming such an alternative exists.
Unfortunately, lots of people can’t afford to shop with a conscience
Absolutely this. Blaming the consumer when the system has been rigged is a bad take
Since they added commercials to prime video we have been considering dropping prime. Video was really the only thing keeping us lately.
What is Video? Prime member asking…
Amazon Prime is also a video streaming service like Netflix. It is included with your Prime shipping subscription but they recently started showing ads.
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.
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.
Yep, canceled back then too, for the very reasons.
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.
As someone else who lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, I use Amazon for stuff I can’t find locally. Our local (and family owned) grocery & hardware stores are not much more expensive, so I tend to buy essentials there and save Amazon as a last resort. Amazon’s pricing isn’t anything special, and being able to talk to a knowledgeable shop owner is more than worth the extra few cents in price.
I seldom need to talk to a shop owner unless I want to talk about the fishing or weather. The price difference between items in local stores and amazon is generally measured in whole dollars. And I always balance the cost to buy on line vs the cost of gas money, (when the nearest real grocery store is a 100 mile round trip and still is limited in choice and availability and the local one sells milk, some bread, a few canned goods and such), also gets considered. Amazon almost always wins on price if I can wait the week it takes to get an item.
This next week I need to pull and test some ice cube relays in my tractor. I hope the blower fans stopped working because of a bad relay. If not, I will need to pull to roof off the cab to get at the blower motors. I already know I will need to order any parts. I could have the local John Deere dealer get them for me, but the price will be outrageous. The relays should be available from amazon, not sure about the blower motors though.
Same here. Never ordered anything off Amazon. Not sure about the U.S., but I’ve never had trouble finding anything in other places, so I never had to resort to Amazon. Maybe certain things are harder to get in the U.S. except on Amazon? Some kind of monopoly thing?
