A real reason to avoid Amazon is fake merchandise. I'd been buying a vitamin supplement from them for years. Then they sent me a notice that it was being recalled as a fake.[1] (Archive [2]) They paid a refund for the last purchase.
But that's all. Amazon won't respond to questions about what was in it or who the real seller is.
I no longer buy anything from Amazon that could be faked.
I bought a book. A literal book. And it was wrong size, wrong paper, printed on a 5 degree skew including the cover. It should have been from Simon and Schulster, but despite Sold and Shipped, it just wasn’t.
> Amazon needs to be stopped, and legislation will not do so. Only its loyal consumers – who keep the beast alive – can do that by taking their money elsewhere.
We've (my wife and I) tried to stop using Amazon. But recently, I've run into issues where I need particular specialized bits and pieces (e.g. just today, a low profile 4" HVAC 90 degree elbow) that are only available via Amazon. A variation is where the item is available from one or two other places, but at a 10x markup.
We need to convince vendors to also avoid Amazon, and that may be even more of a difficult sell (no pun intended).
ps. Amazon employee #2, and I approve this message.
The other problem are people doing price arbitrage. You find the item on eBay and think to yourself, "cool, I'd rather patronize a small business" - but as it turns out, the item is drop-shipped from Amazon, Walmart, or the like.
I just read your Vox article and the comment "We exist with multiple hats" really resonated with me. I find it difficult to interact with a lot of people in tech because they too often seem to be overly dogmatic and unable to consider that other valid perspectives can and do exist... and that they might not know everything.
Sometimes I just want to say to those people, "I want to live in your world, where everything is black and white and you have all the answers in your pocket. It sounds comfortable and easy."
Cancelling Prime seems to have a big natural impact. I heard stories about how much order volume goes up after someone joins Prime, and it seems the opposite is true as well. I cancelled my membership when they started charging extra for ad-free video. It just felt so cheap and petty, since I was already paying for Prime. This was just the straw the broke the camel's back. I was already pretty fed up with Amazon due to being sent counterfeit products, used or open box items being sold as new, the push to leave retail packaging on my porch, all the fake reviews, the inability to find quality items via their search, the site being overrun with low quality garbage being resold from AliExpress for 10x the price, the concern for the future of my local stores, wishlists no longer supporting external links or simply ideas, etc, etc, etc.
I still do make the occasional order out of laziness or a lack of other options. However, I looked up all my orders from the lifetime of my account and charted them a couple weeks ago. After 6 years of year-over-year order increase, and a 17+ year overall uptrend in orders... they fell off a cliff once I cancelled. My orders fell by 60% the year after I cancelled Prime, and it's on pace to drop even further this year. I even did all my Christmas shopping last year without any Amazon orders, while previous years were 100% Amazon.
Going down to 0 can be hard, but even big drops in orders will have an impact. And if that money goes to other retailers, and demand grows, they can invest in more inventory and a wider array of goods that people need. Any percentage shift away from Amazon is progress, especially in done my the masses.
I'd encourage everyone to dump their Prime membership. If you order more than $35 you can still get free shipping (you just have to be explicit in selecting it and be vigilant during checkout to avoid the multiple traps to try and get you to sign back up... lots of dark patterns). Shipping times are a little more unpredictable. Sometimes it still only takes 1-2 days, while other times it seems to take a week or two. Most things aren't urgent. If they are, I try to find them locally.
I've also tried to stop obsessing about finding the "best" whatever it is I'm looking for. When online, there are a lot of traps, but one of the things I expect retail stores to do is make sure they are carrying quality products they'd stand behind. They don't want returns or to get a reputation for selling junk. I was getting a toaster a while back and instead of spending hours researching online, I just went to a store I frequent, looked at the 5 options they had, and picked the one I liked the best. Hours of time saved, and the toaster works fine. I expect I'll have it for many years to come.
I would love to avoid Amazon, and indeed I would love to support local retailers, but more often than not it is simply impossible. The only way I can find out if a local vendor carries an item I'm interested in, and if they have it in stock, is to physically go there. The amount of time that requires is orders of magnitude more than what it takes to order the item on Amazon, where I am all but guaranteed that it will be available.
It is astonishing to me that brick-and-mortar retailers have not banded together to put an on-line front-end onto their stock. It would technically straightforward (albeit not trivial) to build a web site as easy to use as Amazon, but with guaranteed same-day or next-day delivery via a partner like doordash, and with more reliable quality because local vendors have more of an incentive to vet their suppliers. I would love to use a service like that, but AFAICT it doesn't exist.
Someone here, please build this. I will be your first customer.
The other thing is local retailers have cut back on all specialty items because they expect people to buy those items online.
