
Hate Amazon? Try Living Without It - MagicPropmaker
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/hate-amazon-try-living-without-it.html
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yifanlu
I haven’t used amazon for a while (and haven’t had prime in years) and a
couple months ago, after reading some posts about amazon I decided to see what
my life would have been like if I had used amazon exclusively for all my non-
grocery shopping.

Rules: I only buy it if it’s Prime eligible, otherwise it’s skipped. If I
bought something because it’s on sale, I take the lowest price amazon ever
offered for that item (with prime). Otherwise, I take the price of the item on
the same day.

Results: [https://i.imgur.com/kDeM2pM.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/kDeM2pM.jpg) I
saved about $330 by not having a prime membership and buying stuff only from
prime eligible stores. However I spent at most 27 more days waiting for items
(in reality a lot of these shipping times overlapped).

So the takeaway is that amazon made things easier and faster but not cheaper.
I know a lot of people still think amazon is the cheapest place to get things
but that hasn’t been true for a while.

~~~
ikeboy
Savings because other stores didn't charge tax and Amazon did shouldn't count,
because that'll change soon as the Supreme Court overturned Quill earlier this
year

~~~
metaphor
Money leaving my layman bank account today looks all the same regardless if
it's colored product, shipping, or tax. When the Supreme Court's decision
becomes the global ecommerce status quo, a reassessment of value will clearly
be in order. Until then...

~~~
ikeboy
I'm saying it'll be applied to all major US sellers relatively soon

~~~
metaphor
I understood and wasn't contesting the implication. I was merely objecting to
the notion that a favorable purchasing decision made by a consumer today by
today's rules "shouldn't count" because a legal decision that will normalize
ecommerce but has yet to be acted upon at scale (as perceived by consumers) is
imminent.

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adetrest
Cancelling my prime was one of the best thing I did for my future self. I
really didn't need half of the crap I ordered from Amazon. It's mostly
overpriced, poorly refurbished or low quality junk that I could get for half
the price directly from aliexpress.

But more importantly, without 1 day delivery on tap it makes you think harder
whether you really need to waste your money on yet more junk or if you can
live without it. Unsurprisingly, you don't really need it most of the time.

And if you're not buying from Amazon, you're not complicit in the company
abysmal treatment of its employees, or total disregard for intellectual
property laws (fake items are everywhere on amazon)

~~~
jammygit
Its hard when the 3 bookstores you used to go to close down over the course of
5 years

~~~
prklmn
You might be well served by a local library.

~~~
reaperducer
That was good advice when public libraries were less used. But these days (at
least in the American cities I frequent), they are massively popular.

Which means if you reserve a new release, be prepared to wait. Even with 17
copies of a particular newish book, the wait for it from my local library
system is in excess of eight months.

Wait eight months, or drop $11.95 at Amazon? Easy choice.

~~~
ui-explorer12
>> Which means if you reserve a new release, be prepared to wait.

Except we wait 2 or 3 years for the damn thing to be written; a little delayed
gratification until your hold comes up is such a minor, first-world problem.

Popular public libraries are most definitely better than the alternative. They
can justify better funding and bigger budgets, improve physical facilities and
move into new service areas.

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ThJ
This is a very American sort of story. The long hours, the lousy paychecks,
the lack of universal healthcare, the reliance on fast food. It's possible to
not live like that, but America doesn't want to.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
The majority of Americans want to, but in America the popularity of a policy
is not a strong indicator of whether it will be made into law.

~~~
pessimizer
It's not even a weak indicator:
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
poli...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-
and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B)

------
ciconia
> Amazon Prime helps alleviate the pressures of a sped-up economy. I don’t use
> it just because I’m lazy and love to stream “Transparent.” I use it (and
> other timesaving apps like Seamless and Uber) because I’m overworked and
> one-click ordering spares me time.

That's modern slavery for you: you give away your most precious, limited
resource - your time. In return you get the illusion of wealth, in the form of
money, only you have to spend it all just to stay afloat until the next
payday.

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lh7777
Pretty much off topic, but the opening paragraph of this article highlights
what I think is a little-known benefit of Prime membership. The author notes
that "sharing an Amazon Prime account with loved ones is surprisingly
intimate" but it doesn't have to be if you use Amazon Household:

"Sharing benefits through Amazon Household requires both adults to link their
accounts in an Amazon Household and agree to share payment methods. Each adult
keeps their personal account while sharing those benefits at no additional
cost."[1]

It's limited to two adults (plus teens), so not a solution for all cases.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200444180)

~~~
krrrh
They seem to offer this in most markets, but puzzlingly not Canada.

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mindslight
These anecdotes really just mean Amazon is in the same position as Walmart and
Amtrak - serving the underclass, not as a deliberate specialty - but because
it's the lowest common denominator and they've fallen through the cracks
everywhere else.

Just because OP themselves cannot fathom checking other (more appropriate)
vendors first or doing independent product research, does not mean that it's
impossible. If I had family members addicted to Amazon in this way, I'd be
worried about them being blatantly ripped off from Amazon's dark patterns, or
being harmed from co-mingled counterfeit goods. Somehow Amazon has built a
business around people just accepting these pitfalls, and I still can't
understand how. That sunk cost of "Prime" must be a hell of a drug.

