It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription
(slate.com)
from AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 31 Jan 2024 20:52
https://programming.dev/post/9388129
from AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 31 Jan 2024 20:52
https://programming.dev/post/9388129
- The author canceled their Amazon Prime subscription on a whim and realized they didn’t really need it.
- Leaving Prime meant slower shipping but the author was happy to wait and still found the selection and delivery speed satisfactory.
- Many people love Prime for its fast shipping and convenience, but some readers expressed ambivalence and considered canceling.
Archive link: archive.ph/3M27c
threaded - newest
I cancelled Prime late last year, and haven’t really missed it, either.
While I had Prime, I think there was 1, maybe 2 instances where I wanted to watch something and it was actually included with Prime. Every other time, Amazon Video had the movie, but they wanted an additional fee to watch it, so this was absolutely no loss.
One thing to note: Every time I check out on Amazon, now, they offer me a reduced price 1-week “trial” of Prime, to get the expedited shipping, for like… $5 or so? If you cancel yours, and also see this offer: You can take the offer, submit your order (and get the free 2 day shipping), then once you get the shipping confirmation, go in and cancel the Prime subscription. Since you’ve had it for only a few hours, Amazon actually refunds the price you paid. In effect, you get the shipping benefits for free. We’ll see if they close this loophole, but for now, it works.
If you decline a few times they’ll eventually offer you an entire month of Prime for free. I’ve thus never paid for Prime, ever.
No gain or loss there. Amazon’s logistics are so grabasstic now that delivery lead times are about the same with or without Prime. So I don’t particularly care.
I only buy commodity bullshit on Amazon anymore, and sometimes not even then. If they have it for a good price I might get a pack of crimp connectors or a roll of 3D printer filament or nuts and bolts or something. Otherwise it’s just wall-to-wall Chinese word salad non-brand knockoff shit on there anymore. You may as well just shop on AliExpress since at least they’re honest about hawking tat from Shenzen and it’s cheaper to boot.
You might find this very interesting
youtu.be/B90_SNNbcoU
He tests crimps and various Amazon electical products.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/B90_SNNbcoU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
There have been zero times Amazon video has had something I wanna watch
Some of us have been living without an Amazon account since 2007 and we’re still alive. Go figure.
I barely manage, but I suvive.
i have reverted to this lifestyle, and i love it. creating the 5-6 accounts for local platforms was a slight hassle, but now i can enjoy the benefits of a “small” company which still cares about what the customer thinks.
Can you please expound on this?
I gave up on Amazon last year. I do without many things which is fine, but there are some things that are more difficult to find without them. I am still doing without as I’d like to figure it out for the long term.
Can you give examples of the vendors that supplant Amazon for you?
Not the person you asked, but generally I just go to the manufacturer website. Amazon is useful for it’s pictures and an aggregate of similar products, but now it’s usually just a catalog of stuff so I know what to look for
Plus then you can be far more certain you are not receiving a Chinese knockoff of your desired product
Home Depot, Staples, B&HPhoto (decent selection of general tech merch, but tons of photo/video)
As much as I dislike it, google shopping helps me find where I can pick things up locally.
There are things that I’ve been unsatisfied with the alternative options, or particular brands that only sell on Amazon, so I use it occasionally. But I don’t have a subscription to prevent the compulsion to use it.
What “local platforms” are you referring to?
seeking arrangements
It’s kind of crazy how Amazon has dominated so much that alternatives pretty much aren’t a thing over there.
Here in Sweden we didn’t get Amazon until a couple of years ago, and they’re honestly so skeevy. Most of the stuff they sell is weird computer generated garbage, and the brand stuff they sell is usually available cheaper or for the same price elsewhere. They also use the same shipping all other companies use, so there’s literally no upside to using Amazon outside of buying weird little niche products. These niche things could be bought on AliExpress or EBay anyway though.
When it comes to “real” products, it’s just generally preferred to buy them from Swedish/Scandinavian retailers. You know they operate within our legal framework with consumer protection in mind, and if you ever have any issues, contacting support puts you in touch with real people that work for the store, not some outsourced representative that’s disconnected from the whole thing.
The only good thing Amazon has brought is hilarious machine translations. Like curtains of people frolicking in the sexual assault, or fondue sets with integrated email functionality.
That’s the experience in the United States now as well
Where I am (US), Amazon’s anti-competition practices make it pretty hard for other companies to be cheaper. If Amazon doesn’t think they’re getting the best price, they can drop you, and so many people shop exclusively on Amazon that that can be a death knell. Which is part of the reason to stop shopping there.
e-commerce sites that are based in germany or at least in europe.
I started boycotting Amazon back in 1999 when they pulled the 1-click patent bullshit. I loved them before that.
In 1999? Brah.
I was an edgy college kid who was raging against software and business process patents. Their 1-click patent started me on a 25 year grudge.
Not a lot of people hold onto such a niche part of their righteous rebellious college years for so long. I love that, and your bar was so high too!
A fellow Great Book of Grudges enthusiast! I too started writing mine early. I have not purchased anything Sony since they put rootkits on their CDs in 2005. Nothing. Fuck Sony. And anything Intuit makes for multiple reasons.
And I am absolutely passing The Great Book on to my kids. They know exactly why we don’t buy certain brands.
What’s this one click patent ?
In 1999 Amazon applied for and was granted a US Patent for One Click Purchase. Before then, everyone had a shopping cart that you had to go into to check out and pay. Amazon realized that a huge percentage of people would add stuff to their cart and then leave without buying anything, either because they decided they didn’t REALLY need that thing or because they found it cheaper somewhere else or whatever. They allowed you to save all your credit card info plus shipping preferences, then just hit “1 Click Purchase.” It was convenient for shoppers because they didn’t have to go through the whole checkout steps or add everything then come back later to check out. They could just hit a button and be done. For Amazon, though, it prevented the dreaded “items left in cart.”
Other sites like Borders and Barnes & Noble, etc also implemented the feature, since it made a lot of money. Amazon filed for a business process patent (I think they also tried it as a software patent??) and forced the entire internet to go back to normal shopping cart purchases. They ended up losing the patent lawsuit in the EU, but that didn’t stop them from enforcing it on US websites. Borders and BN both implemented “2 Click Purchase” to get around it, but the damage was done. In everyone’s minds, Amazon was the place to go for convenience and speed. Amazon made more money, while others started losing money. With that extra money, Amazon was able to move into the “niche” of Walmart, since Walmart hadn’t yet figured out e-commerce. Amazon out-Walmarted Walmart on the web and became the trillion dollar behemoth we have today.
Wow. Thank you for all of this I had no idea. That helps put a lot of amazons growth and lack of competition into perspective.
It’s kinda weird knowing I advertised for them (word of mouth) back around ~2007.
Cheaper than brick & mortar! INCREDIBLE customer service! No sales tax (until you paid it at tax time of course)!
Didn’t realize I’d be concentrating power, helping create just about earth’s richest human.
.
Sometimes shop around on amazon. Find something I like or need: look for the website of the producer or distributor, order directly from them. Usually same price, sometimes cheaper. Fuck the middleman.
Well, this is exactly what I do sometimes. And not only for Amazon, but for quite a lot of local marketplaces.
I don’t even have an Amazon account anymore. If I need something, I just give the money to a friend and have them order it for me. Definitely saves me money because I don’t want to go through the hassle of doing that for most things.
This is awesome. Amazon is as unscrupulous as a drug dealer, so you need a “connection” to deal with Amazon.
Lol, i never thought of them as a dealer, but i like it
oh, so you’re that guy.
but yeah, perfectly understandable. many people i know use the prime benefits of a single person, i was said person once.
To the best of my knowledge, my friend does not have Prime, but I am not totally sure on that. I just don’t have an Amazon account at all.
One of the final nails in the coffin for me was when I tried to specify the delivery date to a day I would actually be in, and they completely ignored the instruction and delivered immediately. Like, I pay for that option, and you’re not delivering the service.
I’ve also been getting free trials for Prime every so often, so I still get the benefits when I might need them (eg before Christmas). They did make it very hard to cancel, though, half the links didn’t work and the instructions were out of date and didn’t match the pages.
Was it an Amazon branded delivery truck? Sounds more like a shipping company fuck up if not
No idea whether or not it was a branded truck (it was a while ago), but it wasn’t under any other sort of brand - Amazon deliveries are done by people employed by or directly contracted for Amazon.
All of my amazon packages come through UPS or the postal service. Not really sure how much interaction they actually have with Amazon
In the UK it’s either Amazon vans or unmarked vans (eg a self employed person who is contracted by Amazon and uses their own vehicle).
When I lived in NYC I could not even understand the appeal of Prime. Now that I live in the burbs I can’t live without it. I hate that I keep throwing money at Bezos but abusing their return policy is my little solace.
As somebody who lives on an island, I don’t understand the appeal of Amazon Prime. It’s a bogus product - if you live outside the mainland USA, you still get slower shipping speeds (usually like 1 week with Prime vs 2 weeks without it). It’s literally just an instant gratification thing - if I need something now, I’d just go out and buy it from a store instead of ordering it through Amazon or any online retailer.
Where I live it’s either Target or Amazon Prime. And give how crappy the Target selection is there’s no real choice.
Similar to the person who commented below. I live in a very rural area so it would be 10 bucks in gas just to drive to the closest Target to buy a pack of pens that I need for work the next day. And I know that I could just swing by on my way home from work and pick them up, but then it becomes a time thing. I mean my entire plan is to ditch Amazon prime after my current subscription expires. But man, there are some interesting things that have just become normalized with the convenience of getting things mailed to me that I'm totally going to miss. But fuck bezos
It just takes some forethought, some planning, and yeah maybe some “going without” for just a few days. But it can be done! Fuck Bezos.
You can still get things mailed to you, with free shipping. Just order $35 of stuff at a time.
Speaking from my experience in Australia, Prime is quite good for ad-hoc ordering.
For AUD6.99 a month I can order something that will usually turn up tomorrow morning, meaning that if I need a light bulb or a dishcloth or weed killer it’s just a 30 second search with the app on my phone and I can get on with my day.
Compare that to:
eBay - free shipping, a week or so, “express” , 3 days and AUD12-18 per purchase.
Small online retailers - generally no free shipping, usually an Australia Post option at AUD12 or so that takes about 4-5 days, “express” via various couriers that takes that to 2-3 days for AUD18-30.
Large retailers - a week or more for delivery, AUD10-40 depending on size.
Me going down the shops and buying it myself - AUD60/hour labour and consumables, 30 minutes to an hour depending on what I’m buying and where from, AUD30-60.
Say what you want about their treatment of workers, from a consumer point of view Amazon’s warehousing and delivery logistics are pretty effective.
Added edit: I don’t live in a “rural” area (of which there are plenty in Australia), but I’ve sent stuff there using Prime and even then it’s only an extra day or two on top.
Oh and there’s Prime Video, and I’ve watched a few shows on it but it’s not something that I particularly need or desire.
And sure , I could do without Prime. Just like I could do without brunch at a cafe once a week, or I could do without Netflix. But it provides a service that is generally cheaper and more convenient than the other options I have so… I’ll just continue to use it until it doesn’t.
Yeah we've been fucked over for so long down here in Australia with overpriced everything from lack of competition that Prime is a legitimately good deal on many things.
It’s literally cheaper for me to order my fucking groceries delivered to my door than it is to go to a supermarket, yet the supermarkets still don't stop jacking up the prices. Aldi can sometimes work out cheaper, but you've got to hunt for their sales in the magazine each week so its not practical.