The problem is that buying specialized things actually makes sense to do online. But online buying has the problem that an average online retailer gives no guarantee that they will fulfill an order faithfully (I still remember trying to order shoe from Target online and getting ... a used masked and I assume others remember online "burn" as well) so Amazon has a key position of online guarantor. As a "natural monopoly", one might imagine such a role would be regulated but not in the present climate, ha ha ha.
Some stores do have their stock available online. I know Home Depot does. The website tells you what aisle the item is in, which rack in that aisle, and how many they have.
I've also seen where stores won't have it at the store I have selected, but it will also check the stock of nearby stores to tell me of one of those other stores have it.
It's not ubiquitous yet, but I'm seeing it more and more. I've also found with things like Apple Pay that checkout on random online stores is just as fast and easy as Amazon, which is quite nice.
You seem to forget that you can call nearly any local retailer and they will check their inventory for you and often even set it aside for you. A phone call does not require orders of magnitude more time than an online order and you can build a friendly connection in your community that way, too.
I fear it's too late for this. For any category of item, pretty much all the stuff you buy from Amazon or elsewhere online generally comes from the same few factories in China. Any other potential suppliers probably went out of business years ago, are too expensive, or are too small or local to work with.
You could open a brick and mortar store tomorrow but you'd be selling the exact same products that come from the same factories as Amazon.
In Japan, the Yodobashi Camera chain has a web interface tied to their huge retail stores. The page for each product [1, for example] has a link to a list of stores where it is in stock [2]. If you’re in a hurry and near one of those stores, you can have it held for pickup later that day. If not, you can have it delivered.
I buy a lot from Amazon Japan as well, and I haven’t had the problems with shoddy or counterfeit products that others have reported. I don’t know if that’s just my luck or if Amazon Japan screens its suppliers better. But it’s nice to have strong competitors to Amazon in online shopping. In addition to Yodobashi, there are Rakuten, Yahoo Japan, Bic Camera, and Yamada Denki for a wide range of products, as well as Kinokuniya, Maruzen Junkudo, Sanseido, and others for books.
I've been hoping someone would build the same thing. Even without delivery, I'd love to be able to search for products across multiple stores through a web interface and see their availability in a map view, with price and in-stock status. I would be happy to go to the store and buy it, as long as I only need to make one trip and I know it will be in stock and at a certain price.
I do technical consulting for small food companies
This is an immediate non-starter for most local retail businesses because of the steep (25+%) transaction fees Doordash and other consumer last-mile providers charge, and the razor-thin margins of many retail stores
To be clear I agree with your proposal overall and suspect this particular challenge is surmountable, but it's very difficult to get it right, and either way relying on another parasitic platform won't be the answer
It's like $140 annually now... and if you're mostly just buying things and not watching their content, it's a nice speed bump to just accumulate items in the cart until you hit the minimum free shipping and only order then.
When you occasionally do for some reason need an instant item, you can pay the shipping then. It's kinda like for most people, having a second or third car is much more expensive than just renting one when you actually need it.
That said, I am close to a Costco so that's where I get most of my bulk items - the Amazon stuff tends to be more discretionary.
Amazon is very convenient when needing something one off. But we are not going to renew Prime and slowly ween off it.
Still looking for alternatives though, Costco is okay, but when you want something asap, you need either to drive to stores or pay for same day delivery and tips.
None of these are good arguments to convince the average person to not use Amazon (or any other service provided by a megacorp). A better argument (well, maybe not as of May 2025) is that most crap on Amazon is available for 1/5 the price from websites like Aliexpress. Nothing on Amazon is sold for less than ~8 dollars, meanwhile you can buy the exact same product from Aliexpress for less than a dollar.
I feel like the author is undermining their own complaint in regards to Rekognition. Anyone can just sign up for an AWS account and start using the service, pretty much the same as anything else AWS sells. Then in response to specific bad behavior by US police departments Amazon cut off their access, a practice they've kept up to this day.
Amazon could have quietly (or loudly in 2025) lifted the ban at any point in the last five years to much nothing in the terms of pushback.
Myself I can't stand the media blitz that tries to talk up Prime Day every year.
I like hunting for bargains as much as anybody, I love checking out the used games at Gamestop or items on clearance at Best Buy, not least the reuse center at Ithaca where I might find a cassette or Video CD deck with karaoke features or a minidisc player.
Prime Day seems to be just a waste of time. I don't see any attractive prices on anything I want to buy. So many web sites scour Amazon for good deals and can't find any. It's a snoozer.
Fun fact: if you click on Amazon affiliate link, anything you put in your cart in the next 24 hours counts towards that affiliate once you hit purchase on that cart
I wish our local postage carrier was more efficient. Amazon provides next day delivery, whilst other online stores dispatch your purchase within 2-3 days and the package arrives is a further 2-5 days.
I noped out of Prime a long time ago when it became clear they were training the population to treat all their purchases as instant gratification impulse buys.
