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.
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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.
Living under capitalism is living under the yoke of devils. You cannot escape them, and you sometimes make deals with them, whether because you have to, or you think the deal will work out for you. But that doesn’t mean you should love the devils, and if you can get away from them you should.
Yeah, most people’s phones or shoes or whatever probably have some dirty pasts, but that doesn’t mean we should just give up on making any kind of good or moral choices. We’re locked into capitalism, and we will have blood on our hands whether we are aware or not, but using that as an excuse to give up on trying to do better is not a coherent moral position.
I think there’s a significant difference between “any shoe I try to buy is shady, and if a wholesome option even exists it is incredibly hard to find/buy/pricey”, and “sure Amazon workers literally die in warehouses, but next day shipping on my random knickknacks is soooo convenient!”
There exists real and valid use-cases for prime, as several other people in this thread have expressed. But just shrugging and saying “eg whatever” because you want to save $1 on random junk isn’t one of them.
You realize that the alternatives to Amazon all do the same thing, right? Working in a warehouse supplying brick-and-mortar shop isn’t exactly a cushy or well-paid job, either.
It isn’t hard to be better than the worst. My SO worked in a non-amazon warehouse before moving in with me and it is no walk in the park but it is still far better than Amazon. They even started trying to recruit people from her warehouse and everyone who jumped ship to Amazon regretted it quickly.
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What are people buying that they need same-day arrival from Prime instead of waiting 5-7 days? Do people get their medicine and groceries off of Amazon? Or is it just convenience?
Of course, I’m able to say this because I never got Prime in the first place so I never acclimated to same-day shipping and thus never got attached to it. When I had to order off Amazon, just wait and bundle with other items for free shipping anyways, no extra money sent off to get Prime. And they were never important enough that I needed them right now. I could wait.
I’m extremely motivated by convenience, so I’m no better, I just so happen to be able to say “no” to Amazon now because I never let it too far into my life in the first place.
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
Life is a parody
Now you are supposed to sacrifice your sleep for Amazon? No thanks!
I bought in because of the free shipping, but I cancelled when the price went up.
Turns out, you can still get free shipping if you bundle your orders together and are willing to wait an extra day or two.
And 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.
I dislike most things I know about Amazon as a company. However, being disabled Prime isn’t just convenient it is a useful tool to make my life better.
Why not just use one of the many other delivery services?
Because that would be more work than I want to do, or maybe more work than I have energy for. I’m not defending Amazon but there are more concerning things in my life than always fighting the good fight for or with other people. This is just one of those areas I chose to make a small moral sacrifice to relieve a substantial physical burden.
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.
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I was a buyer for a chain of high end bike shops for many years. Amazon really only sells junk products. Any real quality brands of niche products can’t support amazon and the typical brick and mortar business inventory structure. Like, I spent between $100k-$500k in preseason bike brand commitments for 3 stores. If any of those brands decided to allow sales on Amazon I would drop them immediately. Multiply this by every bike shop that exists. This is more than Amazon could compete with by a long shot. The issue is that every Buyer in a shop knows what they are able to sell effectively and buys accordingly. I tailored my orders for every shop independently. It would be impossible for Amazon to predict and fund high end bikes at this scale.
“So what,” you say, “it’s just bikes.” No it is not. The bike brands are usually part of a group of brands that include several parts, clothing, and accessory products. These are part of preseason commitments with the bike brands too. So all of these are not sold on Amazon either. This is the case with most things, the best or even decent stuff is not sold on Amazon.
The worst thing with amazon is that they aggregate all identical products in their warehouses. This makes it trivial for a seller to insert fake goods into a product pool and it is completely untraceable back to them.
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Maybe it’s because it’s been over 10 years since you’ve ordered from there, but it’s nothing like eBay in that regard. Avoiding the cheap, misleading junk on Amazon is pretty trivial. That stuff is there, sure, but I don’t know that I’ve ever been “tricked” in the way I have with eBay.
Not a fan of the corporation, but free next day (sometimes even same day) delivery is hard to turn down.
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.
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A girl can dream
The post office was going to be your bank too. That bill died.
I’d be kinda down for this
Not happening. The returns process is the best thing about buying from Amazon. No need to deal with restocking fees or things breaking after 3 months either.
Bundled with my phone plan.
Buying stuff online is just modern life. Might as well get fast shipping and discounts. Prime is no different than any other pay-to-join shopping club.
You can order from somewhere else online. Most of Amazon is cheap crap from aliexpress now anyway. They don’t even have the best prices most of the time anymore.
Sure, if I can wait 2-5 weeks I’ll check AliExpress.
My point was not to buy things that are just shitty crap from aliexpress. Or that cheap crap from aliexpress is unappealing junk that nobody would want to buy, the equivalent of email spam. In fact, the complaint I tend to hear people make the most often about Amazon is how hard it is to find anything on there that isn’t cheap chinese junk from AliExpress.
Perhaps people use Amazon differently than I do. I mostly buy niche items that you simply can’t buy at stores, or if you do find them at stores they are astronomically expensive.
Which is not to say I don’t switch things up. I order from Best Buy, Walmart, a whole bunch of different places. But on balance, I’m happy with the Prime subscription and use it frequently.
i haven’t had prime in years and am doing just fine. spoiler alert: you still get free shipping from amazon without prime. you just don’t get 2 day shipping, which is an unnecessary luxury.
One day
I support you doing this, but I have physical impairments and no car, so I’m choosing between dystopias already.
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.
Wait, prime does more than streaming?