Im just glad to have rest of the world prices on many goods, sure it might not seem cheap to them but it is here.
Ssst… don’t tell or they will start to make delivery times longer.
Start? They've already been doing that for at least a couple of years now.
Well, the 2-Day shipping guarantee was fucking destroyed through pandemic/online shopping & stimmy checks. We just hit crazy peaks of rampant consumerism & the guarantee couldn’t easily be honored.
I meant without Prime. Most of the time, my orders take 4-6 days to even ship anymore. I'll occasionally sign up for a month of Prime when they offer it for free again, and it's back to normal for that month.
But yeah, there isn't free 2-day shipping anymore, just "free Prime shipping," which is slower than 2-day and faster than non-Prime.
Ah yes, they claim it’s “for your convenience”, “keep shopping!”, “any order you place in (x # of) days will ship for free with this order”. I’m perfectly fine with it, honestly; I online shop exclusively in the slow lane. Free, but slow, shipping? Fine by me. 🐌
Cancelled two weeks ago, and while it's too early for me to have a fully informed opinion, so far I've noticed that if you just hold items in your cart until you reach some kind of threshold (and I admittedly don't know what that is) you can get free shipping anyway.
It's almost like I was paying all that money just so I could one off order anything on a whim. I'm an adult, I can exercise impulse control and stick it to Amazon in some small way by doing it. Win/Win.
Yeah, they have order minimums for some of their shipping options anyway. $25 for same day in my area, but once my membership lapses I bet I still end up getting shit in around the same time
That’s what I do. And by the time I have enough stuff built up for free shipping, I realize I don’t need most of it anyway.
Buying anything on Amazon hardly seems viable anymore. There’s so much counterfeit crap there, and a million low-effort rebrandings of the same stuff you can get on AliExpress for cheaper.
Shop local when you can, and at least shop not-Amazon for the rest.
Not sustainable for me, I price it from time to time and local stores are usually, at best, double what Amazon or even Walmart has it for and that’s if the local store even has what I’m looking for to begin with
So my choices are Amazon or Walmart (or similar big name stores) and going to Walmart…yea fuck that it’s a last resort for everything but groceries…
I keep seeing this over and over, but I order a lot off Amazon and I’ve never had a problem with it. Don’t know if I’m just incredibly lucky or what, but the only times I get counterfeit / cheap Chinese crap is when I order it on purpose.
Ofc, those things I can just get off AliExpress too and sometimes I do when I don’t mind waiting which is the biggest issue with AliExpress, the waiting
I, and probably millions of others, are shopping where the best price/value is and nothing else because we can’t afford not to. I wouldn’t mind shopping locally owned and paying the premium…if I could afford it. Stop pushing for expensive alternatives people can’t afford and push for regulations instead.
Ya simple solution: don’t buy no-name chinesium crap regardless of the storefront and you won’t be disappointed
Search for a desk mounted USB hub. They’re all cheap junk and none are to spec. I looked at well over 200 listings and most were white label.
And if you go to Best Buy, staples, Walmart, target… what is different? I’m actually close to a microcenter and they’re also no different.
Where do you go for a desk mounted USB hub?
Best buy had one that met the USB 3.1 spec
So it like, screws to your desk? I too am in search of a quality high powered fast data transfer USB hub that does not cost a kidney, and have not had any luck yet
Yeah it had little screw holes on the back like a router or power strip
If I see something on Amazon that I want, I just go to the manufacturer’s website and order it directly from them. If they don’t have a site that sells it, then I try other online stores besides Amazon. If they only sell on Amazon, then I decide I just don’t need it.
Except a lot of times it’s cheaper on Amazon, with faster shipping, even without prime. Most recent example I ran into.
$75 direct <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/51aaa124-ebd3-4c81-b955-f11bd2c7a451.webp">
$65 Amazon <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/42139dfd-032a-430f-ad9b-0133462dcf72.webp">
Cheap items/electronics can be more expensive on Amazon than direct, though.
Amazon: <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d3ba053f-59a3-45e7-b7ad-cb72196c2cb0.jpeg">
Direct: <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/78fa0385-276a-494a-ad99-5ff4d70e8390.jpeg">
Doubt that site has free shipping tho
It doesn’t, but shipping is $5, still way cheaper.
Also, free shipping only kicks in at $35, so technically this doesn’t either.
Only 50% risk of counterfeits, but you save $10!
This is the way
I comparison shop almost religiously. Vendor sites are oftentimes more expensive and add shipping on top of that. BB, Walmart, etc. have similar prices but most times it’s actually third party marketplace bullshit using these big name sites as a shittier Amazon.
Prime doesn’t matter so much for me, but 5% on all of my purchases with the Amazon credit card is definitely worth it.
I can’t say that I have ever gotten anything counterfeit from Amazon. What I have been victim to is no name garbage that has 4.5 stars due to thousands of fake reviews. Generally it is stuff that is difficult to research good brands and the review websites often simply redirect back to Amazon. It’s also very little use leaving a bad review because Amazon will remove it. For an example, Louis Rossman bought some fuses on Amazon. The 2A fuse did not blow until 10A was passed through it. That was not a fluke either. He left bad ratings which were removed and those products continue to be sold on Amazon. That is shit easily that can start a fire. If there actually was blow back, the manufacturer would simply stop selling that named version but keep the half a dozen other identical ones up they use to flood the results. So while this may not have ever been an issue for you, it can easily get someone killed. Your conclusion is spot on. We need regulation for this garbage. While Walmart is generally seen as garbage, there is at least someone responsible for purchasing shit to put in the stores and they generally have it tested. That is not the case for Amazon or Walmart’s online marketplace or AliBaba.
And not only are there a lot of crappy products with inflated scores because fake reviews, there are also a lot of good products with low scores because of fake negative reviews but competitors. The reviews are pretty much useless now.
damn right
every time i’ve intentionally picked the ASNDSZYY brand i’ve been disappointed in the thing and in myself. now i’d rather just spend up front for something actually good rather than waste time and effort going back and forth returning things
I think people who see countfeit stuff don’t know what they are buying before they go on Amazon and order from Chinese brands. I know what I’m going to buy before I go on Amazon so I never have the issue. I just use it to check prices and buy if it’s a good enough discount.
It’s getting to the point where even searching for specific products is almost pointless. I did a search for a specific phone model recently and the phone showed up as the fifth result after four prompted results and several ads. When it becomes a chore to even track down a very specific thing you want, why would I keep going back?
The only search worse than Amazon is probably Wayfair.
plus i have gotten several obviously used items when it wasn’t even available as used and cost full price.
I got a motherboard once where it was obvious that someone bent the pins then returned it. I had purchased new item though
So local strangers working to support some local guy’s Maui beach house need our support instead of local strangers working to support some faraway guy’s Maui Beach House?
It’s all local business when their main cost is the employment of locals. Don’t be a snob.
Anybody know more about this?:
I’ve heard the following sentiment & a similar stat over the years:
I can imagine a local shop owner sponsoring the local little league team… and I know the average hole-in-the-wall donut or phở restaurant owner won’t have a beach home, and I like they have the potential to make a decent bit of dough without college degrees… but perhaps somebody’s actually analyzed this?
I didn’t know donut or pho restaurants made their own dough. It probably varies by location, though. I’ve seen some donut places where the boxes of shipped ready to make product were stored where customers could see it. It blew my mind how much they had on hand in order to not run out.
This is my main point of conflict with shopping strictly on price. I do try to support local when possible. I’m price conscious of course, but community support is also important. Not all (or even many it seems) local businesses do support their communities but when I see it I make a note that they’re one of the local B&Ms I will buy from.
In summary, I think the statement is untestable because it’s so poorly confined. Basically it’s something that grumpy local business owners with poor value-propositions tend to say. One of those things that sounds like it ought to be true but doesn’t stand analysis.
For example, there might be a “local” store which doesn’t need many employees but sells products manufatured elsewhere. It’s a local store but most of your money is going elsewhere.
OTOH there might be a chain store that employs 100s of local people, and buys fresh produce from local farms. Not a local business owner but most of the money is benefiting your local community.
Additionally, local people own just as many shares in large chains as anyone else.
What an excellent point.
Have to get to know the business owners in your own community and figure it out yourself perhaps!
I suppose a study could figure out average impacts though, via random sampling? Not sure how my source had calculated it.
You mean our neighbors own stock of Wal-Mart so shopping there is beneficial that way?
Yeah, I think that saying shopping at Wal-Mart is “beneficial” might be a bit of a stretch, I just mean to say that when someone says “shop at a locally owned store so your money stays local” they’re really saying “shop in my store so I get your money”. What most people don’t realise is that their pension plan (called super in Australia, 401k or something in US?) probably owns a bunch of shares in Wal-Mart, so you may as well shop there if you’re a part owner.
What do you mean? You don’t want to buy PRAZO USB-C CABLE FOR DATA TRANSFER AND CHARGING, 3M LENGHTH, COMPATIBLE WITH LAPTOP, DESKTOP, IPHONE, ANDROID?
I love these.
EXTRA HIGH QUALITY PREMIUM KNIFE AND FORK AND SPOON CUTLERY EATING SET COMPATIBLE WITH RICE DISHES, ASIAN FOOD, CHIPS, SAUSAGES, CHICKEN, GALAXY S24+, SALAD.
Every trip to Amazon overwhelms me with choice, then I realize it’s all from Ali, then I close the tab.
I really only buy things from it now if I know what I’m looking for already
I honestly have it for Prime Video. I don’t watch it in any massive quantity but there are some shows on there I really like.
Prime games too, although I've noticed they offer less GOG games than they once did, and I refuse to install their app on my pc.
In my defense prime is very cheap in my country, because they haven't crushed the competition yet.
Every time I've ordered something from Amazon, they always push Prime for fastest shipping. Then when you turn that down, they give you an option to pay a little more this one time to get your order shipped faster. I always pick the cheapest shipping option. The order generally comes just as fast as the fastest shipping, without paying the extra money.
They are going to ship according to whatever is easiest and cheapest for themselves if you pick the cheap shipping option. By now in most large population centers, Amazon warehouses are already stocked. Until they start cutting shipping costs, it will almost always arrive well before their estimates. So just save yourself the money and ditch Prime.
Exactly this. Once you place the order Amazon still has to get it from the wearhouse and ship it too you. If someone is already picking orders in that part of the wearhouse it makes sense to just grab it now rather than wait a few more days. Same with shipping. If the order is together they aren’t set up to just hold it, they ship it.
From what I’ve seen, the difference is that they either ship it same day, or wait a few days to ship it. It still arrives in the same amount of time from when it ships until I receive it, they just take their time (maybe artificially) in getting it out the door.
Ive never understood the dependence on Amazon. It's not even a monopoly, I've never bought anything online that somewhere else didnt also offer the product, usually an online store specializing in that product.
I don’t have access to amazon at all, ao don’t get the rave about amazon itself either.
In the US it’s basically the everything store with fairly competitive pricing and very fast shipping. It’s very convenient if nothing else.
I can get basically anything I want at cheaper prices than locally available by the next day. I can get an increasing amount of things delivered to me same day as well which is pretty nice. The return policy is also a big part of it. There’s basically no fuss or questions asked for anything you want a refund on. You don’t even have to put it in a box, you can just drop it off at the UPS store.
They’re evil, but it’s pretty great from a user perspective.
