It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription

True, you do have to be wary of drop shippers on eBay though. A handful of times down I order something on eBay only to get it in Amazon packaging and with an Amazon gift packing slip - then I look up the item name on the gift receipt and find that the Amazon listing was cheaper and the eBay seller just skimmed off the top.

I really wish there was a non-profit or coop or public utility like replacement for amazon and ebay. Yeah you need a website and infrastructure and warehouses but this is becoming so fundamental to our economy that it's not good to let this "rent seeking" to continue. Make it a fair marketplace that is democratically controlled and optimizes for customers and sellers and workers instead of for shareholders. There is no need for amazon or ebay to exist.

Similar to paypal, all they did was make wire transfers easy. At least I can finally wire money immediately in the EU without extra costs making paypal and their tax on the internet economy superfluous (damn lazy banks!).

Governments ignoring ecommerce as a vital infrastructure has created these completely useless plutocrats.

PS: Sorry for the tangential rant lol

I don't understand some people who swear by it. If there's really something I need by the next day, I probably need it the same day and will just get it myself at a store.

I think it's also different internationally? For eg. in India, I already use credit cards, but there's a lifetime free credit card for Amazon that allows you to earn up to 5%. But without Prime, I earn only 3%. Ofc, this is only worthwhile because I already shop from Amazon without Prime and without the credit card, admittedly, but in my scenario it's far more worthwhile to have Prime than to not, because it pays for itself within a month or two even without me consuming a single piece of media from Amazon (whether it's Prime Video or Prime Music or Audible, etc).

Idk if this exists in every country where Prime exists, but I assume they're just trying to gain more market share in India so it's an option here. 🤷🏾‍♂️ But it certainly makes it worthwhile for me in my specific case.

Amazon: the dropshipping website white people named.

This is the reason I hemmed over my subscription for a few years, and after they announced they were adding ads to Prime Video, that was the final straw. I've ordered maybe 1 or 2 things without a subscription since, but I'm really happy with how much I'm able to get much faster and better elsewhere.

This is so annoying cuz it happens to me as well, yea its 2 day shipping.. . After it spends 4 or 5 days in processing

Shipping is the other way around for me. It's still two day shipping but doesn't ship for 2-3 days. So they're technically true to their prime benefit.

Permanently Deleted

Was one of the people who dropped it after the commercials were added. Started using our library instead and haven’t really missed the video streaming. I’ll log in via a browser every so often and get offered a free month or week of prime and immediately cancel. Was able to access prime day deals without paying for anything.

I had been considering getting rid of prime. The commercials were the last straw. I haven’t had it for 3 months now and haven’t cared at all.

What is Video? Prime member asking...

That's when I dropped prime. It's been just fine.

I can never find anything to watch on Prime Video. My subscription is any to renew in September and I'm about to turn off auto renew. I'll still order my regular things from Amazon but now I'll wait until my cart has $35+ in it for free shipping.

It’s filled with Temu level shit now as well.

This is an example of dark patterns. It can also include multiple steps to 'confirm' a decision, where the confirm button is beneath the decline button, only for the final step to have the button locations (or colours, shapes, etc) reversed. It's done on purpose to confuse people into giving up. Unfortunately, even if it works one time, it's justifiable for the company to continue the practice.

Reach out to their customer support and get a refund.

If you haven't used any of the benefits since its renewal, you can call to get a full refund. It did the same to me, and I was able to get the newest renewal fee back.

I cancelled two years ago and they renewed it somehow.

Then this year I let it use a cancelled card as the default and my one working card was on a list of 20 or so cards. It kept warning me that my card would not renew my prime subscription. Nah, they just ran an if statement over my cards to renew it.

I didn't really fight it because my family uses my prime video which has ads but I'm prepping them that it's not gonna be there next year.

Oh, for real? I've been "saving" mine for the next time I need to buy computer parts in bulk to build one.

Good to know! Thank you

So you pay triple at local stores. Bravo.

Yep, canceled back then too, for the very reasons.

Crazy. I was out of town last week, annoyed I couldn’t order stuff as I discovered I needed it, because it would have been delivered before I got home. I did finally order last night, but had to specifically avoid the overnight delivery in favor of fewer trips/boxes. ….. if Amazon is giving you these ridiculous lead times, maybe you want to take a box,over look at who you’re ordering from

I think most people think you NEED the Prime subscription to use Amazon and that's false.

It's pretty wild how deeply some people integrate products into their lives.

I think so. I don't even use Amazon.

Amazon was really great when it started out, you'd find what you were looking for, at correct/very good prices, fast shipping and good service if something was lost or broken. The whole experience was top notch.

But that was over ten years ago.

I did stop using it when it was still very good but all the abuse popped up on media.

I'm in the EU BTW.