Am I missing something, the article randomly says:
"For context, the US federal government spent $53 million on public education in 2022." and links to: https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... which says K-12 schools spend $857.2 billion.
The federal government is distinct from state or local governments. The numbers still might not be consistent (it says “[t]he federal government provides 13.6% of funding for public K-12 education”, which would be more than $53MM) but the page you linked draws that distinction too. State and local funds make up the difference.
You didn't miss anything, the author of the piece was just wrong. They either screwed up the math or didn't read their own link correctly, or both. Moreover, it is trivial to search for the US Dept of Education's budget for 2022 and fact check this.
It's also cited as evidence that Amazon is now more powerful than the US Government which is just factually fucking false. It really is a different breed of person that thinks some millions of dollars > sovereign power. It's like, yeah, they lobby, but they also have people lobbying against them, including near-competitors. The dynamic is not as simple as spend some $X millions of dollars and get some amount of equivalent benefit. You lobby because an entity with sovereign power can trivially destroy your business.
I guess, but Amazon gets me stuff tomorrow or the next day, reliably, week in and week out. Yeah, I could find this stuff elsewhere on the internet. But not for Tuesday delivery. And not without opening another account. Also, right now, often only by paying a tariff-adjacent fee to cover the import costs of the vendors that didn't have the foresight to pre-stock imports like Amazon did.
People who want to write stuff like this really need to reckon with the fact that Amazon is and remains the superior product, and by a very significant degree.
They're not winning because they "hate democracy" or are "full-stop evil" or whatever. They're winning because they're the best.
And that's kind of an issue. Amazon effectively has a monopoly in this space, and competing at a similar level just is not possible anymore. And Amazon is so big that, even when you have a better product and service, it can buy you off¹.
I have moved anything I don’t need quickly off Amazon as much as reasonably possible, and I do avoid some things from Amazon as well, but for too many things they’re the cheapest and fastest option, or the 2nd cheapest and fastest option.
Also if I think there is a reasonably high chance I’ll return an item, I also go through Amazon, because they haven’t once in 20 years I’ve been using them giving me an issue, charged a restocking fee etc.
Other online shops simply don’t match enough of these Amazon value prop to sway me over
Canceling my Prime account mainly meant I bought less stuff overall. A win for my wallet and the planet in the end. I need zero friction in my life for healthy eating and exercise, not for buying crap from a Chinese brand of the week (Glorf, Qerdu, Plund or whatever).
They are also actively preventing other marketplaces from being better. For example, for exclusive audiobooks on audible, the producers are paid 40% but only 25% for non-exclusive ones.
Amazon enables us to buy lots of things we just wouldn't if there was just a little bit more of friction. I'm not sure it's an overall positive that they have next day delivery. We'd definitely be better overall if Amazon didn't undermine smaller shops using discounts only they can afford long term.
This statement is not an attack on your character or being just a broad generalization.
The biggest addiction of the modern era is convenience. Once people have it, it is very difficult to give up. We are all addicted to this, we aren't running this site via the letters column in a newspaper, because of convenience. But it also means we tend to ignore the negatives of said services.
Your point of them winning because they're the best, that can also be true. But because of that and the convenience addiction they provide, we let them get away with all the other stuff.
I'm not saying this is an excuse to use Amazon, I have never used it. I am just saying it is a hard hurdle for some to overcome.
The author reeks of self importance and what he thinks is moral superiorioty. Was too hard to read.
To the point of the post, Amazon engages in lawful tactics to conquer the retail market. Consumers are incentivelzed to get the best value out of their money. If you want change legislation is needed. Your approach of shaming people for using their services isn't scalable. And I also don't agree with plenty of the premises in your article but it doesn't matter.
I can almost always find a small company - often thing-i-want.com that has just as good deals and they provide useful advice about which version is best - often I have bought the more expensive version for those reasons. (I think for the better though I rarely buy enough of anything to have an informed opinion on relative merit)
When I lived in the US, I tried to order stuff from Amazon as less as possible. The problem was the lack of decent urban areas and public transport. Going to a shop in my city where they had the same thing which I wanted would take the better part of a day.
One of the people I follow on tiktok suggested abstaining from shopping from large corporations for Lent except for sundays. I tried it and ended up finding out some things about myself I did not realize, which I guess is kind of the point.
Strangely enough, yes to both (at least for in store purchases). And I find neither company particularly ethical.
They have a tighter control on their supply chain and don't have a truly open "market" where anyone can sell crap (or stolen crap).
A lot of this comes down to limited stocking and shelf space. Amazon effectively has unlimited storage space. Hence their ability to show off 6000 drop shipping products which are actually the same product.