The return policy is really what seals it for me. I’ve never had an issue with returning something, ever.
Other places make it such a hassle and make you pay to return it.
Dude… We’re trying to live without Amazon and this guy is just giving up prime??? What a martyr…
Water is wet
But is it surprisingly wet?
I hate to be honest, but I used Amazon Prime a lot because:
I also save a shit ton of money. When I used to browse Walmart or Target, I used to buy a lot of shit I didn’t need. I don’t get as distracted with focused buying. I also order from Aliexpress if I can wait 30 days, and I have only been ripped off three times in several years, for a total of maybe $35.
I’m not saying my way is better, and certainly not if it’s better for you, but it’s been a godsend to the house-bound.
If Amazon genuinely fits your use case, more power to you. I think the problem is the average person being duped into thinking they need Amazon Prime as the default position.
A lot of companies now offer two day shipping for free (if you spend enough of course), and it’s just as good. Hell, I bought some batteries for a UPS that died on Monday from a battery wholesale site, and they arrived today. And that’s with the shipping saying it could be at least a week. The competitive advantage of Amazon doesn’t seem like it’s there any more.
Another thing you realize when you quit Amazon is that you don’t really need to be ordering so much junk. You just don’t. I promise. And when you do need something, I feel like I’m more confident buying the jacket or whatever from the company that makes it instead of sitting through a thousand knock offs and hoping I picked the right one among all the AI written reviews and titles.
Maybe it’s buying a new PC, but it’s been awhile since I am excited to get a package. I got most of the parts off other websites, and did get a new monitor on Amazon and was nowhere near excited about it.
There was no build up in waiting for it to come in. With Amazon I just like “it’ll come in in two days”, but with my other parts I’m repeatedly checking the delivery time, planning out what to do when X part comes in, etc.
Prime video just isn’t all that good and it sounds like ads are coming and shipping is still free over like $25.
Only reason to have prime is if you also have their credit card and order a decent amount of stuff there and/or shop at whole foods a lot for the 5% back. Otherwise it does add up at all.
I’m really stingy when it comes to subscriptions and honestly paying for anything at all that I don’t have to. But the few things that I and the wife are happy to drop a dime on are Prime, Netflix and unlimited cable and cell data. I got the Verizon NF and Starz deal last year, 1 year for both for $74 and I watch NF constantly. Every day. I’d pay $20/month for it easily. Similarly I’m always buying shrapnel on Prime. I know I could live without it but it’s essential enough to us to warrant the outlay.
I can’t live with Amazon, so I NEVER use them out of principle.
‘surprisingly easy’ is laughable because I have never lived with Amazon prime
Exactly, it’s like people are addicted to Amazon, like they need therapy to get out of an addiction.
Amazon sucks, it’s a toxic company, just don’t do it!
Its sur… ok its not that surprising to me that so many people shop with a company that is so terrible to its workers and for the climate.
hey, its €2 cheaper on amazon, what do I care if their workers aren’t allowed to unionize
It’s basically like taking that €2 out of the pocket of a worker, essentially.
.
I cancelled my prime because free “2 day” was actually 3-4 day shipping despite living 8 minutes from a distribution center. Among other reasons too but my shipping times haven’t changed much. Maybe an extra day or two now since their probably creating an artificial delay for non prime members.
I have prime for the no rush shipping. Every time I delay my same day or next day shipping to the 3-4 day no rush shipping I get a few dollars of digital credits which I use to buy ebooks. Over the course of a year it essentially pays for the cost of prime with free books I would have bought anyway.
I have never not been able to pirate a book, if you’re interested. Book piracy is super super easy
I only support book piracy because most of that money goes to a publisher anyways, and Amazon gives credits because they take a huge cut anyways when people do pay out of pocket.
Yo ho!
The hoops people jump through to justify why this way of getting free shit doesn’t hurt anybody is nuts lol.
Trust me when I say music artists, writers, and anybody else selling their creative arts are getting most their money through direct sales. Having to justify your theft by saying you’re stealing more from a nameless corp instead of the person who created it doesn’t mean shit. You aren’t Robin Hood.
You’re hopefully just stealing from someone who won’t notice because you’re hopefully too poor and they’re hopefully too rich.
I’ve cancelled several years ago because I rarely buy anything online outside of games so it’s just not worth it (also Prime Video’s selection sucks ass)
The bastards still try to charge me about 4 times a year and I have to do a charge back with my bank.
Also if I ever have to actually buy something through amazon, even if I specifically tell the fuckers not to add prime to my account, they do it anyway.
Fuck Amazon.
Just use privacy.com and set the card to disabled. Then you don’t have to worry about charges.
I just bought new name brand tires from Amazon for $200 cheaper per tire than my local tire shop was selling them, and about 80 cheaper than other online stores that I checked. Plus free shipping.
Hate Amazon or not, they do still have good deals and free shipping for certain items is huge. Plus they ALWAYS have better selection than any local or big box store.
Was the brand name SZZXYY?
Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, 275/35/19
I dropped Scamazon Slime a long time ago when I figured out they were not meeting their 2 day shipping promise. I really have never missed it.
I hate Amazon for a variety of reasons, but I can’t you seriously after you said scamazon slime.
I can't you either.
Twinklebreeze.
I can both of you.
The can is the seriously we along the way
I’ll beach you all off
Ooo, yes please
I accidentally the whole of you both..
Oh. That’s like visiting Canada for a bit, where ‘prime’ usually feels like a week.
Prime used to mean something. Guaranteed 2 day shipping with no minimum for no extra charge. $5 for next day shipping. Then next day disappeared. Then the 2 day guarantee disappeared. Then delivery times were in the 3-5 day range for most things. Then, in my university town, around the time of students returning to school for terms it would be 1-2 weeks. I’m not paying an ever increasing annual fee for that.
Yeah it has definitely gotten worse outside urban centers, but there it’s actually gotten better with same day shipping options on orders over $35. I can impulse buy shit at work and it’s there when I get home.
Back then, Amazon was the shit. My GF at the time and I cancelled our Costco membership because shipping was good and selection was better.
Now, Amazon is shit. And now back to buying in-store whenever possible. And got a Costco membership again.
I have a running cart in my Amazon and about once every two weeks I’ll hit the purchase button.
Just not worth it anymore.
I literally had an Amazon CSR tell me “Prime” shipping was an estimate
I live in an area where lots of stuff can get there same day or overnight which has legitimately saved my ass a bunch of times. If it was just 2 day I would definitely consider cancelling, especially now that prime video has ads.
same. i feel gross using it but it’s literally figuratively magic being able to lie in bed, realize i need a specific cable for something, order it on my phone, and have it the next morning
sometimes i’ll try to go to an actual store instead, but then often they won’t have the specific thing, or it’ll be out of stock, or they’ll only have expensive ones, and either way i have to drive there and back and talk to the guy which is a pain
What things do you all need so fast? The convenience is undeniable, but once I forced myself to stop using them i found I don’t actually need to sacrifice my morals and the planet to get something the next morning
I canceled my prime subscription when it was announced they would be putting ads on prime video. I don’t even use prime video but I cancelled out of principle.
Same here. It’s a future that I don’t want. Ads everywhere and you cannot escape.
Same. The shipping was still 2 days or more to my location. No point.
Same. Gonna have to find some way of pirating the shows I ‘purchased’ on prime so that I can still go back to them.
I think that you can still watch them.
If you link your account to Vudu, Google, and Movies Anywhere they should appear on the other platforms I believe?
Oooh, I did not know that!
Duh?
dropped it when they sent me the emails about adding ads, gf was halfway through a season of supernatural though so set it to expire at the end of the month.
they just took the next payment anyway and carried on my subscription. i had to go on again, cancel… again, and get a refund.
slimey sneaky bezos had his fingers in my wallet
Yup. I stopped using Amazon for anything but maybe searching the closest thing to a unified search engine for goods, and when I find good information or a product I need, I will find somewhere else to buy it.
Turn Amazon into a search engine. Buy somewhere else.
.
You mean to tell me Amazon prime hasn’t been around since the dawn of life on earth???
TBH, the games and books provide enough worth for me. Got the newest Dean Koontz book at the beginning of this month.
I been anti-amazon for about 5 years now.
Nothing lost or needed. If I need something I go to local store to find it.
My only issue with Amazon is tools that uses their cloud services and Twitch. But since last December I decided to switch to YouTube with ad blocker.
Planning on de-google and de-microsoft within the next two years.
There’s weird stuff I can’t find anywhere else or they’re on sites that I don’t trust my payment info with. Otherwise, planning ahead takes care of shipping times.
I use privacy.com to guard my actual payment data. Works amazibg
Just be aware of the Plaid issue!
programming.dev/comment/4986651
This have a simple solution: generate a virtual credit card with just the amount you need for the transaction.
yeah same for me, about five years.
it’s not just that i can still get what i need. it’s also that i just ‘need’ way less shit.
i think i realized i had a problem when my brother in law made fun of me for having an 8-port USB charger on my bedside table (with a single cable for my phone plugged into it).
I’ve never had one. I’ve never bought anything from Amazon.
I’m fine.
I get the 1 month free trial every 9 months or so lol
I had amazon prime for free for 10 years. It was free for students back then. Then i finished uni and they never bothered to check. This went on for a very long time. Only 2 years ago they killed the subscription and i never subscribed again.
I’ve been living without it my whole life so I guess it’s possible
Just wait till you need to buy enough stuff to hit the $35 minimum for free delivery. It takes a maximum 4-5 days for stuff to arrive but sometimes they can arrive as early as 2 days. I never went on prime after my free trial.
I only activates prime with the 30 days trial when I bought a TV that didn’t have free shipping otherwise. Canceled it the day when the TV arrived to my home.
I’ve done that 30 day free trial thing about three times, they caught on to me and started to make it extremely difficult to cancel. So I don’t do that anymore. I just endure the long shipping times and it’s no big deal. I don’t need Amazon prime for anything, I don’t watch movies or whatever else the heck promises they promise. I don’t need it.
I do the same, it is not worth it. Ans they even ship big things now for free, so the wait of a couple of days is ok with me too.
I decided to not renew my amazon prime account when it expired in November. I did end up using Amazon once since then. Products on Amazon are overpriced, in addition to the annual fee. I didn’t feel like I was getting my money’s worth. I didn’t like that there were ads on prime video, or fees for grocery delivery that used to be included in the annual fee.
I found a bento box at Marshall’s for about $6-7, and the exact same one on amazon for $20-25. Also fuck Bezos and the exploitation of workers, and Amazon’s aggressive union busting. and they stole Amazon fresh delivery peoples tip money.
Who the hell has a prime subscription? Bigger question is how to live without using amazon at all. We need some kind of improved
In my country I can finally start to pay vendors by wiring money instantly without the need for third party payment services. Fucking banks took their sweet time. All this inefficiency basically leads to a tax on all internet commerce that empowers people like Musk or Thiel via paypal.
Someone shared THIS LINK a couple of weeks ago and it hit me hard. Keep swiping.
I haven’t bought anything off of Amazon for a decade, I get most stuff used, refurbished or not at all.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
stuff
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Honestly ridiculous state of things we have got to, that the majority of wealth in the world is owned by a group of people so small they can’t even fill a relatively small 2-aisle airplane
Muthafuckas act like they forgot about eBay. But seriously, shipping times and prices are often better and they’ve always sided with me with refunds, even when sellers tried to pull sketchy shit.
