Amazon gives non-Prime members free shipping at $35 or more of eligible items. Instead of simply letting users get the product with free shipping, they’ve added a discount that prices it exactly one cent below the $35 limit, while only subsidizing the price with $3.38, which is about half of what they’ll then charge you for shipping.
Easy fix, don’t buy from Amazon.
I try to when I can, but I tend to have major difficulties doing so.
I tried Ebay, they restricted my account and said the only way for me to get it un-restricted was to buy a product from a limited set of brand-new partner suppliers (e.g. Logitech, HP, etc) that were all over $100, and nothing I actually needed.
I tried buying some chargers from Anker and they also restricted me and said they wouldn’t let me make a purchase because my email seemed suspicious (I don’t use Gmail), so I had to go back to Amazon and buy it there instead for practically the same price, even though it would have actually been cheaper on Anker’s own website since they had a discount code that would have worked for my order.
I bought something on Target because I’d been given a Target gift card, Target cancelled my order 3 times and made me contact customer service to remove an invisible hold on my account.
I frequently try checking third-party sites for the same products, and the prices are way higher (e.g. A product I plan on purchasing is $80 on the manufacturer’s site, and $58 on Amazon, with the price frequently dropping to $38) because Amazon literally mandates that the cheapest price must be on Amazon. Often times, these price differences are so drastic that I could end up paying double for the same product.
I also tend to get Amazon gift cards from relatives even though they already know I dislike using Amazon when I don’t have to, so it’s often somewhat unavoidable.
Don’t get me wrong, those are just the worst instances so far. I’ve bought quite a few items from elsewhere before without issues, it’s just that I tend to have the occasional issue that makes it practically impossible to buy elsewhere.
Believe me, I do my best to not have to spend money on Amazon, but it’s either so drastically more expensive that it’s simply not reasonable to buy elsewhere, or for various reasons I mentioned before, I’m not even capable of placing an order in the first place.
What in the world are you doing to get restricted and cancelled at different sites?
Don’t ask me, I’ve been asking the same question myself 😅
The only things that had originally come to mind were my accounts on those stores being new (but who makes an account there then just lets it sit for like a week), me using virtual cards to avoid using the same payment info across different sites (but many other people do that with no issues), using my non-gmail email (but other people also do that with no issues), ad & JS canvas blocking (but as needanke mentioned earlier, they don’t seem to have problems), or possibly just something with my address itself making its way onto some shared-around list of addresses not to ship to for some reason, but none of these explanations really seem to make sense.
I’m genuinely just as stumped as you are.
I know, I only took this specific screenshot because it happened to show up as a recommendation within Amazon’s interface and I noticed the price and discount seemed odd. I intend to try buying it (or at least, a similar set made by iFixit) on their own site when I end up actually needing it.
What’s the alternative? The other places I can order a big box of cheap stuff from (Walmart, Target) are run by even worse people and have even worse service.
I once ordered porcelain plates from target and they arrived with no packaging. I don’t mean insufficient packaging, I mean four plates just thrown in a giant box with absolutely nothing else. Somehow 3 were not broken.
Right now I want 1) creatine and 2) cheap t-shirts and I don’t wanna pay for shipping them separately. I can’t find any place where I can get both at a reasonable price besides one of the above. I’m actually considering a costco membership but I’m only going to ever order online from them so I doubt it’s worth their stupid membership.
Generally, I believe the convenience of cheap shit delivered to your door comes at the invisible cost of exploitative labor practices and/or excessive consumerism by the means of low quality crap that will need to be replaced regularly or through “buy more and save” deals. If you want to avoid supporting that, you’re probably going to have to spend a few extra bucks buying from a smaller business or buying secondhand.
Convenience isn’t free and if we want to reduce our dependence on harmful institutions we’re going to have to make some sacrifices.
I do this. But, I’m also lucky to live in a city with second hand shit everywhere. Not everyone lives in a city.
But, google shopping will tell you an alternative store to buy most things online. And compare costs for you. This gets tricky if you’re also trying to cut google out of your life though. There really is no ethical consumption under capitalism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, in the case of the OP, the alternative is the manufacturer: https://www.ifixit.com/Tools
Either buy more expensive shirts or stop buying creatine if you want to stop ripping them
Walmart and Target aren’t run by worse people. I’ve never heard of Target or even Walmart employees being forced to piss in bottles or a robot will fire them.
They said, they are still bad people, as retail capitalists, but are you ready to have that conversation?
Retail capitalists are fine, but Amazon, Walmart, and Target all did the maga loyalty thing after Trump’s win. I don’t need to buy from someone who shares my politics or even doesn’t disagree with me, I just need them to not be outright oligarchs using my money to support dictators.
Target also have free 2 day shipping and 5% discount if you use their “Red Card”, which is free. It’s available as a debit or credit card. I’m using the debit card version which doesn’t require a credit check or impact your credit score.
Sure, it lets them track what you buy, but they can already do that if you pay with credit or debit card. The only way to not get tracked is by paying cash or buying prepaid Visa/Mastercard gift cards and swapping them periodically.
So you literally never buy from Amazon?
You must live in a very major city.
It’s literally not even hard, but yes you have to put some effort into it, and of course it isn’t convenient. You’ll probably save money, though - Amazon hasn’t had the best prices on 95% of items for many years now.
If you aren’t OK with being slightly inconvenienced, you can always keep supporting Nazis 🤷♂️
“Not convenient”? Have you any idea what it’s like to live in the US rural south? It’s Walmart, Amazon, or just fucking die.
there are a lot of companies that sell things direct to consumer, using the exact same shipping infrastructure that amazon would otherwise be using, if it doesnt already.
If you live rurally, go campaign for funding the USPS more, trump fucked that one, you can thank him for that.
“If you don’t have access to even remotely consistent alternatives than just go solve the USPS for us” are you for real?