Walmart and Target, on the other hand, have to be somewhat judicious because shelf space is limited. They can't have a row of the same products under different labels. And if what they choose to sell has quality problems they get hit harder for it. They take the loss for the unsold counterfeit goods. Amazon, by their nature, sees minimal hits when products are determined to be counterfeit. That usually just means they blacklist a seller. They are hardly impacted.
Also, funnily enough, it's why I don't worry about counterfeits at Wholefoods even though it's parent company is Amazon.
Mostly social reasons here but there are also practical reasons even for those who don't care about any of this stuff.
Amazon is becoming more and more like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but it's very touch and go when it comes to the quality of the merchandise you'll receive.
If that quality isn't a concern for you, Temu and AliExpress can give you similar quality for much less. Take a screenshot of the item on Amazon with Google Lens and use the image search on either of these platforms to get the item even cheaper.
For LPs specifically: it's much better than paying import fees now that preorders are instant with RSS alerts. Also AWS Science/Dev Program Training is nice. Supplement labels can be cross-referenced elsewhere. Just use Nootropics Depot, Science Bio, Cosmic Nootropics,iHerb, Syntharise, etcetera. All legal/not iillicit.
Many commenter's here saying they cannot avoid Amazon. I am not here to deny their reality, but I have a different story
I have avoided Amazon since ~2004 when I accidentally bought two box sets (double clicked) and there was no way to undo one. Clearly a Dark Pattern. Fuckers
I have succeeded. I always find another source for everything (mostly books, some small electronics).
I am not in the USA, I am in the South Pacific, a long way away however you measure it (except we speak English, mostly, here too). I have to wonder if that is a reason? Yet we use the same Internet
I started avoiding Amazon because they dishonestly ripped me off 20 years ago. I would start to avoid them today because they are evil
I refuse to boycott Amazon, but I do try other sites and local places first, but I'm not going to to a 100% boycott that doesn't really prove much; I just don't run to Amazon first to get stuff.
As someone who is very personally interested in the intersection between different political opinions, I really like how this article side-stepped individual issues to present the argument that Amazon is bad as a whole. “Ok, you don’t connect with BLM? Let’s talk about something else.” I find very, very often that conservatives & liberals are talking past each other and cannot even understand why the other side is making the argument they are. This is the first time in a while I’ve seen that side-step motion applied productively.
I agree with the authors conclusion about Amazon, but even if you don’t, you should think about how polarized the nation is and what political issues we can try to coalesce on.
It felt pretty insulting to me. It had the smug, sarcastic, holier-than-thou kind of flavor to it—"there are only 3 ways to think about things, I already know more than you do about who you are and what you believe, you must be one of THAT tribe of one-dimensional dummies, here's YOUR flavor that I've so generously dumbed down for you."
Kind of like the "didactic" voice that the young men on YouTube use when they're cosplaying documentarians or newscasters.
It works better for authors who genuinely know what they're talking about--but in most cases, the closer you look at something, the more complexity you notice, and the less breezily confident you are about it. So often, it's like this—"reheated nachos," do the kids call it? A big sassy omnibus "take" of "takes," more than, like, facts and analysis? All building up to a meaningless language-of-empowerment call to action?
Regardless of what one thinks about Amazon, one's actions have approximately zero effect on it.
Even if one controlled, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 people and commanded them to not use Amazon, it would have little effect.
If someone opts to stay away from Amazon, they should at least do it with clear eyes: they are doing it to feel something and will not actually affect the company.
I've been a vegetarian for 30 years. Big beef is still raging despite all the Hindus and abstainers. Doesn't mean I'll grill a burger and chow down. It would be great if suddenly the world woke up and thought about consequences of what they do in a myriad of things. It will never happen, but acting unaware when you are aware is something you have to live with. Some people think morals are divine, but I guess some people think of them as "feelings".
"For context, the US federal government spent $53 million on public education in 2022" Hilarious, the federal government probably spent more on photocopiers for the department of education in 2022 than that.
Honestly I hate Amazon because they are a mega corp that just gets bigger and bigger. But on the other hand they are just the best online store hands down. I ordered an electric toothbrush yesterday at 23:30 and it arrived today at 15:30 - that's just amazing. Also returning stuff is hassle-free and they often are the cheapest.
I tried using Otto for some time but it just cannot compare. Sure. I could also shop from multiple shops but that is kinda waste of time. Amazon is a real one-stop shop.
The only standard I hold Amazon to is if they can get me the things I want in the fastest time. Until someone does that better, I have no reasons not to use Amazon.
This behavior works in a competitive, monopoly averse economy. In the US, this means you will eventuy have no alternative to Amazon.
I've been thinking about the poor quality and availability of Communist goods in the 1980s. I think about the bread lines every time I shop at Costco. What happened to make us so complacent?
I understand hyperbole is a useful rhetorical device, but it's very hard for me to take anyone who uses it seriously or trust anything they say at all.