It’s a joke unless you need something overnighted or next day and as a bonus - it will usually be improperly packaged and delivered with malice.
Prime Video catalogue is a pale shadow of what it used to be. Exclusives have dwindled. Now they want 3 bucks for no ads on top of paying for Prime? Naw.
Counterfeits are everywhere. That’s what Aliexpress is for (half joking). Frequently have to check the manufacturer’s site when pricing or picture seems dubious.
One delivery driver commandeers our neighbors’ empty driveway, swings the back doors open and blasts shitty pop music at full volume while fumbling through deliveries for 30 minutes every other day.
Buying direct is now often the same price more or less and you can get in a week anyway for negligible shipping price. Or even free shipping if you spend x amount.
So we cancelled too.
Yup, it’s so easy now to buy direct. Same price, same shipping, no counterfeits. One of the things that was really annoying me about Amazon was how often my “new” item was so obviously already opened and returned, often with parts missing. I cancelled and haven’t looked back.
Amazon is bad at packaging books lately. I’d say 1/3 orders are damaged. My last one was both misprinted and the envelope was unsealed, so the book arrived bent, wet, and blurry.
Yep mine are always floating around in the boxes, dogeared and cosmetically damaged. They can’t even get their original core service right.
Edit: Just ordered a roofing tool. Was shipped the tool packaging and the pieces of the box from them tearing it open to steal. But it was carefully supported with packaging material this time. Hilarious.
Ordering anything off Amazon takes like a week minimum here with insane shipping costs, prime or not, while ordering from any local store you usually get it the next day or the day after that for like 2 euros for shipping max.
Amazon Prime is the biggest scam.
My family holds a prime membership and recently I’ve been seeing how long I could go for without needing to use it. Most things I was able to purchase on eBay. Most recently, I decided to buy pen stuff and JetPens was a good option. However they needed like $50 or something for free shipping so I splurged a little. The one pen ink refill I needed (Jetstream Prime SXR 600 0.5) was way too expensive on both jetpens and ebay so I had to purchase it on Amazon. Nonetheless, I think you can still buy on amazon without a membership so maybe deal with the longer shipping times but that’s no biggie.
I’ve wanted to get a nice pen for a while. Checked out JetPens. $800 for a fountain pen 💀. I’ll stick to Amazon for now
Edit: So I went back and looked through more of their stuff and third party pens found a starter pen, the LAMY Safari for $37. Now we’re talking haha.
Bruh. I make pens as a hobby. Happy to make and ship you one. <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5e1fcd3b-3ace-4410-9341-dfe25ff8a36a.jpeg">
I still have the three on the right and the third from the left on hand. Can also make whatever.
The stripey one, second from the right is recycled skateboard deck. Those have been really popular. I’ve got a big ol’ stack of skateboard decks ready to go to make more of them :D
Off topic, but as a pen lover - those are lovely! Especially enjoyed the second two from the left.
I still have the third one available. I’m asking $50 for it, with free shipping to the continental US. It’s padauk, canarywood, katalox, and leopardwood with an aluminum inlay and a cyanoacrylate finish…
How much for the ol bolt action?
The bolt action is wenge with a oil/wax blend friction polished finish. I’m asking $100 for it with free shipping to anywhere in the continental US. It comes with a free black faux-velvet sleeve for safekeeping.
I will ship internationally, but that’s not included, sadly.
Man you must post these in the pen subs please. One of these days I’ll buy one from you.
There’s a pen sub? I was on r/penturning on that other place.
!fountainpens@lemmy.world
!pensandpaper@lemmy.ml
Those are fantastic, thank you for sharing!! I just bought my first cheapo fountain pen and I find it really intriguing. If I stick with it, I’d definitely consider buying one from you. Do you have an online store somewhere, or could I just DM you in the future to see about buying one?
No online store. I just do it as a hobby. Feel free to dm me whenever.
I get Prime for free as part of a subscription I have to something else. Otherwise I would be hard pressed to subscribe. It has driven up our impulse purchase amounts, though. My eldest daughter got hooked on that shit for half a year. She needed literal detox in a clinic hahaha j/k
Joking aside, retail therapy is a thing. Some people shop when they are lonely/bored. Ask my exwife.
Holy carp… I do believe that. My condolences about your marriage. I don’t even consider myself invulnerable. I have barely scratched the surface of what’s on Amazon. I could one day stumble upon a whole universe of knick knacks that I would find immensely desirable. Everyone has a point of failure, it’s all about finding that button to push!
I agree. Unsubscribed to Prime and Netflix. I’m not missing anything. Good riddance.
My wife has it and exceedingly rarely I’ll ask her to order something for me on it because it’ll be the best price/quality/feature ratio I can find or it’s just like one small cable and that’s the only place I’ll get free shipping but that’s also extremely rare.
I do have the luck of living somewhere with countless alternatives, and they all deliver next day for free most of the time, maybe a limit of 20€ and over or something.
This is news to whom? Many “Prime” items don’t even get to you in 24 hours as they used to claim.
I come out ahead in a sense without Prime because if I pay for overnight, it’s late 80% of the time. I get the shipping refunded and the item arrives before the Free Shipping deadline.
Yeah, just wait until amazon finds a way to legally force non-prime users in the US (since EU probably wouldn’t be having any of that bull) to have to wait an extra week or 2 before your packages arrive.
Also, I had a strange sense of déjà vu while writing this comment. I know I haven’t seen this post/article before, but both it and this comment are giving me major déjà vu.
Lmao it’s surprisingly easy to live without AMAZON.
Eh. I live in the middle of nowhere. It’s fucking awesome cat litter comes delivered cheaper than the store 40 miles away.
Good luck using the internet without using AWS.
Prime is extra useless here, except for maybe the free shipping. Overnight shipping is the default here for all webshops, except Amazon lol.
Imagine being subscribed to a shop. Wtf?
The exact opposite is true in many cases. Many shops want to subscribe to me, but so far, only two shops have earned that privilege. They give me discounts, and I carry two extra cards with me.
Costco can be worth it
I just genuinely don’t understand why people think it’s necessary. I use Prime once a year and it’s when my boss gives me a gift card for Christmas. I guess I just don’t understand what the typical person is buying every single month from Amazon to warrant a subscription - I know 1 or 2 people buying cat litter every month and having it delivered, but why? Just go to the store! I love in a rural town and I still trek to the store. Maybe if you have mobility issues or something but I just don’t get it. Probably just the anti-consumer in me.
Buying cat litter when you also need diapers and have to shop with a baby in tow? I’ll be anti-consumer next year.
Plot twist! By then you will need a second job to fund your child’s Need for Robux.
That’s easier to boycott than diapers, my friend.
I have yet to witness a fulfilled life that is not flush with 20 Robux a week.
/S just in case people thought I gave more than two craps about Roblox.
Maybe I’ve always just felt a Roblox-shaped hole in my heart.
Subscribing to deliveries typically gives a discount, which makes the cost cheaper than going to the store and removes wear & tear on your vehicles and your own gas costs.
Depending on what kind of litter you want, the store might not even carry it. My cat litter is from a major brand, but is one that doesn’t get as much in stock at my local places and when itis in stock, it’s rarely the cheaper, larger box, so that also increases the cost.
Cat litter is fucking heavy. I don’t blame anyone wanting it delivered to their door.
I buy from Bezoco maybe once or twice a year, if I really can’t find something anywhere else, and they always, always offer a free Prime trial.
If you don’t know this already: you can cancel the Prime trial immediately and still get the full 30 days (or week or whatever) out of it.
I found out that even without prime the delivery speed is sometimes the same here in Germany. They say it would take 1-2 days longer but quite often my amazon packages arrived early. Same for packaging cost. Sometime they adverdise the 0€ shipping costs with prime but it literally is also 0 without prime. I mean they are not lying, just not telling the whole truth xD
I kind of live without it by paying for it once a year and then you know, that’s it. What’s all the fuss about.
For the same price, you could buy so much else. For example, an old but still usable office PC. Every year.
I can buy PC for 12 USD? That’s a totally crazy idea.
For that much for sure I can’t buy many games, access to numerous movies and TV shows, additional Twitch sub and I don’t know what else they have. Frankly the Amazon store is the least important thing to me in this package.
Oddly enough I still might not get it, as that company definitely has become pretty fucky.
$140. I said every year, not every month.
.
I swear to God I’m losing it… It cost for me 12 USD per year in Poland.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4d4c02c2-d44d-4ffb-b1b1-8086876b4023.jpeg">
Am I looking at the wrong thing?
I forgot to consider the price could be different outside of the US.
That’s not different, that’s ludicrous. I don’t understand.
Americans have more propensity to consume than Poles. Amazon sees this and prices accordingly to maximize profit. It’s the same reason why games were sold in Argentina for $5 when they were $60 in the US.
I’m one of those people who always hated amazon, but since moving out to a rural area without a car it ends up a lot easer, quicker and often cheaper to get most of what I need from there :(
No shit that it’s easy to live with marginally slower (but still really pretty fast) shipping and access to a second-tier streaming service.
It’s pretty much the definition of a luxury purchase.
But how will I recycle 3 tons of cardboard a year?
The cardboard I don’t mind, it’s the packing pillows that I mind (better than the old fashion packing peanuts or bubble wrap, from a recycling perspective). I bring them to Publix for recycling because my local waste company doesn’t recycle most plastics. I suspect Publix isn’t either, but it’s better to try than to just throw them away.
Amazon moved a distribution center near me and now I basically get what prime delivery used to get me without prime. I can still get free shipping so long as my cart total is high enough, and I think that will remain because even independent retail websites and shippers offer that, so Amazon doesn’t want to give people more reason to use them less. Getting rid of prime was easier than soooooo much other stuff I’ve ditched.
I think it actually costs Amazon money to have separate shipping plans for prime and non-prime, and artifically holding goods later costs warehouse space. I suspect the dirty secret is that prime is no different to normal shipping now.
They constantly deliver ahead of schedule for me and I assume it’s exactly because of what you said. They can deprioritize non prime shipments but at some point it just doesn’t make sense, and infact costs money to not move it. Why spend wearhouse space on already sold goods when you could fill that space with things that can make you money you haven’t received yet.
This may be true at the moment, but Amazon can control how shitty the non-prime experience is.
Personally, I’m trying to avoid Amazon altogether. It’s much worse now, and flooded with cheap defective shit. I’ve also been noticing that a lot of manufacturers don’t sell on Amazon (guessing Amazon takes a big cut).
My retired mother was trying to look for a new Nintendo Switch dock for my niece. She asked me if she was looking at the right one on Amazon and showed me one with a picture of a real looking Nintendo Switch dock except the logo was blurred out.
I scrolled through the Amazon results and was having trouble figuring which was the real one. instead I went to the official Nintendo store and sent her the link to the switch dock from there.
Amazon is really a horrible user experience for buying anything that isn’t cheap junk.
Your retired mother is the ultimate Amazon mark. Like you said, Amazon is full of sellers with photoshopped images of shitty Chinese knock offs. Regular people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You basically have to be a forensic expert in your chosen field to have any luck on Amazon.
The main trick is checking the seller. Certain ones are very reliable for used-but-good things like dvds/books. And you just use amazon for the shipping part.
But even these days they use another shipping company.
