Amazon Prime is a remarkable success but also dystopian. It has made convenience and speed the norm, habituating consumers to buy more products. Prime’s flywheel effect - where more customers lead to more data and scale which attracts more customers - has fueled Amazon’s dominance. Prime subscribers spend twice as much and Amazon’s value has multiplied 97 times since 2005. While canceling Prime may not hurt Amazon, it can benefit local businesses by gaining a new customer. However, Prime has rewired how people think about what is possible to obtain and how fast, making a Prime-free life unimaginable for many.
You must log in or register to comment.
And buy from where? Retailers these days, insofar as they exist at all, have ridiculously limited inventory. If I want something that’s even slightly uncommon, the only place I can find it is online, and since there’s no telling whether any given website will steal from me, welp, Amazon it is.
You can still buy from Amazon as needed without Prime. The free shipping is still usually relatively fast, and they’ll give you a free or heavily discounted Prime trial fairly often. I try to avoid buying stuff on Amazon these days, but a lot of things simply aren’t available elsewhere or would be significantly more difficult to acquire. I haven’t had a steady Prime sub in at least a couple years, but they end up offering me a trial probably every few months. Hell, they gave me a full month for free a week ago (probably to try to drive up Prime Day sales).
This. Trying to find anything in a brick and mortar store in the last decade has been such a godawful experience that I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. Groceries are largely delivered (not using Instacart, but the store’s own delivery or pickup service), tech stuff is all aliexpress or amazon, clothing I still largely go in to buy, but don’t buy very often. Appliances? Research the shit out of it online and usually order online from a local retailer with a decent website. Heck, even hardware is online through Home Depot and auto stuff is either rockauto or similar.
The amount of times I’ve made the effort to look in a brick and mortar and not found the thing I’ve needed is too high.
I support you doing this, but I have physical impairments and no car, so I’m choosing between dystopias already.
i haven’t had prime in years and am doing just fine. spoiler alert: you still get free shipping from amazon without prime. you just don’t get 2 day shipping, which is an unnecessary luxury.
Wait, prime does more than streaming?
deleted by creator
Life is a parody
I look at it from an energy standpoint. If there’s an Amazon truck driving down my block every day, sometimes twice, and I need a thing, may as well put that thing on the truck. The alternative is me driving around, which is wasteful.
There are other stores on the internet…
I can think of at least one other truck going to everyone’s house once a day too.
deleted by creator
A girl can dream
I cancelled Prime around that time and my Amazon spending dropped significantly. I still shop there occasionally when I need something, but I’ll usually throw the stuff I need, but not immediately in my cart and wait until I qualify for free shipping. Also, they’ve given me like 5 free month trials, which I use when I DO need something ASAP. Just gotta be sure to cancel before it auto-renews.
Less consumerism is always better.
I live in a state where it’s hard to find what you need. Amazon is often the only place to find what I need like computer parts or electronics. Prime is too valuable to cancel.
deleted by creator
For real, the amount of people acting like the choices here are Amazon Prime or driving over to the B&M is ridiculous. It is like people forgot how to shop online. There are many other choices for online shopping. It is so incredibly lazy to just throw your hands up and say “Whelp, the local store doesn’t have what I need, guess I need to use Amazon Prime.”
Amazon and B&Ms won’t steal your credit card. A lot of other websites will.
I’ve literally never had this happen to me. Plus, you are never on the hook for it anyway with a credit card. Also, privacy.com
Everyone who thinks people should cancel their prime account because of horrible working conditions should first look at their phone… then their tv… then any other random electronics they have… then look at their shoes and their clothes and everything else they have made cheaply in a factory that abuses human labor. Then find a dictionary and look up the word hypocrite.
Many people don’t think about stuff like that, they would rather ignore or stay unaware and keep buying 2€ shirts
The only way to hit those price points is with slavery or “child labor” aka slavery kids edition
I dislike most things I know about Amazon as a company. However, being disabled Prime isn’t just convenient it is a useful tool to make my life better.
Why not just use one of the many other delivery services?
What makes you think they’re any more ethical?
See my other reply to your same question above. It isn’t hard to be better than the worst.
Nah, it’s too convenient and I don’t live in a big city so the things I need aren’t sold here.
Do you need Prime for that? I’m not in your same situation, but I used to be very reliant on Prime shipping. Since I cancelled Prime, I still sometimes buy stuff from Amazon, but I realized I don’t have a need to get things so rapidly. Free shipping is still an option on most items, it just takes a few more days. When they’re small items that don’t qualify for free shipping, then I just add it to my cart and wait until I have something else to add that makes it cross that free shipping threshold. And I also generally don’t feel the need to use Amazon as much since so many other companies offer free shipping these days.
In my circle, I’ve seen that people are just so expectant of rapid shipping, but they don’t actually need it. I’ve learned how instant gratification isn’t actually valuable to me, but I know that’s difficult for a lot of people to accept.
Our conversation on a different post made me check your post history. And now this post has me considering canceling Amazon Prime. Ripple effects are weird.
Haha, that’s a fun little coincidence. Benefits of the federated communities being smaller for the time being.
I bought in because of the free shipping, but I cancelled when the price went up.
Turns out, you can still get free shipping if you bundle your orders together and are willing to wait an extra day or two.
Canceled it awhile ago. Generally, I can search it to know what kind of niche products are out there. Then either buy directly from the distributer or find it in a different place
How do you avoid the distributor stealing your credit card?
That is way less common than you seem to think it is. Most online payments are fairly secure.
PayPal is always an option. If it isn’t an option then nope the fuck out.
PayPal itself has been caught stealing, if I recall correctly, so I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be an improvement.
