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…
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.
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 😂
Go lick windows
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)
Yup. I tried selling on Amazon and ended up back on ebay because perfectly working stuff was being returned and I had to eat the cost of shipping both ways.
Hey, at least it came back working. :/
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.
Is their completely automatic online store still closed on Sundays?
Of course there are thousands upon thousands.
Which is a privilege that I hope you appreciate. America would never do something as reasonable tbh
I’m in the UK but I’m largely housebound. Prime is life changing for disabled people like myself. I won’t cancel my subscription but I’ll probably pirate anything I want to watch on prime video in future, which isn’t much now they don’t have the tennis rights in the UK.
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.