For your used things for sure, the seller being reputable and the items being less common works well. Common items (like that knock off Switch dock above) that can be faked are tough because even if you buy product X from seller A, all product Xs can be in the same bin at the warehouse and Amazon just grabs one and ships. if Seller B is pushing a hard-to-distinguish knock off that Amazon believes is product X, then one might end up with that one and think seller A is to blame. That sort of mistake is definitely Amazon’s fault in my view. You can end up with knock off stuff when buying from the official brand’s store on Amazon for crying out loud.
.
.
The quality of good is the big thing for me, and you can’t discriminate through the reviews. They are all astroturfed.
Basically, if I can buy from anywhere else, then I will, but finding goods out there is harder now that web search is shit.
actually READ the reviews you can usually tell which ones are legit. and read the lowest ones first.
Amazon takes 50% on average now
www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/…/445043
They’re only cutting fees in categories competing with Shein
businessinsider.com/amazon-reduced-seller-fees-to…
They also halted doing returns when the product is faulty. I guess there was some sort of scam going on over Christmas where a bunch of shitheads claimed items didn’t arrive so they could get money back but it’s no reason for Amazon to take it out on legit customers when it’s a simple return entry. It’s like they suddenly forgot they were online and can simply remove a line of code to avoid the scam entirely.
I get gift cards for Amazon because I used survey apps that pay me money and I have made quite a bit. So Amazon stuff is always free stuff for me basically. But Prime is worthless. Prime Video has absolutely nothing worth watching, and last week I ordered hair dye on my husband’s Prime account on Saturday and it didn’t arrive until Thursday, so what’s the point?
Prime video has two things. The Boys and Reacher. Nothing else.
Good Omens was enjoyable, and I do like the Henry Rollins special, but nothing I couldn’t live without.
The Expanse!
Wait, you can actually get those gift cards from survey apps? Every time I tried them, it took so long to get those points that I just gave up.
Qmee is excellent actually. I usually make 5 bucks a day and it adds up. I also use Attapoll, Leger Opinion, and Survey Spin. I’ve bought myself a ton of stuff this way.
Gonna give those a try, thanks
The only time I use Amazon is when I’m shopping for PC parts and they’ve got the best deal (maybe one part every 3 years) or if they’re the only source for something like an obscure PCB or whatever. Aside from that, it’s really not helpful. People who have their regular weekly shipments are wild to me. So much easier to just get everything you need at the grocery store in one fell swoop every week. Don’t even get me started on Prime shipping when I live in the same city as a distribution center. Prime Video is aids.
be careful with pc parts, even processors are being faked (they use a lower model and engrave it as if it is the higher model)
Good to know! I rarely shop on Amazon these days, I’d much rather buy PC parts from a brick and mortar retailer anyway.
I’ve only used Amazon to buy obscure raspberry pi stuff that isn’t available within a 3000 km radius. Also, roomba spare parts are fine too. If I want something else, I’ll just walk to the nearest store and buy it there. I’ve always wondered why do people want to buy stuff from Amazon or even pay extra to get the prime stuff.
I had an issue recently where they sent me the wrong item (it was coded wrong in their system- their fault) and when I contacted support they wanted me to either be at home for an entire day for them to pick up the item or have me take it to a drop off location for them, then wait for several weeks for the return to be processed.
Prime Video was nice, but I don’t like the move with including ads. Since they fucked me over as a linux user by using dumb DRM, I don’t really miss it.
Shipping: same as the author. I will likely get used to increased wait time. Shipping was never my main use case.
I will miss my free monthly twitch subscription. So I will likely not support my favorite streamer anymore (via twitch sub at least).
I’ll see how it goes. But fuck the industry for their ad-ridden shit tour. I will rip any service out of my life that tries that bullshit.
The Prime shipping isn’t really any faster most of the time, in my experience. I don’t bother with paying for Prime but once in awhile they offer it for free and I’ll take the offer and order a few things.
Prime sub is the only thing keeping me from cancelling, I watch Kitboga exclusively and paying for the yearly sub is almost as much as paying for prime.
I cancelled Amazon prime a few years ago. Amazon was never able to honor the next day or even two day shipping so I cancelled.
Technically, for me, there was no change in shipping speed for me cancelling prime
I used to travel a lot for work and needed deliveries on specific days. Amazon guaranteed delivery days were crap.
I know a guy who actually got an official response from Amazon about that. Their response was “We guarantee 2 day shipping once the items are shipped. We may not start shipping for a day or two depending on how busy we are.”
i had the same experience.
I wait for “try prime for 30 days” offers. I’ll sign up for it, instantly cancel it to prevent recurring bills, and then order whatever it was I was thinking of over the last six months. Because once upon a time I’d be on Amazon all the time, browsing this and that, but it has become such a cesspool that I infrequently bother. If I wanted to wade through a sea of Chinese OEM crap and counterfeit products, then I might as well use Aliexpress and be done with it.
Is saving $6 on shipping really worth waiting 6 months to buy the thing?
depends on the thing, really
I just wouldn’t be able to wait that long for that little savings.
If you can wait 6mo you might not need it. Save all the money.
if I’m waiting for 6 months it’s for something that has no pressing need, but if I’m still thinking about it in 6 months will probably bring enough joy to my life that it’s worth the investment.
‘Please allow 6-8 weeks shipping from Pueblo, Colorado…’
I had prime for maybe a year or something, but it just seems daft to pay more to avoid shipping charges when half the things ship free anyhow. Buying things remotely through the mail or whatever used to take weeks to get to you and there was no tracking to sit there monitoring the arrival in real time. It sucked, so people would buy things from the store nearby and skip all that. Now take your amazonian primates and get off my lawn…
But then I also pay for shipping separately
.
Not when you order over a certain dollar amount.
I just order from aliexpress. 10 day shipping (to canada) is worth the ~30% discount and the mask-off, low-cost chinese product offering. I’m sick of getting ripped off by useless garbage with 5 stars from amazon.
And Jeff, I am coming for you.
When the revolution comes, you won’t even be able to get to your car to drive to jeff before his housekeeper beats him to death with a dyson.
We just dropped Prime a month or so ago and I can’t see ever getting it again.
It actually makes your life better!
I’ll go further, I stopped using Amazon entirely and I don’t miss it.
The junky shopping experience is especially clear once you leave and come back.
I only ever order books from amazon anymore, and usually only when I get a gift card or a product isn’t for sale elsewhere.
The prices aren’t even that good anymore.
if you want to try an Amazon alternative of books, try ThrifBooks, they have new books as well as used ones
www.thriftbooks.com
Most of the books I buy are reference books, that site actually has a decent stock, thanks!
There’s a great website called geizhals.de which gives you a price comparison for a lot of different online stores for each product and there are almost always multiple stores that sell it cheaper than Amazon.
Do you know an English version or alternative?
Don’t you have a local one where you live? Here, we have two good large (non English) comparison sites that everyone knows about.
Not that I know of, that’s why I was asking.
I thought those existed everywhere.
The more you know.
They probably do, but I don’t know about them.
Unfortunately not
How nice for you. you must live near a metropolis and have much time on your hands and not living with something impacting your ability to leave the house. You must have multiple sources for products are already in your area because in many parts of the world amazon is supplying many things that are not sold even at local brick and mortars. And many people who live in disabilities/injuries/disease to not be able to go very far without passing out while they receive home treatment.
Jesus, they were just saying that they themselves don’t miss it, not that no one should ever use it, no need for all the snarky sarcasm.
I will remind you the title of the post ‘it’s surprisingly easy to live’ - no. It isn’t. Representation matters. when people start speaking their experiences for application: Other experiences should count too. You don’t silence me just on unapproval or ‘not shared experiences’ alone. Stop the ableism.
I agree with you that those with disabilities and those in isolated areas rely on it, but you didn’t reply to the post - you replied to that comment. I’m not being ableist, but pointing out that you replied to a person who was just stating that they themselves can live without it. The person you replied to wasn’t being ableist either.
don’t tell me what to do. That’s all.
I never gave you a directive, just pointed out that there is no need for the snarky sarcasm.
I mean, the junky shopping experience isn’t unique to Amazon. You could find it in Walmart and TJ Maxx and any number of other low-income retailers a decade ago.
But that’s largely a result of the pivot to Planned Obsolescence as a universal standard for consumer products. Things are junk because if they don’t degrade in quality you won’t be inclined to buy new ones. Your shoddy kitchen appliances break after a couple of years. Your electronics die just in time for a new release. Your IKEA furniture can’t be disassembled without destroying the particle board its made from, so you need something new every time you change residences. Everything from your AC unit to your car radio to your dishwasher is designed to fail inside ten years, because that’s how business gets you back in line to shop.
Greedflation, baby. Everyone’s got to justify their existence with steadily increasing profits.
That’s because they have been forcing suppliers/sellers to raise their prices.
How so?
Amazons average take is over 50%, so naturally it’s not cheap to sell on.
they got busted doing it
Shop local, it’s actually quite fun
Must be nice if you can leave the house without need for concern while receiving home treatment for disease/injury and your local brick and mortars actually do hold the products you need.
These aren’t personal shots at you bud.
Then stop with the public lecturing.
Why don’t you stop doing the exact same thing you want others to stop doing?
What: representing minorities where they are ignored? No. You won’t silence me. All experiences matter. Even ones you don’t share in. It’s a far cry on ordering other people around “Shop local” on what to do with their life as if they all fit the same standard experience. Not even the same planet of existence. So you can go huff your farts through your empty comparisons for a shitty red herring argument. That is some bad actor Bullshit to try to silence me as if they are even remotely compared that I shouldnt reply to an absent minded direct order like that. Neglect minorities and order me around. Nope. Fuck that. Not on my watch. You get the full brunt of this argument if you think you can order me around. Fuck that poorly thought out action all the way up a mountain.
As the famous words go; standards are good, double standards are double as good.
What you are essentially doing is that you are publicly lecturing people on public lecturing. The very same thing you despise, you’re doing yourself.
The cause is lost the very same second that you cross your own line.
You dig a good hole for someone with an injury.
Don’t tread on me.
You do on others so fuck off lol
I’m sorry you’re in that situation and I would probably be bitter too
.
I’ve never had prime and never felt the need to get it. I don’t order frequently from them so, when I do, I can hit the free shipping minimum easily. I have no problem waiting a bit extra for shipping. When they do get around to shipping my stuff, it usually takes just a day or two to get here.
I’ve never used any of the prime benefits other than free shipping when I had a big free trial. I forgot about it and I started getting charged, and immediately cancelled.
If I bundle my orders into $35+ ones, I still get free shipping. And with Amazon getting crappier and greedier each year, I get less and less there and more on other online marketplaces.
I haven’t used prime in idk how long. 2 day shipping hasn’t been 2 days or even 4 days in years now. Every order with or without prime is at least a week. The only reason I use Amazon is ordering odd ball stuff you can’t find in a store or the price difference is substantial enough to justify. I never need to pay for shipping since if I’m ordering it’s a bulk order of stuff I need and it’s free shipping over $25. I hate Amazon but i also gotta get by some how
Is this satire?
I know right. It’s not like they’re going without a toilet or something.
Amazon have slowly destroyed all their products over the last few years out of sheer greed. They’re the poster boy for enshittification.
Basically a “it works for me but not for some people” statement. Such a waste of my time to have read that.
You’re kidding right? Are there actually people thinking they just can’t live without Amazon Prime? Seriously? Fuck even if you HAVE to order something off of Amazon, which you absolutely don’t HAVE to do, you don’t fuckin need prime just for… what… slightly faster shipping?
On the contrary, during the great formula shortage of 2021/2022, Amazon Prime and the recurring delivery option was the only way I was able to get formula for my twins. Speed was important l, but so was Amazon’s huge supply chain.