And it really doesn't help develop trust when the citations used to support one's points directly contradicts them (like that bit about Amazon providing real-time surveillance from Ring doorbells to police without owners' knowledge - the one and only thing I decided to read the source for which said quite the opposite).
It's a shame too since I'm sure the author had some good points, but I have neither the time nor energy to research every single claim made to see which ones aren't bullshit.
It’s right there in the second paragraph of the WaPo(!) story that Ring owners opt in and can decline to share data.
Does Rekognition perform poorly? Maybe it does, but it’s a best effort service, not a police officer in a box. That AWS was shamed into not selling it to law enforcement doesn’t mean law enforcement won’t have access to facial recognition, only that the vendor they choose isn’t capable of being embarrassed by bad PR.
This honestly may as well have been a paid ad by Amazon. It served as a reminder for me that Prime Day is coming up. That reminder was followed up with several extremely weak arguments that Amazon is the pinnacle of evil. Also felt like it was written largely by AI
Many of the things the author accuses Amazon of doing are troubling, but the logic the author used in the Chris Brown music buying example to tie it all together shows of a lack of distinction between types of cooperation with evil.
When an act has both a potentially good and bad effect Philosophers like to distinguish the morality of this act of "cooperating with evil" by analyzing the degrees to which your cooperation is:
- formal or material (do you want the bad thing to happen and that's why you're buying from Amazon?)
- immediate or mediate (are you supplying a critical component such that without your specific instance of cooperation the evil could not occur?)
- proximate or remote (Do you work for Amazon?)
Each of these dimensions should be taken into consideration because without such analysis one can easily become scrupulous about every act that one does that may have unintended side effects. This is how you get people who say things like "there is no such thing as ethical consumption in capitalism" and other extreme statements that would otherwise force you to be a monk in a desert lest your acts accidentally create harm.
To learn more about this principle of double effect:
It’s like some Soviet-style retailer where everyone is supposed to shop for everything. It’s about as contrary to competitive capitalism as a company can be. I signed off two years ago and haven’t missed it for a minute - though you should make your own decisions, as with everything.
Amazon manipulates your product searches. When you search for a product, it will push a few select brands and you won’t get past that, except you deliberately search for a specific brand. So it will limit your options. But it will give you the illusion to show you a large amount of various brands.
Searching for a product category on Google won‘t allow you to find a big number of brands either. Because they will push certain products as well.
So be aware that these platforms will limit your options.
But I admit that Amazon has a very polished UX. It‘s a one-stop shop, returns are handled very generously, and you don’t need to visit a dozen sites to get various products.
Trains are shaped like penis, bus is shape like penis, skyscraper is shape like penis, rocket is shape like penis, now Amazon logo is shape like penis? Why are all Americans always looking everywhere for shape like penis. Every time.
"Hello, American, look at this pencil"
"Pencil?! Shaped like penis!"
"Hello, American, look at your hands"
"Oh my god! That is five penises a hand!"
Constantly searching for penis everywhere. Is there reason for this? It is not as common elsewhere, but American is always constantly searching for penis. If not provided, American will construct it out of household objects. Desperate for penis, American will find it even in intangible objects like logo.
It's not enough to be against Amazon.
You need to be against everyone who
- sells tech to the gov,
- undercuts prices,
- exploits employees,
- lobbies for regulation.
Not to mention the real reason we hate Jeff Bezos.
Because you wouldn't like it if I mentioned it.
Animats|7 months ago
I no longer buy anything from Amazon that could be faked.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/ask/questions/Tx2Q5O0C84HF1GU/
[2] https://archive.is/rN8B9
SoftTalker|7 months ago
davidw|7 months ago
freeone3000|7 months ago
It’s all fake. Every bit of it.
mandeepj|7 months ago
PreserVision -> I've never heard about that brand, so I would have never bought it. What was the reason behind your purchase decision?
bilsbie|7 months ago
PenguinCoder|7 months ago
apt-apt-apt-apt|7 months ago
sheepscreek|7 months ago
PaulDavisThe1st|7 months ago
We've (my wife and I) tried to stop using Amazon. But recently, I've run into issues where I need particular specialized bits and pieces (e.g. just today, a low profile 4" HVAC 90 degree elbow) that are only available via Amazon. A variation is where the item is available from one or two other places, but at a 10x markup.
We need to convince vendors to also avoid Amazon, and that may be even more of a difficult sell (no pun intended).
ps. Amazon employee #2, and I approve this message.
hinterlands|7 months ago
ranger_danger|7 months ago
I just read your Vox article and the comment "We exist with multiple hats" really resonated with me. I find it difficult to interact with a lot of people in tech because they too often seem to be overly dogmatic and unable to consider that other valid perspectives can and do exist... and that they might not know everything.
