Stop using amazon
I feel like a lot of people who say this don’t realize how difficult this actually is for many people who live in different circumstances to them.
If you, like many, live in some urban sprawl ass area, Amazon has become the “weird part/replacement/too unique for physical stores but costs 5 times the amount shipping it in from somewhere else” central.
It’s also often more convenient than some other options while being ethically just about on par.
Its like, I can buy this thing from the walmart family, the loblaws family or jeff bezos.
They all have their evil, and it rotates from time to time who is taking the cake.
Like it’s certainly a consideration, like I’ll sometimes pick a slower option just to not buy from amazon, but then its like… its from Bestbuy. How much better is Bestbuy to Amazon? or Newegg?
I mean, tbh the whole inauguration has certainly knocked Amazon down a few pegs for sure, so I guess this is sort of a pre that bias.
My point is, there is a shit ton of things any one person can be doing, and different things are more or less important to different people, so do what you can, and don’t expect perfection of yourself, because there will be things you do (if you’re a person that tries) that the person barking at you for not being perfect in some other aspect will be doing and won’t even be aware of what else you do.
It also doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Even if there is some specific issue that keeps you bound to Amazon, seeking out alternatives the rest of the time is still an improvement.
I know someone who has extreme difficulty taking pills and who frequently needs pain relievers to function. The only thing they have ever found that works for them is the Walmart brand Tylenol (aka tiny lol). They don’t buy anything else from Walmart on principle, but thos pills are a necessity.
That said, in my experience at least, while Amazon’s shopping experience has gotten significantly worse over time, smaller local and regional businesses have been making things much better over the last few years. It’s easier to find what I need on the website of my local hardware store than Amazon, with prices that are as good or better on most things, and without the glut of trash items clogging my search. I can even get 2 hour delivery if I need it. I can’t get a fucking pizza delivered to me but I can have a socket wrench and a change of underwear here at a moment’s notice.
I can’t say that there is a better option available to everyone for anything they need. But I would bet that there are good alternatives available the vast majority of the time.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. Make a different choice where you can. It’s all good.
Use eBay.
I needed 7/16" ink ribbon for my antique Burroughs adding machine. Bought it on eBay. Order was fulfilled by Ribbons Unlimited, a small business that just sells ink ribbons for typewriters. Took a week to get it, but I wasn’t in that much of a hurry.
I was buying some rolling papers. They were $10 on Amazon. I decided to check eBay, they had the same exact pack but it was $15. Decided to go with the eBay purchase to avoid Amazon. 2 days later I get an Amazon delivery. It’s my rolling papers, shipped straight from Amazon with a $5 dollar markup going straight to the eBay seller. So not only did bezos still get his cut but i paid an extra $5 for the privilege.
Same thing applies to lots of stuff on Amazon. They are just things off of AliExpress marked up a lot.
That happens from time to time. Hell, I’ve even had that happen two weeks ago with Newegg for a rare cable I needed.
Still though, on the whole, you can get in touch with some real brick and mortar style sellers, and often times it’s cheaper. I saved like $20 on a pack of water filters for my fridge recently.
eBay abuses sellers, too.
Amazon is shit now you can find stuff cheaper only “problem” is you don’t get it in "two* days.
I remember watching an old Tim Allen stand-up set, he was talking about ordering a bench grinder from the Sears catalog. “Six to eight weeks later” it arrived.
I sometimes think about how we got here. How now this has become some people’s only option. Amazon banked on people relying on them and scooped up market share, and destroyed small businesses so they became the only option. People don’t even look for alternatives or discover businesses around them anymore. I had to help a few friends understand this. I had a friend buying toilet paper from Amazon, that’s literally sold everywhere.
When I say don’t use Amazon, it’s not to shame the people who can’t, it’s to have them think of an alternative, train out their reliance. Don’t continue to give Amazon that reliance.
There are not many times you need that specific obscure part, most of the time it’s things that will have alternative sources. So it’s about taking a moment to just consider.
Target Jeff Bezos because he is literally top of the list of billionaires, he does not need the money. You can use this as a measurement. Newegg is a better option. A small electronics store that delivers in your country if their brick and mortar store is not near you, even better.
And like you pointed out, perfection is the enemy of progress.
This combined with just considering if you actually need something or just want junk advertised to you. It’s a way to break from frivolous consumption as well, which Amazon also relies on. Also consider that you don’t need things this fast. I feel like Amazon broke our perception. We used to not get things delivered for up to 2 weeks and that was fine. But somehow it’s unacceptable if it’s not there the next day. Most things you buy are not emergencies. Waiting does not waste your time, your life goes on while you wait.
Using Amazon , I’d love to stop using Amazon but unfortunately amazon has killed all competing stores in my area so if I want a product that’s more specialized than s*** you would find at an old timey General Store I’m out of luck
FYI: You are allowed to say “shit” on the Internet.
I’m much in the same boat and “stop using Amazon” is a breathtakingly privileged take that really pisses me off.
I use a tts that does that by itself and you know what I meant so I don’t fucking care. This one I hand typed. Don’t fucking bother me about how I do or do not 𝓕𝓾𝓬𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓰 swear thanks.
Did Bob Loblaws update his law blog?
It’s a Canadian national super market chain/brand that owns a ton of supermarkets here.
I understand and agree to some extent. Still good to say it tho, doesn’t really sound like barking.
Of course. Just give me an alternative that
- gives me a definitive delivery date without excessive extra cost
- handles returns and warranty claims at least half as smoothly
- takes responsibility for missing deliveries
Well returns have gone to shit on Amazon. Now they charge you most of the time. Delivery date not so much now they are charging for faster delivery on some items.