Since then, we live in a remote place and getting some stuff just isn’t possible at the one store near us. Amazon is really one of the best ways to get things we need. Now, of course, I hate them, but I also hate Walmart and don’t really have choices beyond those or a gas station convenience store.
The practices of those businesses, and people choosing them over other options, is exactly why you don’t have other choices now
And what should they do now? Protest it by not having any formula? Don’t victim blame
I agree. Buy formula, but not non-essential knick knacks that can be purchased for the same price on another website
And when the other website costs more, has worse return policies, slower shipping, and possibly is even a scam site? The problem with Amazon is how good it is even when it’s being evil.
As I said elswhere, I look EVERYWHERE before Amazon first. That involves me checking out BBB on mom&pop storefronts and trying to filter out the scam stores or the ones with significant issues. It involves me price-checking, coupon-checking, seeing if services like Rakuten can get the price to match Amazon’s. I don’t expect most people to do all those things and neither should you.
And even then, I end up buying from Amazon about 2/3 the time. Because I won’t pay 20% more in some meaningless protest that isn’t going anywhere.
I’m not blaming them. I acknowledged they may not have any other choice. Just pointing out the harms for the benefit of anyone with the option to do something about it
sorry twins – daddy isn’t a puppet of capitalism
It’s an extreme-case prisoner’s dilemma. For shoppers to prevent a Walmart/Amazon monopoly, people would have to both give up convenience AND affordability in hope that everyone else had the same radical values. There were PLENTY of boycotters for both, but they just weren’t anywhere near enough.
At some point, when you’re starving and Sam Walton comes by and offers you food your family can afford, you pull the trigger. And I don’t fault someone who does that.
For real. It would obviously be better if they didn’t use such destructive and predatory practices, but “vote with your dollars” isn’t an option for a lot of the people these businesses earn most of their money from.
It turns out that there is, in fact, a case to be made for regulation and labor organizations in these situations.
Free shipping, but at that point you should question why you are buying so much from amazon in the first place
$25 gets you free shipping anyways unless they changed it!
Might be 35 bucks now. Can’t remember.
It’s the Walmart problem. People buy from Amazon because they can’t afford some necessities at MSRP when going to a local store.
Some of the stuff I can get in bulk on Amazon are as much as 50% cheaper than getting those same things in bulk from a restaurant supply (which is cheaper than buying them at a grocery store). And that’s before Subscribe&Save’s 15% off. Coffee (for example) costs would drive me into the poor house if I didn’t get my beans from Amazon… and I end up getting higher quality beans than my grocery store at that lower price.
Do I NEED coffee to live? No. But it’s not exactly a luxury in the modern world, and beans are much cheaper than going to Dunkin. There are things I buy that I need; there are things that I buy that I want. And as much as I hate it, most of them are not available locally or are FAR more expensive locally. I never go to Amazon first, but I very often find myself landing at Amazon last.
And yes, that doesn’t justify Prime on its own. But because I have Prime, I get those things that I couldn’t find cheaper elsewhere the very next day. Prime will never be necessary when there’s free shipping options, but boy have they packed it out with more features than (for example) Walmart’s subscription model.
Here’s what I get with Prime that I appreciate:
I mean, a lot of it I could get on the High Seas as it were, but it’s the law of convenience. They make it easy and there’s a value prop there for me.
If I JUST wanted free shipping, Prime would be a complete waste of money to me. But I’d still end up giving Amazon my damn paycheck because the alternatives are just not there where I live.
Interesting. For me it’s the other way round 😂 The games are on their app (nope, thanks) or epic (no thanks). The digital goodies are only nice if you game any of those. The tv stuff is the worst I’ve seen back when i actually paid for my series/movies. Rarely nothing there and the interesting stuff still asked for money.
Books i can’t judge… I have a tolino full of epubs 😁
Their app is surpisingly fair. No inherent DRM, just click “download” and it downloads. Epic… well, I have 100+ games I got for free, so I have it anyway. I probably have a $1000 collection of “free” games on Epic at this point.
With all the subscription services, I think that’s the rule. If you like what they have, you love it. If not, you go elsewhere. At least Prime is cheaper than some of them, but at the end of the day it’s about the stuff you enjoy.
For me, it’s WoT, Reacher, Good Omens on top, along with a few of their FreeVee partnership shows. But I have to respect they also have The Boys, which I’ve been meaning to get into.
I mean, to me they beat Apple+ and Hulu, lose to Disney+ and Netflix. At $11/mo, I get all those things along with the expedited shipping and the books. Convenient, but also not overpriced.
Ok tbh i never tried the amazon app. But i doubt it just downloads and that’s it. No tracking? No phoning home? No play-statistics? Hmm
Yeah sure, we all got epic accounts filled with freebies. But i never heard of anyone actually using the app instead of maybe even playing one of those freebies and then quitting the app again 😁
Ok, they might indeed be the cheapest, thanks to the massive added value. Maybe it was a local thing? I tried watching like 3 things. And one i could rent, the others pay extra and i was like “wtf? This is prime? Fuckit”
And i didn’t mean to question your choice. It seems to be the best deal for you.
It just sucks that you’d need like 5 services and still can’t watch EVERYTHING. And in case of netflix (i assume that’s valid for the others too) we e. G. Only get 30% of what the muricans can watch. Same price. Or use a vpn.
I really tried being legit, but I’m back to *arr and emby. Not 10 bucks a month for 99% of everything. Did i mention netflix didn’t even work on any of my droids because of rooting? Fuck this.
I can’t be positive. I’ve never run any network traces on it. But it doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of service DRMs. No “connecting” popup or login prompt. I’ve played Amazon-downloaded games offline. If there’s a hidden DRM, it’s more-or-less obscured.
Let’s be honest, though. Amazon gives the games away for free in an app that will never be used to sell products; and they do it as a bullet-point for Prime and to nudge people towards Luna. It’s obviously the games they get for free that they give away. I see no reason for them to do more work than they have to, plugging in a DRM.
It’s hard to remember what games I got through Amazon vs Epic, but I clearly remember a few times I was excited about an Amazon Games offering added an Epic game.
In Amazon Games natively, my happy games are Autonauts, Terraformers, Close to the Sun (recently), and a few of those short adventure games I completed that nobody wants to spend $20 on but everyone loves to play.
Their rent thing sucks, but I *never *see rentals in front of me when I use Prime Video on my TV. I named 3 of their big exclusives, but there’s plenty more either exclusive or just licensed. It’s never the most awesome shows of any service, but I could still find a few hours per day of video if I tried.
Yeah, I’m with you 5000% on that. That’s where Gabe Newall is right. I’d probably be willing to drop drop $100/mo or more on a service if it had EVERYTHING on-demand, convenient, with no DRM of any kind. And I’d never once think to download-and-unsub or distribute or anything.
…as for your experience, I say wave that damn Jolly Roger. Gimme convenience or give me death. I pay because things are convenient for me. If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t be paying either.
Okay, guess my prejudice about the amazon app was a but premature grounded on misanthropic bitterness 😊 I retract that statement and stand corrected.
Oh autonauts. This i even bought on steam before it went for free. Still don’t regret. Still can’t recall a game i actually played on epic. Though i gotta admit i bought a looooot of games on steam.
Hm. Maybe i picked a bad bunch or had bad luck that one time i tried prime. It just never occurred as a prime (no pun intended) reason to pay… Errr… Prime.
I totally hear you on the convenience-point. Warez were never convenient. Just “free”. Yet, with a tiny amount of “work” (given you’re not a tech-illiterate) the sailing-seas-way is a child’s play nowadays. I enter the name of the series/movie, wait for the download (full speed 24/7)and simply watch it on emby with all comfort there is. From phone, tablet, laptop, desktop… My maintenance-time is below an hour per year (and i even love tinkering). All for below 19 bucks in the quality i prefer.
Dishing out 100 bucks would need a lot of benefits to convince me. Though i get you. Trading money for tinkering-time. All depends on our preference and skill and nerdiness 😂
Here’s a few of mine (not sure if any come from Amazon): Control (this was awesome!), shapez (almost bought it, then it was in my inbox), loop hero, Guardians of the Galaxy (Christmas free games), Outer Worlds (ditto), Evil WIthin 1 and 2, most of the fallout games, Death Stranding, Gloomhaven… I’m only on page 5 of 20 lol. Only 1 out of 5 of their free games are any good, but between big giveaways and the like, that’s still ~15 good free games a year lol. So needless to say, Epic is always installed on my computer.
Perhaps THE problem with Prime right now is that none of their services except maybe TV is worth $11/mo on its own. Their free games aren’t Humble Monthly, but HM is just games. Their TV isn’t Netflix, but it’s $4/mo cheaper. You can get free shipping without Prime now (that wasn’t true before), but next day is phenomenal. As for books, there’s not really any replacement I know of. It’s not perfect (has this annoying thing about having books 2 on in some series, without book 1), but if you read a book a month, it pays for itself.
For sure. It’s always been a baseline of convenience. I remember the old days of curating my mp3 collection every 6 months, removing dupes and fixing organizational shifting. But if I do that stuff for apps, I have to maintain freaking sandbox environments for each app, make sure my computer is backed up in case I have to wipe it, make sure nothing auto-logins so a remote attack doesn’t happen, etc. About 1 in 2 cracked apps show up as a virus and you can never know whether it’s a false positive, so you have to use a computer condom and then STILL get tested.
I’m in an ok place right now. And Amazon is still the cheapest place to buy anything, for me. If I spend over $1000/yr there on everything, a lot more if you count the holidays, then Prime has already justified itself. And slower or not, Amazon with Prime is STILL the fastest Christmas shipper.
Anecdote… We bought Ring cameras from the Ring site for a family member in November. By mid-December, they still hadn’t shipped because Christmas orders were so backlogged. So we bought them again on Amazon and they were on our doorstep 2 days later, just a couple days before Christmas. Was it next day? No. Was it worth it? YEAH.
Then we had to fight with Ring for 2 weeks because they wouldn’t cancel the order. We got the Cameras the 2nd week of January and my wife was on the phone with them 6 or 7 times before they finally approved a return. Amazon has this thing called “Free Returns” on most items. You can literally write in “I was drunk shopping” for your return reason and nobody bats an eyelash.
Aye, i’d second that list! Yet I usually have them on steam before they ever show on epic. So most of my epic-freebies i have twice in my library now. The tool “play-nite” is great for multi-library-gaming btw. includes gog, amazon, itch, ubi, steam, epic etc.
Still do that. For over 25yrs I nourish my library. Just the MP3s made room for FLACs.
Yeah ok, I get that. I’ve got 2 servers running 24/7 with proxmox/hyper-v, so those tools all run in seperate VMs. But especially in this case, it’s practically no maintenance. I’m still wondering why it works so flawlessly :-) As to the viral issue…I must say that i’m in the warez-scene since the early 90s and I never had a virus-problem. Ever. Though the majority is pure media, so no problem at all. And even if there should be a problem, I’ve got daily backups of everything. So I just go back to yesterday :-)
Totally worth it in that case. I spend like 600 bucks for a ton of stuff for wifey this xmas, and even though it took them a day longer than usual they all came on point. And prime paid itself quickly. Rest of the year it’s not that much, so I just surf on the usual trial or just use free shipping or just pay 3,99 if need be.