Sometimes I just want to say to those people, "I want to live in your world, where everything is black and white and you have all the answers in your pocket. It sounds comfortable and easy."
al_borland|7 months ago
I still do make the occasional order out of laziness or a lack of other options. However, I looked up all my orders from the lifetime of my account and charted them a couple weeks ago. After 6 years of year-over-year order increase, and a 17+ year overall uptrend in orders... they fell off a cliff once I cancelled. My orders fell by 60% the year after I cancelled Prime, and it's on pace to drop even further this year. I even did all my Christmas shopping last year without any Amazon orders, while previous years were 100% Amazon.
Going down to 0 can be hard, but even big drops in orders will have an impact. And if that money goes to other retailers, and demand grows, they can invest in more inventory and a wider array of goods that people need. Any percentage shift away from Amazon is progress, especially in done my the masses.
I'd encourage everyone to dump their Prime membership. If you order more than $35 you can still get free shipping (you just have to be explicit in selecting it and be vigilant during checkout to avoid the multiple traps to try and get you to sign back up... lots of dark patterns). Shipping times are a little more unpredictable. Sometimes it still only takes 1-2 days, while other times it seems to take a week or two. Most things aren't urgent. If they are, I try to find them locally.
I've also tried to stop obsessing about finding the "best" whatever it is I'm looking for. When online, there are a lot of traps, but one of the things I expect retail stores to do is make sure they are carrying quality products they'd stand behind. They don't want returns or to get a reputation for selling junk. I was getting a toaster a while back and instead of spending hours researching online, I just went to a store I frequent, looked at the 5 options they had, and picked the one I liked the best. Hours of time saved, and the toaster works fine. I expect I'll have it for many years to come.
twobitshifter|7 months ago
curamious|7 months ago
wow, that must have been quite an interesting experience. Do you have any anecdotes that you were willing to share about the experience. Thanks
lisper|7 months ago
It is astonishing to me that brick-and-mortar retailers have not banded together to put an on-line front-end onto their stock. It would technically straightforward (albeit not trivial) to build a web site as easy to use as Amazon, but with guaranteed same-day or next-day delivery via a partner like doordash, and with more reliable quality because local vendors have more of an incentive to vet their suppliers. I would love to use a service like that, but AFAICT it doesn't exist.
Someone here, please build this. I will be your first customer.
joe_the_user|7 months ago
The problem is that buying specialized things actually makes sense to do online. But online buying has the problem that an average online retailer gives no guarantee that they will fulfill an order faithfully (I still remember trying to order shoe from Target online and getting ... a used masked and I assume others remember online "burn" as well) so Amazon has a key position of online guarantor. As a "natural monopoly", one might imagine such a role would be regulated but not in the present climate, ha ha ha.
al_borland|7 months ago
I've also seen where stores won't have it at the store I have selected, but it will also check the stock of nearby stores to tell me of one of those other stores have it.
It's not ubiquitous yet, but I'm seeing it more and more. I've also found with things like Apple Pay that checkout on random online stores is just as fast and easy as Amazon, which is quite nice.
PhoneTag|7 months ago
yupitsme123|7 months ago
You could open a brick and mortar store tomorrow but you'd be selling the exact same products that come from the same factories as Amazon.
tkgally|7 months ago
I buy a lot from Amazon Japan as well, and I haven’t had the problems with shoddy or counterfeit products that others have reported. I don’t know if that’s just my luck or if Amazon Japan screens its suppliers better. But it’s nice to have strong competitors to Amazon in online shopping. In addition to Yodobashi, there are Rakuten, Yahoo Japan, Bic Camera, and Yamada Denki for a wide range of products, as well as Kinokuniya, Maruzen Junkudo, Sanseido, and others for books.
[1] https://www.yodobashi.com/product/100000001004349962/
[2] https://www.yodobashi.com/ec/product/stock/10000000100434996...
mitthrowaway2|7 months ago
vector_spaces|7 months ago
I do technical consulting for small food companies
This is an immediate non-starter for most local retail businesses because of the steep (25+%) transaction fees Doordash and other consumer last-mile providers charge, and the razor-thin margins of many retail stores
To be clear I agree with your proposal overall and suspect this particular challenge is surmountable, but it's very difficult to get it right, and either way relying on another parasitic platform won't be the answer
Hikikomori|7 months ago
vidro3|7 months ago
______|7 months ago
It's like $140 annually now... and if you're mostly just buying things and not watching their content, it's a nice speed bump to just accumulate items in the cart until you hit the minimum free shipping and only order then.
When you occasionally do for some reason need an instant item, you can pay the shipping then. It's kinda like for most people, having a second or third car is much more expensive than just renting one when you actually need it.