People often say to vote with your wallet, but really if you want meaningful change it has to be backed by legislation so you must vote with your vote.
The only two choices where I live are Amazon or Target. I despise Amazon, but I despise Target more because of their betrayal to the LGBTQ+ community. So, while I’m not happy about it, I choose the lesser of two evils (to me) and use Amazon.
So you can’t purchase stuff from Walmart, Costco or any online store just Amazon?
Stop living somewhere with choices!!
While I agree that people should not use Amazon, there’s a lot of places that it is one of the only options people have to get these types of products because of companies like Amazon, Walmart, target and all the other big retailers that have gone and completely destroyed small and local businesses in alot of communities. Some don’t even have a Walmart or Target anymore purely because they came and destroyed everything realized they couldn’t make enough money so they shut em down.
Yes but if you can buy off Amazon an online store you can buy from another online store. So saying it’s the only choice is false.
Have you tried using it harder?
“With a little effort it’s a consumable article”, Amazon probably.Have you tried using it harder?
Answering that requires some calibration. What’s the middle ground between explosives and a healthy diet? Because I suspect that “I eat nothing but taco bell” qualifies as “harder”.
I recently bought a washing machine, and not even 2 days later the same website sens me an ad email with 5 other washing machine models that may interest me…
it’s like they use Youtube’s algorithm. Sure, the last 15 minute planetary astronomy video was cool, I’ll watch another.
Doesn’t work as well with material goods.
Every time I see those ridiculous “have another one!” ads, I’m happily reminded that, well, if that’s the best they can do with all the technology and the money they have, there is still hope.
More likely they have hard numbers saying that for most of their products this approach work, and why bother having a button letting people tell the algorithm they have something already? All that would do is expose them to fewer ads. And you never know, maybe one will eventually give in and buy another toilet seat just in case!
there is still hope
On the contrary, you should expect them to put more effort into using that stuff in ways that don’t benefit you than in ways that do.
Let’s go with one example. There’s this United Payments Interface (UPI) app called Google Pay.
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They let you add a comment when paying.
- go to Google Checkout and download previous years payment data to help with accounting and you don’t get the comments along with it. You have to go into the app and open each entry, one-by-one to see what was what.
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They keep the timing information of when you pay.
- They also know which tower you were connected to at what time
- They also have location data from Maps being open at the same time
- This would tell that they have the ability to let you check the exact position at which you paid
- But will they let you? No. Even the timeline feature doesn’t give accurate history.
- Because somehow they believe we will think that their database is that inaccurate and we are somehow safe (despite having the driving navigation on at the time)
- But will they let you? No. Even the timeline feature doesn’t give accurate history.
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They started removing handy features to access timeline features from desktop.
- somehow acting like it is making stuff more secure, when all it is doing, is reducing our ability to access our own data, while their “partners” can still do so.
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Remember when they had a button you could push and it would just order individual items for you? Presumably with no further authentication?
Well, I just learned that while they are discontinued, you can apparently buy an instructional audiobook on them. Possibly I’m being obtuse, but from that listing it seems like it also includes a set of the buttons as well.
I still see that button (in the mobile version, anyway).
What’s more alarming is that I’ve run across several things akin to toilet seats (things you probably buy like once every 20 years) that have defaulted to the ‘Subscribe and save’ option. I don’t know if this something the seller does or if AI is flagging things for them, but it’s insidious.
If you’re not paying attention, you can wind up an accidental collector of toilet seats.
Since moving to my current house ~3 years ago I’ve had to replace every toilet seat at least once (the state of them when I moved in was pretty abysmal) and two twice.
Perhaps becoming an accidental collector of toilet seats wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to me.
Look, most toilets come with seats. Amazon knows that your fat ass broke one, the cheap shit one you just bought isn’t gonna be as good a the OEM one.
You’ll be back
It would be really nice if you could mark suggestions as no longer needed or purchased.
I prefer this regular reminder that they are a shower of incompetent wankers.
It’s just a computer following an algorithm. An algorithm that has been found to increase sales.
I bought a wedding ring on Etsy and I get like four emails a week for wedding rings…
Similar story happened to me literally yesterday. Wanted a new vacuum, saw that a construction store chain that has a store nearby has some on offer, research them for a while on my phone, go buy it, use it.
Then later, I get ads for that exact model and some others from that exact store on my phone while browsing for something completely unrelated.
Yeah, not system can know that I already bought something offline, but still…
Google cannot wanted to not sure where it landed. They wanted credit card records so they could see who purchased what. I think they did do the deal.
You know you wanna subscribe-n-save
“Let’s make AI do everything even though it has an IQ of like 40” - every giant company rn
nah, targeted advertisements were like that for a long time. check the date, its 2018
All that money, all those algorithms and machine learning… and this is the best they can do?
Or YouTube recommending me videos in Arabic, thinking that maybe I happened to learn the language.
Are these the same tech giants that supposedly want to solve all of humanity’s problems with AGI in under 2 years from now?
Are you sure? Your loved ones don’t need one, holidays are soon.
My girlfriend likes to look at weird shit on my amazon account and now I have to be careful browsing in public or at/for work. Most recently she searched for stripper shoes.
You know you can link accounts as family to share prime right? You don’t need to let her on yours. I think it’s a limit of two “adults”.
I got an email a few days ago that they were disabling mine, now I would have to buy my own prime in addition to my wife’s. I simply decided not to use Amazon anymore.
They must be thinking of this person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2b-wTJ8x3E