Aye, that’s totally my reason to shop at this fucking monster called amazon. No hassles, no worries, you get your crap the day they tell you, if you have ANY problem, you’re helped in 5 minutes at max. Dunno where you’re from, but we call our country “service-desert”. Some might be cheaper than amazon and it’s often tempting (my GPU was 2000,- elsewhere and 3000 on amazon…and i regret not using amazon), but if anything happens, you’re screwed and everything takes forever. Or they charge you extra fees, usage-fees, “this item isn’t defective and will be returned to you at your cost plus fee” etc. You just never have to worry. One gift we needed to return (glass broken), but as it classified as “food-item”, they told us to keep it and it will be refunded. Now we have 2 glass decanter for free instead of 3 for full-price. You won’t see that elsewhere here. No way. First you gotta prove it wasn’t YOU that broke it at home. I could on for hours…
I’ve used playnite a few times. I always forget about it for some reason or another. Gog has a built-in tool like playnite and I fail to use that, too.
I still have it somewhere I’m sure, but I really gave up on it, for the convenience of youtube music of all things. Literally every song I ever had including a couple super-obscure albums I’d lost. And it’s SO convenient. It just works for me everywhere I want it.
Every time I mean to start setting up servers, some reason (or my wife) talk me out of it. I’m jealous. It’s on my bucket list. I’m the only guy I know who has run server clusters professionally who has never had his own.
I have had a couple over the years; usually use the “nuke and restart” solution. Only one was REALLY major and I was never sure whether it was software or a dumb family member. My password-protected screenshare app went live one day and started buying Chinese gift cards with a clearly automated script. Thank god someone was in the office when it happened and they only got through a couple hundred dollars before we pulled the plug and called our bank.
I know resellers hate Amazon returns, but they agree to them. I will literally make buying decisions based on the presence or lack of the “Free Returns” flag. I would literally pay for “return insurance” if AllState started to do that, too. I hate return hassles.
Can’t complain about convenience. I use MediaMonkey since v0.1. It actually replaced my self-made music-archiver because it was simply superior and I couldn’t match it. And for mobile we just sync our favourite playlists and be completely mobile even when there’s no net. It’s the only serious tool for serious collectors :-)
lol. Sorry :) My wife actually talks me into it while I try to talk myself out of it (i’m a horrible cheap fuck). I actually managed to hook her on the smart-home, as she runs into walls now when the system is down because there is no light. We forgot how to use switches :-) Seriously though: You should. If you have some kind of passion for it, just do it. I don’t need it professionally anymore (long retired) but just love to keep up and tinker. And nothing beats a working self-hosted something.
Oucchhh. That could’ve gone bad. Ok, granted, with family members working on the same machine/network, danger rises. We have a global firewall and a global ad-/tracker/malware-blocker. Wifey often nags that some sites won’t work, and then it’s manual-fix-time for me, but so she can surf freely without fear. I don’t even have any virus-/malware-scanner-crap installed anymore for decades. I occasionally check manually if something’s hooked somewhere and that’s it. And when I’m really really really suspicious of something, there’s a sandbox. Honestly more “normal” software phone home and do shit i don’t want than warez ever did. Every effing software wants to phone home, install 3 services no-one needs and what not.
And don’t get me started on the “purchase software and own it” to “rent it for extortionate prices and never have anything”. It so became the standard everywhere. Wait…what were we originally even talking about? :-)
Totally. At least we have that mandatory 14-days-return-policy. Everywhere. BUT a merchant might reduce your cashback upon “usage signs”. Which are very subjective unless still sealed. But the reason for the law was to promote online-shopping. So you could check your product at home like you would in a shop. And return it if you don’t like it. But it all takes too long, in the end I only check amazon. Better the devil you know…i hate myself for that.
I think that’s one of the ones I tried. It’s just more convenient to have unlimited access to music, whether I own it or not.
What do you do for lights? Like motion/position detection into each room? Or voice control?
I’ve wanted to get into automation several times, and I’m never settled enough in a house to spend the money. There’s always some reason we want to move and I don’t want to do all that permanent work to move. I even worked at an IoT company for a few years on backend and embedded code, so I have literally no excuse…
Not sure where that is. That would be nice (except that they could reduce the cashback anyway). Consumer Protections these days have been eroding in the US. Even our so-called consumer protection laws have landmines to protect the businesses.
Yeah sure, I get it. I actually use Tidal Hifi. But not really for streaming but for downloading and discovering new music. Has its benefits for sure.
It’s mostly based on motion. If it’s dark enough in a room and you enter it, light goes into a - we call it motion-light - cyan. So it’s clear to us it’s automatic. If no motion after 2 minutes is detected it slowly fades out for like 20s so you got a chance to “renew” the light by moving. Unless you switch a scene on, then it just stays on. If you switch it off, the automatic mode is on again. Took a good while to fool-proof it :-)
Voice control too, yes. But also homebrew. No Alexa-shit or similar. Also control by watch, or even outside over telegram.
Oh dude, we moved like 5 times in the last 5 years :-) Good thing is, we take the stuff with us. I use zigbee, not wiring. Wiring is superior, but also very fixed. So yeah, I regularly have to place everything again and adapt the scripts a little bit. But nothing much changes actually. Just a lil more extra-work after moving. Awesome, for an IoT-company I would even consider working again :-)
Lol, excuses…It’s a time- and money-sink, there you have great excuses. Also at least once a month I have to tinker here and there, or change a battery. Since Star Trek i wanted a home that reacts to voice and does things automatically. And tablets which give a great overview. Or, as mentioned, our watches. Automatic doors would be awesome now! And they gotta do the WOOOSH-sound!
That 14-day-forced-return is EU-wide AFAIK. And yeah, you guys took the “FREEDOM!” really literally. You just forgot that the companies have those freedoms too :-) I often cuss about our country (or the EU), but as a consumer it’s really nice having some decent rights. But if you need service, you’re in the darkest mid-age here. Recently had troubles moving some domains from my german ex-provider to a us-based one. The german one did cost 10x as much for half the benefits, but i had to wait 3 days for a fucking reply. Weekends are holy. The us-based answered in like 5 minutes on a saturday night.
I effing hate amazon and what it stands for. Yet, it’s one of the very rare companies here (krautland) that actually give a damn about support and reliability.
Got a prob? It’s solved saturday night.
Got a prob with {most other german companies}? You can call us mo-fr between 11:00 and 12:00 but only when it’s not fullmoon. Also your estimated queue time is 2hrs. And wait till you hear our mind-dissolving on-hold-“music”…
When amazon says “it’s in stock and can be with you tomorrow if u order within 2hrs from now” then it is like this.
You get the gist…
So, on topic: i only buy prime when i plan to order a lot of stuff the coming month. For occasional orders i don’t need prime. Most of the time i can just use another free trial instead of actually paying.
It’s not really how much you buy, but how conveniently. I also thought it was silly to pay Prime, until pandemic. Then I discovered it’s silly to goto stores.
I go to the grocery once a week, and very rarely goto other stores. Al those trips to Walmart and target and kohls and those horror that are malls, just gone. I save all that time and all that driving. I want free shipping on my shampoo, for example, because it saves me a trip to the store. If I had to wait until I had $35 worth of stuff to get free shipping, I’d probably end up with anther trip to a store for emergency items: my time, my car costs.
Granted I also get things like shampoo in larger sizes than my local store Carries, so arguably more efficient in many ways. In some ways, it’s like Costco: why waste a trip to get a bar of soap or two, when i can get a 16 pack and just not worry about it?
but… if you really like your shampoo, why not buy $35 worth at once?
Yeah, it was a bad example and my comment was a bit contradictory, I actually do get larger quantities that I can’t easily get at a physical store. It’s not that I like it so much, as that I want to get it with minimal thinking and I don’t want to have to worry about it again as long as possible.
The point is both that I save an emergency trip to the store and can buy in more bulk than the store provides.
Prime is worth it for overnight delivery, regardless of the value I buy - no need to wait until a list piles up not to buy in more quantity than I’m comfortable investing in
Then imagine living without Amazon altogether… impossible
I have prime because i don’t have to pay for shipping. Good on the author for being wealthy enough to be able to afford 38 Bucks in shipping for 10 items. I pay 0.
You’re prepaying your shipping with the subscription. You could divide that by all the shipments and probably still have a great rate per shipment, but consider that paying for individual shipments would push you to make fewer, larger purchases. Personally, it’s pretty rare I need it tomorrow and can’t wait a week. Some things I need today so I go to a store, some things are rooted in poor planning. The special Amazon shipping window isn’t a big deal for me as I worked to unhook myself from the near-instant gratification.
I pay 12 Bucks a Month. I order things from Amazon daily. No i cannot wait a week for food. I also cannot wait a week for a fuse for my fridge.
I also cannot fathom why i would spend twice as much for things i need to survive just because.
bread at my bakery is 8 Bucks. I can get the same bread from the same bakery every sunday morning for 6 Bucks from amazon.
where do you live where stuff’s so expensive? genuine question, because honestly, i’ve never seen such pricing here
most of the stuff i get from amazon (which is, to be fair, not much and mostly non-food/perishables) has free shipping (without prime) to amazon lockers or to your house if you have a >25€ (or maybe >40€ now…?) order
also, may be biased because i live in france, but like, a loaf of bread is at most 3€ here, even in the most remote villages, you’ll likely not have for more than 1.30€ for a baguette
www.amazon.de/Braaker-Mühle-2525-Bauernlaib-650g
Good bread
Come on, the same bread? That’s crazy. How can that work?
I don’t know, i only know that i “profit” from this system and use it.
Probably Amazon and slave wages.
As someone who lives in a country where there’s no amazon…
yes.
you can live without amazon subscription and you dont have to pay them a single dime
Same, but it means for cheap electronics I have to pay more.
Last time I ran out of coffee, Amazon meant that I had a couple months worth delivered to my door overnight. I’m more addicted to coffee than to Amazon, so, yes, I need it
I’ve never had prime. Whenever I look at Amazon now it’s basically a local AliExpress with loads of cheaply made Chinese stuff. Amazon is not cheap anymore either. eBay is always cheaper.
You can get better Chinese crap on Temu for 1/10 the price of what Amazon charges.
AliExpress too, to some extent, depending on what it is. Usually has “direct from the mainland” shipping, though.
I recently got several brand new NECA TMNT Last Ronin and Usagi Yojimbo action figures for about 40% less than retail on Ali. But you have to be careful; I also inadvertently dropped $20 on what turned out to be a couple of accessories.
link on the figs? are they LEGIT neca figures? or just rip offs?
To my knowledge, there are no knockoffs of these figures being produced yet. They’re too new, so these are almost certainly legit. And definitely look completely legit. And if they were somehow knockoffs, they look so good I wouldn’t care to be honest.
Qing Toys Store a.aliexpress.com/_mOqcbLk - Ronins; No longer available.
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Thanks friend!
There is no need to buy anything from those fucks ever
I’ve been on the student discount for almost 7 years now so I’ve been paying half price for it, but I also like it cuz I watch a decent amount of shows. That being said, I could totally cancel for a month or two and not even notice it.
I deleted my Prime! So many good points on this post. My last 2 purchase from Amazon took 2 weeks to get here, which is fine but prime is advertised as 2 days. Amazon prime’s TV selection is for the most part trash & finally Amazon can burn in hell. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to cancel it.
I wanted to cancel Prime for a long time due to all the creeping enshittification. The last straw were ads on the Fire TV boot screen (I switched to Shield TV Pro) and the notice that ads were coming on Prime Video. I immediately canceled after that mail. 90 EUR less from me. Next incentive: order less.