That said, I am close to a Costco so that's where I get most of my bulk items - the Amazon stuff tends to be more discretionary.
paxys|7 months ago
fvgvkujdfbllo|7 months ago
Amazon is very convenient when needing something one off. But we are not going to renew Prime and slowly ween off it.
Still looking for alternatives though, Costco is okay, but when you want something asap, you need either to drive to stores or pay for same day delivery and tips.
variadix|7 months ago
Spivak|7 months ago
Amazon could have quietly (or loudly in 2025) lifted the ban at any point in the last five years to much nothing in the terms of pushback.
PaulHoule|7 months ago
I like hunting for bargains as much as anybody, I love checking out the used games at Gamestop or items on clearance at Best Buy, not least the reuse center at Ithaca where I might find a cassette or Video CD deck with karaoke features or a minidisc player.
Prime Day seems to be just a waste of time. I don't see any attractive prices on anything I want to buy. So many web sites scour Amazon for good deals and can't find any. It's a snoozer.
heavyset_go|7 months ago
It's literally been a decade or more since Prime Day, or Amazon in general, had the best prices online.
jedimastert|7 months ago
kristianp|7 months ago
7speter|7 months ago
add-sub-mul-div|7 months ago
kevin_thibedeau|7 months ago
dosinga|7 months ago
wging|7 months ago
SllX|7 months ago
It's also cited as evidence that Amazon is now more powerful than the US Government which is just factually fucking false. It really is a different breed of person that thinks some millions of dollars > sovereign power. It's like, yeah, they lobby, but they also have people lobbying against them, including near-competitors. The dynamic is not as simple as spend some $X millions of dollars and get some amount of equivalent benefit. You lobby because an entity with sovereign power can trivially destroy your business.
zmgsabst|7 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...
bentt|7 months ago
ajross|7 months ago
People who want to write stuff like this really need to reckon with the fact that Amazon is and remains the superior product, and by a very significant degree.
They're not winning because they "hate democracy" or are "full-stop evil" or whatever. They're winning because they're the best.
ezst|7 months ago
¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souq_(company)
no_wizard|7 months ago
I have moved anything I don’t need quickly off Amazon as much as reasonably possible, and I do avoid some things from Amazon as well, but for too many things they’re the cheapest and fastest option, or the 2nd cheapest and fastest option.
Also if I think there is a reasonably high chance I’ll return an item, I also go through Amazon, because they haven’t once in 20 years I’ve been using them giving me an issue, charged a restocking fee etc.
Other online shops simply don’t match enough of these Amazon value prop to sway me over
fred_is_fred|7 months ago
agnishom|7 months ago
They are also actively preventing other marketplaces from being better. For example, for exclusive audiobooks on audible, the producers are paid 40% but only 25% for non-exclusive ones.
viraptor|7 months ago
SlowTao|7 months ago
The biggest addiction of the modern era is convenience. Once people have it, it is very difficult to give up. We are all addicted to this, we aren't running this site via the letters column in a newspaper, because of convenience. But it also means we tend to ignore the negatives of said services.
Your point of them winning because they're the best, that can also be true. But because of that and the convenience addiction they provide, we let them get away with all the other stuff.
I'm not saying this is an excuse to use Amazon, I have never used it. I am just saying it is a hard hurdle for some to overcome.
tenuousemphasis|7 months ago
Or you could compromise your morals for convenience, I guess.
duckilicious|7 months ago
To the point of the post, Amazon engages in lawful tactics to conquer the retail market. Consumers are incentivelzed to get the best value out of their money. If you want change legislation is needed. Your approach of shaming people for using their services isn't scalable. And I also don't agree with plenty of the premises in your article but it doesn't matter.
lr0|7 months ago
bluGill|7 months ago
agnishom|7 months ago
jedimastert|7 months ago
johncole|7 months ago
cogman10|7 months ago
They have a tighter control on their supply chain and don't have a truly open "market" where anyone can sell crap (or stolen crap).
A lot of this comes down to limited stocking and shelf space. Amazon effectively has unlimited storage space. Hence their ability to show off 6000 drop shipping products which are actually the same product.
Walmart and Target, on the other hand, have to be somewhat judicious because shelf space is limited. They can't have a row of the same products under different labels. And if what they choose to sell has quality problems they get hit harder for it. They take the loss for the unsold counterfeit goods. Amazon, by their nature, sees minimal hits when products are determined to be counterfeit. That usually just means they blacklist a seller. They are hardly impacted.
Also, funnily enough, it's why I don't worry about counterfeits at Wholefoods even though it's parent company is Amazon.
aussieguy1234|7 months ago
Amazon is becoming more and more like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but it's very touch and go when it comes to the quality of the merchandise you'll receive.
If that quality isn't a concern for you, Temu and AliExpress can give you similar quality for much less. Take a screenshot of the item on Amazon with Google Lens and use the image search on either of these platforms to get the item even cheaper.