Mail order has historically been a large part of US consumer buying. This is due to the number of people that lived in remote rural areas for most of this countries history. Access to goods was severely restricted due to that problem. And didn't really start changing much until post WW2 and the growth of urbanization. Mailing a cheap catalog to everyone was the best way to show off your goods and get necessary goods to those who wanted them and would have no access otherwise.

Amazon is merely the latest in a very long line of those businesses that developed that marketing stratagem. And since I live in one of those remote areas, Amazon does provide me with easy, fast, and generally competitive priced goods that I would simply never be able to access without making a 600 mile round trip to get. But if you live a large dense city, there is little need for Amazon. But then, people order uber eats or whatever it's called to get supper when they could cook something to eat cheaper instead.

I could spend hours googling for items from small and possibly sketchy websites and wait times than can stretch to several weeks or more, and sometimes I do out of boredom, but time is money as they say, and I do have other things to do.

Same here. Never ordered anything off Amazon. Not sure about the U.S., but I've never had trouble finding anything in other places, so I never had to resort to Amazon. Maybe certain things are harder to get in the U.S. except on Amazon? Some kind of monopoly thing?

The only reason is not having to register to thousands of crappy webshops that don't know shit about itsec and get data leaks all the time. There are other platforms than Amazon but I don't think their business practices are significantly more ethical.

There was a time in the long ago times when it was a really good, customer focused service that didn't have all of the issues it has today. It then of course got worse every year like everything else but now many people use it out of habit or addiction.

They're also trying to trick you into staying.

They keep giving me a month of free prime, which I use and cancel before the first charge.
Amazon seems confident they'll convert me eventually.

Then the eff with them. If something isn't available retail, there's a million other online retailers more local, more specialized, or just plain out of the manufacturer itself.

You can live without. Or you help them becoming even more dominant.

Fight it. Fight them.

….so find different manufacturers. Why do you need those specific ones? Fuck Amazon, stop giving them money. What do they have to do to lose your business.

It probably takes too long to go to each apartment, especially ones on the opposite end, and they probably are incentivized/punished more on time than accuracy.

Maybe they're using different map providers by default? Check Open street map, Apple, Google and Bing and see if some will route to the wrong side of the building, for example.

If you're that curious, of course. I'm not telling you what to do :-)

I don't want Amazon or Google using ai to harvest my family's photo data and likeness so it's not worth it. You pay and still are the product

That's basically the only reason I have it. I almost never use Amazon for ordering something

Did you ditch Amazon entirely or just wait until you spend over $35 for free shipping?

How does that work? Do they require another launcher or other kind of drm?

I cancelled Prime about a year ago, and so far it has had zero affect on our lives. Sometimes I'll put something in my cart that's under $35 and just wait until I want something else that brings me over $35. Maybe I'm more disciplined than other people? If I need something urgently, I'm not ordering it online anyway.

Quite a few times, a long period of time goes by before I add something to my cart to get above $35, and in the meantime I decided I don't even want the original thing. I'm ordering from Amazon a LOT less often, and it's great.

We buy as little as possible from Amazon, though it sort of doesn’t matter because our choice is basically Amazon or Walmart (where we live there aren’t any other retailers).

Basically we buy as little from all of these shit companies as possible. We keep a running list of things we do need to buy from Amazon and when the tally is $35 or more, then we make the purchase. It doesn’t cost us anything extra because it’s stuff we can only get from Amazon and it’s all stuff we need.

I've posted this elsewhere in similar comments. The value of Amazon has shifted from "buy anything" to "buy something that's annoying to find".

Unfortunately local brick and mortar stores are to blame as well.

Say you're looking for a 3-ring binder. You likely know where to go for it at your local Walmart. You aren't tied to a particular brand (or you are) and it doesn't take you long to find it.

But now let's say you're looking for something small like car wax. You're not sure what you need. You'd think it's in the care care section but you're not seeing it. The Walmart app says it's in aisle K44 and your in, what the hell? Z4? Map does you no good. And when you get there there are so many small products that you can't find it.

Amazon has done studies and the majority of shipped products weigh less than something like 5 pounds. People find Amazon search better than the in-store experience.

Walmart, and most B&M stores unfortunately have no incentive to change because they want you to browse. For Walmart, it's basket size (items per cart) whereas Amazon is the speed of checkout.

if you’re forced to make your order $35 to get free shipping, you’re likely buying stuff you don’t want/need just to get to that amount.

Nnnnooo. I'm pretty sure I need toilet paper. My order was $33 for the main stuff I needed to buy and then I threw in toilet paper to push the order over $35. I needed that anyway.

Also, you could ask your spouse if anything else is needed around the house. Also, also, you could just wait until you need something else and batch the orders into 1 order over $35, instead of ordering a bunch of single $5 items.

If you really need something urgently, then it's perfectly fine to pay for shipping. But this probably doesn't happen very often.

It's really not that hard. You should try it. Cancel Prime for 3 months. If you hate living without it after 3 months, then you can resubscribe. There's no penalties.