------
baroffoos
Wasn't long ago that most of Australia was super hyped to see amazon come here
and then it did open and it was the same price as everything else that we
already had here. I wonder if a higher minimum wage here meant they weren't
able to cut the prices lower than everyone else.

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angarg12
I don't want to take the spot away from the topic of the article, but what
horrified me the most is the appalling conditions of end-of-life care of the
health system in the US. If there is one reason I'm glad I was born in a EU
country is that I can escape that madness when the time comes.

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codyb
I gave up my prime membership at the last renewal about four months ago and
haven't been to the site much since.

Granted, I was in Portugal at the time which doesn't get great shipping
apparently? Not that I was going to order anything, I had trouble enough
getting my luggage back as it was!

That being said, I'd been pretty turned off by the articles about their
workforce at their warehouses, and also this recent development with their
headquarters initiative.

In my opinion NYC should have come up with a package to present to Amazon and
then turned around and used it to benefit small businesses. Why we're throwing
money at one of the world's largest corporations by revenue is quite beyond
me, especially for a city like NYC which could use that money for their
subways and already is incredibly vibrant economically.

I enjoy going to the stores, chatting with people, touching products, and
trying things on. It's mild exercise, it's social, it's something to do, so
for me it's pleasant, and I'll pay a premium if I have to because of that.

The one thing I do like about Amazon is that I've heard it's more energy
efficient for products to be sold that way as opposed to in individual brick
and mortar stores which need heat and electricity.

Finally, I really enjoy putzing around on AWS and feel less conflicted about
using that (especially since my personal use is all on the free tier) since
their engineers and tech teams are well compensated (although I've heard and
have no idea if this is true, worked hard).

All that being said, if I was in any of the articles situations or lived in a
less dense locale shopping wise, I'm sure I'd use it or similar services. It
is certainly true that there is a ton better variety online for a lot of
items.

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kerng
I just quit my Prime Membership - wow, I had to click so many confirmation
buttons, it was funny. At least 3-5 times click ok, really ok, are you sure it
wasn't a mistake? It just too expensive with little value anymore.

I also started shopping books at Barnes & Noble primarily, although it is less
convenient, I feel better to keep supporting alternatives.

~~~
Nomentatus
Bad news: you aren't done. You've hardly started. You're going to have to keep
clicking no to reinstating Prime, if you use Amazon at all. You'll be
confirming this again and again before Amazon will let you do anything on the
site, for days or weeks, or more. Dark pattern after dark pattern. Market
power creates endless abuse.

~~~
masonic
It's easier to create a new account.

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voltagex_
I haven't had full Amazon for long (Australia) so I won't be giving it up just
yet. It's a godsend when you're mobility impaired and can't get to all the
brick and mortar stores. At the moment they're not running a full Marketplace
and they're definitely not pricing as aggressively as they could in Australia.

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superkuh
Uh, okay, done. Amazon is a pretty crappy place to shop unless you buy into
the lock-in and let them control you. Prices are high and shipping take a long
time. eBay is much better.

~~~
reaperducer
I cancelled my eBay account because I was tired of getting ripped off by
sellers.

At Amazon, I might get a co-mingled knock-off. But at least I'll get
_something_ , and not six weeks of shipping excuses followed by radio silence.

~~~
superkuh
Sorry to hear that. In general I find eBay's rating system for buyers/sellers
much more reliable than Amazon's. But of course I don't always shop at eBay.
Going to the sites of individual companies that sell the product I want saves
a lot of money too. And there's generally better support.

I can do this because unlike Amazon eBay doesn't pressure me with incentives
and sunk costs to only shop there.

~~~
masonic

      eBay's rating system for buyers/sellers
    

There is no meaningful rating system for _buyers_ anymore given that you can't
leave any buyer negative or even neutral feedback... even if they never pay.

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paganel
I live very well without Amazon, what am I missing? Granted, I live in a dense
European capital where there's a grocery store open every day till mid-night
located 200 meters away from my building's entrance and I do prefer to buy my
books directly from a book-store, but even when I used to live a little
farther away from a grocery store I was still not purchasing anything from
Amazon or Amazon-like websites.

~~~
mcguire
Wait...A grocery store open until midnight in Europe?

What sorcery is this?

~~~
paganel
It's Eastern Europe, actually, and yeah, we kind of love it and I must admit I
miss stores being open post 6PM whenever I visit European cities located more
to the West.

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landsman
No problem we have Alza.cz

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DyslexicAtheist
haven't ordered anything from Amazon since 2013, and I wouldn't work in a
company that utilizes AWS in any kind of way.

~~~
reaperducer
_I wouldn 't work in a company that utilizes AWS in any kind of way._

How would you know? Any company of any size is going to use AWS directly or
indirectly. The HR people won't know that some contracted vendor uses it for
their API.

~~~
SirLJ
Wishful thinking here...