I’ve noticed that without prime you can still get free shipping if you just have a big enough order, so as long as you don’t buy a ton of small purchases individually but instead save up what you need for bigger purchases then the only advantage prime has is the shorter shipping time. Which I’ve also noticed sometimes that the shipping without prime will often arrive a day or two earlier then it’s original estimate, probably cause Amazon has optimized for that shorter 2 day shipping. It’s still not usually 2 days but for most stuff it’s either a week or less which is usually plenty fast for anything I get on Amazon.
The crap people write nowadays.
It’s surprisingly easy to live without any subscription. I don’t have any. If you’re tech savvy you can either block most ads that subscriptions give you, or bypass the service entirely and get free premium or just dl videos/music etc.
And as the services get worse there’s little incentive to actually keep a subscription. Netflix is becoming pretty dogshit for example.
Or if you’re not tech savvy, buy physical, wild concept I know
Now’s a good time to be looking for cd’s and bluray that people are purging
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I can’t imagine being such a simpleton that this is a revalation worthy of a write up
Breaking news: Local man finds he had two arms instead of one.
I thought this meant the writer is forgoing Amazon as a service completely.
Cause that would be something worth reading. Not these first world problems ffs
Seriously. I have stopped doing as much business with Amazon as I can. Terrible company. Bad for the planet.
I wish I had alternatives. For man yof the stuff I need, my only option is amazon simply because local shops dont stock them.
Okay, but can’t you simply ship something from a non-local company the same way you ship from Amazon?
Not where I live. Amazon has one competitor and thats it. There are a bunch of online stores with specialised catalogs, etc. for clothes exclusively or for makeup exclusively, but I’ll still need amazon to get things homegoods or QoL items.
I think the only viable solution is to start looking around in local shops. As long as we use amazon, we won’t even know if something is available locally.
if you’re in the states try Walmart. they have a marketplace similar to what amazon does and they have a large catalog of goods.
I could kinda understand this if you live in a rural area and have had it for years…but still, first world problems, my god.
I have never used amazon, much less paid for a subscription service for the pleasure of using it. I was hoping that the author atleast stopped using amazon alltogether. Ah well. Little victories I guess.
Musk, bezos, guillotine
What’s common between the three? “They are all headless”
Prime is a waste of money.
You missed the opportunity to say
“A prime waste of money”
.
I’ve never really understood what prime actually is. They nag me about it on the occasion I might buy something from amazon. weird to think someone perhaps couldn’t live without it.
Free two day delivery and access to prime video
One thing I’ve noticed is that it pretty much always takes two days to deliver your items. The only difference is that Amazon will let your order sit in their warehouse for a few extra days if you don’t have Prime.
Yep I think that they optimized so much for 2 day delivery that it is cheaper to give to everyone. They just let the order sit around for a few days to make it take longer.
That’s what I don’t understand. The item is using up warehouse space, marked for me, for five days. Surely they’d make more money just mailing it and restocking the item to sell more during those five days.
Then you wouldn’t be pressured into paying for Prime. A subscription is the gift that keeps giving forever. Amazon probably wouldn’t give half a shit if nobody ordered an item ever again as long as everybody keeps paying for Prime.
I canceled my prime over a year ago but previously have been a prime member since 2003. the two day shipping thing was legit for a lot of those years but has been anything BUT two day shipping for at least the last 5 years. week if you’re lucky.
You would need to pay shipping on orders under 35$ - previously 25$ was the threshold. With some exceptions that require shipping be paid no matter what prime was there to give you two day shipping on all orders at no extra cost. Now they have prime video, prime gaming, prime music, and prime reading as part of it aswell. All of which have were some nice added value to anyone already paying to get the shipping. Although prime video now has ads, music and reading are really just a worse version of their subscriptions for those services - amazon music and Kindle unlimited.
Basically if you have frequent small orders on Amazon it might be cheaper to pay the monthly sub than to pay for shipping. For most people it’s really not worth it, either because you don’t place enough orders or they would meet the threshold for free shipping anyway.
With ads being put on the videos now it’s definitely not worth it.
Christ, we cancelled it a month ago and I feel so fucking stupid. Stupid that we had it for so long for… what? I don’t need anything so quickly that a couple of days delivery makes a difference. Food, water, heat, somewhere to sleep are things I need on a strict schedule. Knock off earbuds and some silicone molds for frozen shot glasses can absolutely wait. AND IT’S STILL FREE SHIPPING, you just add to cart and buy once you hit $35.
Wow, never thought I’d see a headline like this. I’ve never had Amazon prime except for the free month trial. I had no idea it was such a problem for others that there are articles written about it.
I think what a lot of people are missing in this thread is that not everyone has access to convenient physical stores and many people do have good reasons to want faster shipping.
For example, young families who don’t live near a Walmart. When you realize you need a few things for the kid, it can be pretty tough to pack them up and drive however far to the store that may or may not have what you need. If they do have it, you aren’t going to get reviews or many options.
My recent prime purchases have included bottle brushes, a crib mattress protector, a replacement remote for our sound bar (dog ate it), and a cheap car camera to check the baby since he started daycare last week and I’m completely paranoid about my ADHD brain leaving him in a hot car and killing him.
Did any of these need to be prime purchases? I guess not but you can see how I would want them sooner rather than later.
Walmart near me didn’t have any good car cameras in my price range.
The sound bar remote was online only and was required for us to watch TV since our TV speaker doesn’t work.
The bottle brushes were just convenient.
The mattress protector could have waited but would have been a gamble on ruining our very expensive crib mattress. This could have been a a Walmart purchase for sure though.
I’m not saying these were life or death purchases. They weren’t and people got by just fine before Amazon. But does the convenience and reliability outweigh the monthly prime cost? For us, yes. And I admit we have become pretty dependent on it.
Thanks for explaining this. I’m a childless guy living in the UK in a big city, close to many big markets and specialty stores, so I guess my experience is totally different than what you’re describing and you gave a few pretty good reasons why there’s such a gap in how much the convenience of Prime is worth for someone like you and someone like me. I guess the article just isn’t aimed at people like me.
I think I’ve used Amazon a grand total of twice in my life. Got a cheap knockoff of what I actually ordered both times.
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I’m certain I could easily live without it. But I don’t need to. Who in their right mind thinks they can’t live without it?
Their next story: You cannot live without avocado toast, it’s a fact.
As a millennial, I agree with that.
What do you people need prime for? Like, how many times a year do you order on amazon, and what products? Its really a mystery to me.
I ordered 76 items from Amazon in 2023. It’s mostly hobby stuff or things for my cats.
Amazon Prime exists for me to run a 30-day trial around Christmas, when I happen to come up with a few gift ideas I can’t find elsewhere, and then to let it expire and never use it the rest of the year.
Is it really 140 USD annually in US? Here in EU it’s about equivalent of 12 dollars yearly… What is that?
It’s called regulatory capture. They have a monopoly here, so they can just raise their prices until the pain threshold starts diminishing their returns noticeably then dial it back a notch.
In which EU are you living in? It’s 90€ annually in Germany, which is about 100 USD.
Poland
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49 PLN is about 12 EUR\USD (and it’s been like this since 2021 I believe). I am losing my mind because I can’t figure this out. It’s the same thing - shipping, Prime Gaming, Prime Video, free Twitch sub?
Yeah, same features. Good to know that there are incredibly high price differences, even though we’re neighbouring countries.
I was thinking about that and then found this article - www.comparitech.com/…/amazon-prime-video-cost/
They collected a lot of data and stats, like the catalogue sizes of Prime Video around the world and it varies massively. So that’s part of the answer. And Polish is mostly crap and midocrity, and few good older shows. Lower Decks last season is missing, this kind of crap happened to me number of times.
50€ on Amazon Spain.
There are varying levels of quality of service in different countries due to shipping infrastructure, partnerships, content restrictions, etc, and I’d say that ties into the cost.
www.comparitech.com/…/amazon-prime-video-cost/ - found this article, and it seems what you are saying is correct. Polish catalogue is pretty small, has shows missing seasons, a lot of frankly obnoxious Polish crap.
Pro-Tip: If you’re already signed up for prime, you can go to your membership details and cancel auto-renewal OR they allow you to cancel now and will refund whatever they owe you before the renewal date.
Ok, thanks!
I wonder how they handle people signing up to prime for a shipping discount and then immediately cancelling it, only to do so again for their next order…
I can’t speak for the US, but at least in Canada Amazon has just been getting worse since I started using it. In 2019 I used it to get some great camping equipment at a ridiculously good price. During Christmastime last year I got a 50$ gift card from my company and I struggled to spend it after buying a $20 crystal ball. My household cancelled our prime subscription last year and I doubt we’ll go back.
I generally wait more than a month for things to arrive, be it random stuff from aliexpress or books from bookdepository (may it rest in peace), blackwells or kennys. It’s kinda the norm here, and we don’t think much of it.
The shipping time never bothered me. If I need something urgent I’ll go to the store and get it. Otherwise a week or 2 won’t make a difference.
Majority of the things I buy, usually aren’t at the store. Or there’s more of a variety. On top of that their return policy and process is pretty solid.
No mention of the free shipping?
I’m no fan of Amazon, but not mentioning the free shipping as part of the benefits of being a Prime member is not presenting an honest argument to people.
Yeah, all those shipping costs add up over time and 100% cost you more than having Prime would. Granted not everything is on/off the Amazon store
Lots of mentions. Most of the article is about that in particular. Don’t trust summary bots
Wait, read the article? This is Lemmy, I thought we were just supposed to read the post comments and talk about what we think might be in the article.
Snarkiness aside, it’s fair for one to look at the summary before deciding if they want to read the whole article or not.
The summary itself should have mentioned it, and it’s omission is suspicious.
Well I depend on the summaries to decide if I’m going to read the article or not. /shrug
There’s only 24 hours in a day and I have plenty of things to do other than watch commercial-plagued programming on Amazon.
Prime shipping is included with my prime streaming subscription and the streaming subscription pays for itself. Having prime shipping is just an added bonus for me.
I like the prime gaming service. On the site, there’s this list of games with free stuff if you have a prime account, which is a great way to see a list of MTX games to avoid playing.
this used to be true. now they’re putting ads on the videos.
so you have to pay extra to remove the fucking ads. this is intentional shittification in order to drive prices upward.
FUCK DICK ROCKET JEFF.
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Amazon HQ in Seattle, WA looks like a dick and balls too.
Source: I live in Bell Town Seattle a few blocks away, yes that is a real picture of their HQ that I took myself.
fellow seattloid here, thankful I don’t have to see dickrocket jeff’s faceted bollocks often. I used to spend loads of time in SLU but these days it’s kinda a sterile wasteland.
belltown on the other hand continues to remain Seattle’s finest open air insane asylum!
Capital Hill has been on a steady decline ever since they removed the mystery soda vending machine.
I’ve been in the Bezos balls. (Anyone seen the old Woody Allen sex movie?) Neat but no good reason for them to be balls. It’s just a climate controlled botanical garden.
I’ll also note that the place is jam packed with staff that constantly ask you if you have any questions. Well… I asked questions and no one had any clue. Great job.
There’s also a not great coffee bar inside. Underwhelming.
They started putting commercials on Prime Video.
Nope, not paying for that. Certainly not paying EXTRA to remove 'em. Dick rocket Jeff can go eat shit.