HYPRFLX|7 months ago
worik|7 months ago
I have avoided Amazon since ~2004 when I accidentally bought two box sets (double clicked) and there was no way to undo one. Clearly a Dark Pattern. Fuckers
I have succeeded. I always find another source for everything (mostly books, some small electronics).
I am not in the USA, I am in the South Pacific, a long way away however you measure it (except we speak English, mostly, here too). I have to wonder if that is a reason? Yet we use the same Internet
I started avoiding Amazon because they dishonestly ripped me off 20 years ago. I would start to avoid them today because they are evil
EasyMark|7 months ago
worik|7 months ago
But I am unsure that this will convince anyone not already convinced.
We need good political messaging to bring them, them all, down and to get economic freedom
subjectsigma|7 months ago
I agree with the authors conclusion about Amazon, but even if you don’t, you should think about how polarized the nation is and what political issues we can try to coalesce on.
alwa|7 months ago
Kind of like the "didactic" voice that the young men on YouTube use when they're cosplaying documentarians or newscasters.
It works better for authors who genuinely know what they're talking about--but in most cases, the closer you look at something, the more complexity you notice, and the less breezily confident you are about it. So often, it's like this—"reheated nachos," do the kids call it? A big sassy omnibus "take" of "takes," more than, like, facts and analysis? All building up to a meaningless language-of-empowerment call to action?
djoldman|7 months ago
Even if one controlled, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 people and commanded them to not use Amazon, it would have little effect.
If someone opts to stay away from Amazon, they should at least do it with clear eyes: they are doing it to feel something and will not actually affect the company.
gibbitz|7 months ago
bluGill|7 months ago
recursive|7 months ago
cavisne|7 months ago
"For context, the US federal government spent $53 million on public education in 2022" Hilarious, the federal government probably spent more on photocopiers for the department of education in 2022 than that.
Phelinofist|7 months ago
I tried using Otto for some time but it just cannot compare. Sure. I could also shop from multiple shops but that is kinda waste of time. Amazon is a real one-stop shop.
witty_username|7 months ago
deadbabe|7 months ago
gibbitz|7 months ago
I've been thinking about the poor quality and availability of Communist goods in the 1980s. I think about the bread lines every time I shop at Costco. What happened to make us so complacent?
Aloisius|7 months ago
And it really doesn't help develop trust when the citations used to support one's points directly contradicts them (like that bit about Amazon providing real-time surveillance from Ring doorbells to police without owners' knowledge - the one and only thing I decided to read the source for which said quite the opposite).
It's a shame too since I'm sure the author had some good points, but I have neither the time nor energy to research every single claim made to see which ones aren't bullshit.
coredog64|7 months ago
Does Rekognition perform poorly? Maybe it does, but it’s a best effort service, not a police officer in a box. That AWS was shamed into not selling it to law enforcement doesn’t mean law enforcement won’t have access to facial recognition, only that the vendor they choose isn’t capable of being embarrassed by bad PR.
whall6|7 months ago
jbermudes|7 months ago
When an act has both a potentially good and bad effect Philosophers like to distinguish the morality of this act of "cooperating with evil" by analyzing the degrees to which your cooperation is:
Each of these dimensions should be taken into consideration because without such analysis one can easily become scrupulous about every act that one does that may have unintended side effects. This is how you get people who say things like "there is no such thing as ethical consumption in capitalism" and other extreme statements that would otherwise force you to be a monk in a desert lest your acts accidentally create harm.To learn more about this principle of double effect:
https://thinkingthoughtout.com/2021/01/24/cooperation-with-e...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/
AvAn12|7 months ago
starik36|7 months ago
Standing in line for 2 hours to buy milk with my grandma is a childhood memory that's burned into my brain.
1vuio0pswjnm7|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
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unknown|7 months ago
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submeta|7 months ago
Searching for a product category on Google won‘t allow you to find a big number of brands either. Because they will push certain products as well.
So be aware that these platforms will limit your options.
But I admit that Amazon has a very polished UX. It‘s a one-stop shop, returns are handled very generously, and you don’t need to visit a dozen sites to get various products.
unit149|7 months ago
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bawana|7 months ago
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renewiltord|7 months ago
"Hello, American, look at this pencil"
"Pencil?! Shaped like penis!"
"Hello, American, look at your hands"
"Oh my god! That is five penises a hand!"
Constantly searching for penis everywhere. Is there reason for this? It is not as common elsewhere, but American is always constantly searching for penis. If not provided, American will construct it out of household objects. Desperate for penis, American will find it even in intangible objects like logo.
SoftTalker|7 months ago
jkuli|7 months ago
Not to mention the real reason we hate Jeff Bezos. Because you wouldn't like it if I mentioned it.
amanaplanacanal|7 months ago
v8410|7 months ago