I think I might cancel. I’m not watching ads and I’m not going to pay the extra $3/mo to opt out. I don’t know if I’d end up paying more than the subscription cost in shipping though…
Are other online retailers so hopelessly sucky that you can’t live without Amazon over in the states? It just blows my mind because Amazon honestly sucks compared to the more local stores where I’m at in the Nordics.
For me it’s the fast shipping I can’t live without.
I recently moved into a new apartment and needed to run a network cord from our router to the other side of the apartment to put an access point so we’d have good WiFi coverage. I went online to several other retailers for the few things I needed (cat6, crimp tool, and a few other things), but all of them wanted me to pay ~$25 or more for their slowest shipping option of 5-7 business days.
Meanwhile, Amazon had everything at my door the next day with free shipping. I tried to avoid Bezos, but I couldn’t. :(
But it’s not complely free shipping. It’s $140/year free shipping. So depending on how often you need something tomorrow, you could come out ahead even without Prime. That’s what I’m weighing now. Streaming is close to a solved problem, it’s the shipping I’m on the fence about.
I haven’t had Prime for years but still shop on Amazon a bit. You get free shipping on orders over… $25 or $35? So group a few non urgent things and you’re good to go. I pay for quicker shipping maybe once or twice a year, and pay for shipping in other sites maybe a half dozen times a year.
You bring up good point. But, for example, I tried another company for pieces and parts for several projects. The only other US alternative to Amazon for such things is NewEgg. Where items cost nearly quadruple what they are on Amazon. Not including the shipping times (24 hours instead of 5-7 days).
I guess what I’m getting at, is Amazon is the largest monopoly in history, IMO. There’s no way for anyone to compete. Even the $140 a year is pennies in the grand scheme of things. If you require items that can’t be acquired locally…
But it’s not complely free shipping. It’s $140/year free shipping.
That’s the thing. The more expensive Prime gets the more people who do pay for it feel locked in.
People end up feeling like they need to do more and more shopping on Amazon in order to justify that steep yearly subscription cost. Dumping Amazon completely is more effort than simply shifting more of your shopping over to Amazon. This causes people to get more and more locked in and comfortable with using Amazon for the vast majority of their online shopping.
The other side of that coin is once you do drop Amazon Prime you realize that Amazon isn’t irreplaceable. It’s fairly easy to avoid them if you are willing to compromise a little.
“Couldn’t”
It’s very obvious that consumers are completely unable to “vote with their wallets” for anything but convenience and low prices. Workers rights, equality, morals you name it are for the vast majority waaaaaay down the scale compared to price and convenience.
This is a case study on why regulation is very much needed, even though we really should be able to do with out.
I mean fine; you’re right. I could have sat on my thumbs for 5 days with no WiFi in my living room while I waited for someone else to send what I needed, but why should I have to? Is it completely impossible for a company to provide that convenience without also being a bag of dicks? (Or is that what you meant by regulation?)
I mean, usually when I need something immediately I just walk 5 minutes to the physical store and buy it.
I don’t even remember a time where I needed to get something I needed immediately from Amazon. In fact, if I am getting anything from amazon it’s probably because it wasn’t possible to find it elsewhere and that’s usually not something so important it needs same/next-day delivery.
I hate Amazon but there are several reasons I use them. Wide selection, free shipping, easy returns, and typically low prices. Every time I have tried avoiding Amazon for everything, I’ve run into annoying issues before long.
Also, sadly there are a lot of less common products that aren’t super available elsewhere. And even when they are, I feel like it’s a risk buying from some random website I’ve not dealt with before.
I wish others could/would compete with these advantages but most don’t. And no I don’t buy everything from Amazon but it is a safe fallback for the items I can’t get at better retailers.
I feel the only thing they do well in my area is provide safer access to random bits and bobs that I buy from AliExpress. But that business is not what makes them rich, of course. It’s people buying everything from them, but that that is even compelling is mind blowing to me due to how atrocious their website and shopping experience is. And I work in e-Commerce as well…
I’ve found Walmart+ and Sam’s+ to be better for my needs lately. I only have prime when I can get it for free for a month. I only care about free shipping. I can give a crap about anything else that comes with prime
“I could care less” is ignorance, “I can give a crap” is a whole new level of stupidity 😂
Most people want the question free returns, that’s really the thing keeping amazon afloat compared to say eBay or aliexpress. Sure you can get the stuff directly from China in most cases, but you have to wait for a month for it to arrive and hope you don’t need to return it.
As for local stores, they always cost more because of the cost of doing business, which is why Amazon is cheaper and faster to deliver.
All that said, as long as you can wait a few days, there is no need to pay for Prime, you can still get all the stuff shipped for free if you just wait until you have 45 bucks of stuff to buy.
