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.
Here are the things that constantly bring me back to using prime.
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Customer service - I can get a rep on the phone quickly, and chat is actually functional. And rarely do i even need these because returns are super easy to self-service.
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Logistics - I do not live in a big city. Most things take a minimum of 2 days to get to me. Amazon included, because they have to always go through the larger city near me (a few hundred miles away) and then go through local sorting. That said Amazon, is about 85% on the 2 day delivery, where most others are…5-7 days, even if i do in store pickup for some of the big box stores that ARE in town.
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Site functionality - They 100% have dark patterns. And they 100% track what sells well and then copy it into their “amazon essentials” catalogue to siphon off profits from third parties. But their site is functional, search works, I can usually find what I need.
I still often seek out alternatives. Especially local and small shops. But when my choices become Amazon vs BestBuy or Amazon vs Cabelas/Academy/Dicks/Walmart or something similar, I usually choose based on ancillary policies like speed of delivery and least amount of time wasting with returns. Amazon often wins out there.
I live outside of a tiny country town in Australia, and local shops literally do not carry many of the sorts of items I need or, yes, want.
I work from home and rarely go into town, so paying twice as much and taking a day out of my life just isn’t my bag.
If I can get local and it’s not urgent, I will put together a consolidated list and go in some weekend when I have enough to make it worthwhile.
Sure, it probably makes me the devil, but unless I go move to a cabin in the woods and life a self-sustainable lifestyle, I can’t realistically avoid supporting some amount of evil just by existing under capitalism.
I try to make good choices where I can, and vote for people who, ideally, could effect real change.
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.
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 at least in my case, shipping got faster once I canceled my prime. Lol. Fast shipping had been the only reason I had signed up in the first place.
I only have prime because it’s VERY cheap in poland - it costs ~ $10/YEAR. I don’t even really buy stuff on amazon, it’s just for prime video and the gaming rewards.
Nah, it’s too convenient and I don’t live in a big city so the things I need aren’t sold here.
I live in a rural area and gave up Amazon shortly before the pandemic. I switched to ordering items directly from the manufacturers’ websites. Giving up Amazon doesn’t mean giving up the rest of the internet, though admittedly some manufacturers link you right back to Amazon instead of running their own separate storefront, so I have to look for another.
All considered with Prime I end up saving money. Not considering their Video and Games services. I have no brand loyalty, if someone comes around with a better value proposition I’d take it but for now Amazon is where I prefer to buy. Oh, I forgot to mention their return and refund policies. Just great
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.