Sure, but the question free returns are a big part of why no (well, very few) decent brands can be found on Amazon anymore.
Anyone with actually good products doesn’t have the profit margins to be forced into accepting obviously unacceptable returns. (eg customer returns item they clearly broke, gets full refund, retailer is stuck with it). They also have good enough products that they don’t have to put up with Amazon to reach the masses, they can sell anywhere else.
You’re speaking like there literally aren’t any online retailers in the US, is that really accurate? And question free returns are literally the law here…
Question free returns as in even if you’re clearly in the wrong; purchased an item, throughly destroyed it, returned for a full refund. The seller gets to shut up and eat that cost because amazon already gave the customer their money back and isn’t interested in hearing your claim as a seller.
This is why you can only find random ass bramd names you’ve never heard of throughout 99% of Amazon. Seller’s refuse to be treated this way. (or at least anyone with anything actually worth purchasing)
There are some others, bhphoto being a good one, but many of the online retailers do not have free shipping and many also have return fees. That’s where Amazon saw a way to steal customers away.
This is annectdotal but I twice tried branching out recently to other retailers, both times they said they delivered my package and they did not. Trying to get help from them is like pulling teeth.
I rarely have a problem with Amazon and the few times I did I was given a refund pretty much immediately.
It makes it hard to switch when the difference in service is so drastic =/
Some products are only available on Amazon, altough there’s always an alternative on another shop.
I try to avoid Amazon because of how many bad products are on their platform. Other shops also list third-party sellers, but by avoiding those platforms and only buying on proper non-marketplace shops the products usually meet a minimum quality. At least my experience with shops that actually specialize in a specific categorie (pc hardware -> mindfactory.de, electronics -> reichelt.de, …) is generally better.
Ebay for stuff, because you are usually dealing with a person that has some care for your order. Ebay doesnt wait 2 weeks to ship my stuff. Amazon now waits to ship so they can combine my orders. So in the past few months my ebay use is way up and my amazon use is way down. As far as content goes, piracy is still an awesome thing. I pay for physical books and music from bandcamp, the rest is acquired. I think people get lazier and dumber the closer you get to the equator. Thanks for your comment. a guy at 59.9n.
News broke on this a few months ago, and I jumped ship. Their failed music app is another reason I ditched their ecosystem. Kept crashing; music would pause mid-song; couldn’t play downloaded music offline without a data connection.
Video service had such poor title coverage and nothing compelling for the price. As many others have said, the value proposition didn’t work. Enshittification is in full swing. Sail the high seas.
It’s a fairly niche sport, but Amazon had the tennis rights here in the UK. They’ve gone to sky now and the very minimum you’d need to pay is £30 p/m for much less choice in the way you watch matches. As for prime music, they have a good amount of ad-free podcasts, including everything from wondery. I only have prime for the free next day shipping and free returns by collection, but the tennis and podcasts were a really great extra.
An already overpriced subscription service wants more money 🤣
The real trick is you cancel AND shop elsewhere. We get most of our necessities locally now at normal retail and I’ll occasionally put an Amazon order together when I need something specific and I’ll spend enough for free shipping.
I missed shopping there at first, but so much of their inventory is junk now; I feel like I actually get better quality from traditional retail. The $140/yr for Prime feels like free shipping but it obviously isn’t.
It really depends on where you live.
Between living in a smaller town and never ending supply chain/distribution issues: If I need something I can’t get at the local store, it is a bare minimum two hour ordeal. I can usually justify that on a weekend but if my mouse dies and I need one now? Suddenly I need to figure out what else I can grab to get free shipping or if I need to just eat the costs and overnight it.
I have been doing the math and will likely stick with amazon prime. Admittedly, I increasingly don’t bother to even watch the amazon shows I like (the boys and reacher) because I have increasingly become spoiled by a proper blu ray or UHD (… ripped to my plex).
140$? Why is this so expensive in the us? We pay 90€ (~100$) in Germany. So brake even is with like 20x 5€ shipping orders per year. Which I sadly do pretty easily. Getting the stuff I need locally is sadly not that easy.
If they need more money, they can just take about $2,000 USD per second from Bezos’ money. He makes over $3,000 USD per second.
I forgot to mention. over 99% of all online sales go through amazon. They don’t need to raise their prices.
Unthinkable!! How will Jeffey-Bear survive without his nightly molten gold enema?
Gold? He’s not some dirty plebian that accepts gold, he wants Iridium dusted with rubies, emeralds, blood-diamonds, sapphires and war-orphan tears…but only war orphan tears from the wars he’s profiting from. And after he gets the enema, he kills 100 puppies and earns a single penny by doing it.
