Fuck Amazon!

[quote] Is anyone here still buying from those leeches???

You.

Nope. Just you.

Unfortunately, I purchase Kindle books on the reg.

I, OP, cannot stop buying mp3s though I can go months without getting new ones. I've not physically ordered something from Amazon in a very long time. I get a kindle maybe once or twice a year, and often don't even read them to the end.

I am a softer engineer from amazon . And I am an insatiable bottom. Welcome to destroy my ass!

*software

Typing doesn't come easy

What did they do this time, OP?

I canceled my Prime account after, in a span of about four weeks, I had three items that arrived damaged (due to poor packaging, then being haphazardly tossed over a fence), and four other items that either went missing or were marked "undeliverable". After some investigation, I found this was due to an unrealistically high workload for Amazon Logistics drivers who, at the end of the workday, would simply mark all remaining packages as undeliverable, then return them to the distribution center.

Read something about their audiobook sales helping fund 8chan or some shit like that? Is it true?

R9 thanks for your enlightening post. Four times in two weeks, I got email that my pocket radio was damaged or undeliverable. Got credit the same day. When I called, a rep claimed to speak with a "Leadership Team manager" who said a replacement wasn't available. Was given a $10 credit for my inconvenience.

Subscribe & Save bulk deliveries yesterday, today, tomorrow, and Wednesday. Probably not going to give it up. It's just so much easier than lugging shit home myself. I don't drive, and I don't live in Manhattan.

I'm especially hoping the sneakers I ordered will fit. I tried a bunch on at Dick's and couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, but Amazon apparently has them. But I won't know for sure until I try them on my own two feet.

[quote]I, OP, cannot stop buying mp3s

There are other options. I always check if I can purchase music through bandcamp.com (good deal for artists as they get 80% and you can even pay more if you want to). 7digital is a good option for more mainstream artists. There's always iTunes.

Buy local when possible. Regional when that’s not possible. U.S. produced goods when that’s not an option.

If you have to buy something from overseas then you are part of the problem.

I shop on Amazon all the time. Don’t have delivery problems but I live in the suburbs in a “good “ neighborhood.

Amazon has stuff that I can't find locally. Plus, I don't have to leave the house and no sales tax. Win-win-win!

R9

In some cases, it's also because Amazon (or its partners) is terrible at managing inventory. I was waiting on a product for a few weeks that had supposedly already been shipped. (I only waited that long because this coincided with a weather emergency in my area that could have held up delivery.) When I finally checked the tracking number with USPS, turns out it was never shipped and that Amazon's partner no longer had it in stock. So, the partner printed out the mailing label (which to Amazon means it "shipped'), found out they no longer had the product, and decided to blow me off rather than cancel the order and refund my money. When I complained to Amazon about it (mostly pointing out that it would have been nice to be told), I received no response.

Amazon seems to be reaching the point in market dominance where they no longer give a shit about customers.

R8 France just imposed a new GAFA tax, and Amazon's response was to raise their cut by 3% on their French Amazon sellers.

Thanks R18.

I really dislike Amazon but I live basically in the middle of nowhere, and for a lot of items I get much better prices from them than anywhere else. Local stores are expensive even though they're franchises like Walgreens and Kroger, and ordering online from Walmart is cheaper than buying locally for some reason. You can even buy an item online and pick it up at this Walmart and it's cheaper than if you'd just gone to the store and grabbed it off the shelf. I try to avoid Amazon when I can.

Prime and Punishment

My current beef with Amazon has to do with wild price fluctuations that are seemingly unrelated to stock levels, inflation, or any other logical factor. It's probably a combination of what the market will bear and what an individual customer will tolerate.

Almost a year ago, I was considering the purchase of a lamp that wasn't in stock. "Order now and we'll let you know when to expect it," said Amazon. I didn't order, but put it on my wish list for further consideration. Since that time, the lamp has NEVER been in stock, but half a dozen increases have taken its price from $105 to $158 - without ever having one to sell.

Crap like that makes me want to drop Amazon completely. Unfortunately, like R3, I still buy a lot of Kindle books.

What do you do with leeches?

r21, I don't purchase anything on Amazon without first checking camelcamelcamel -- copy/paste the url of whatever you want to look up and it gives you its Az pricing history. There's a browser extension that makes it even more convenient to use

Thanks, R23! I'll have a look at that.

I'm waiting for my Subscribe and Save delivery. 12 items, will most likely arrive in 12 separate boxes over the next few days. Don't you just love Amazon?

I stopped buying from Amazon a couple of years ago. My local (amazing) bookstore will order in any book I request and gives me great discount. I prefer buying local for almost everything else. I ordered a couple of things from Simple Human last month and ordered directly from the manufacturer. In a lot of cases, ordering directly from the manufacturer is cheaper. I fucking hate Bezos and his creepy company. No way is he getting my money.

r21 they have automated systems for adjusting pricing based on certain criteria, that's why you see things going up and down a lot if (like me) you have a bunch of items sitting in your "Save for Later" list. Also, it may not be in stock from a main reseller/Amazon direct, but it may be in stock with someone hidden under the "See all buying options" button.

I used to order a fair amount from them when I joined in 1999, I've never had Prime as I don't order as much as that. I have retired from the bookselling profession, when it was still a profession of knowledgeable people, but is now an app for people who might as well be selling garden supplies or canned fish. Their idea that a book that was $50 new, once it goes out of print should be $1000, has totally ruined the field.

I had two new history books I wanted in my Amazon shopping cart, but I went to the publisher's website and ordered directly and actually saved a few dollars.

Cut out the middle men already.

I buy crap on Amazon everyday! You can pry my Prime membership from my cold dead hands!

I don't get why a person will pay over 15 dollars a month for "free" shipping. It is mind boggling.

I started because of Bosch, r31. Amazon Prime is the home of Bosch. I wish they had other series that I enjoy as much, but once a year, I get to watch a new season of Bosch.

R32, I watched that too, great show. I use my friends account for Prime movies..but, really...Bosch is the only good thing on there, IMO.

r33 Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton and the Cities of Santa Monica and Los Angeles, was excellent in its first season, but then sucked in season 2. I'll be surprised if there's a season 3. I urge you to watch season 1.

I highly recommend Isle of Lesbos, available on Amazon Prime!

more shit from Amazon

[quote]I don't get why a person will pay over 15 dollars a month for "free" shipping. It is mind boggling.

Because of all of the other benefits that come with a Prime membership. It's much more than just free shipping.

[quote]I don't get why a person will pay over 15 dollars a month for "free" shipping. It is mind boggling.

If the shipping charges on orders placed in a month would exceed $15, then this is worth it. How is this is mind-boggling to you?

I hate shopping in stores. I love Amazon. That Bezos gets under the hide of that thin skinned orange smegma is a win, bigly Count the crowd, we’re all shopping the Amazon and it’s because of Smegface.

It’s the really patriotic thing to do.

I know they're evil, but dat one day shipping tho...

r38 his mind was boggled, so he couldn't understand it!

R9 - that's what's made FedEx infamous - their delivery people have been pulling that for years.

R21 - you're referring the pricing algorithms that are used by third-party sellers. Their script monitors competitors' pricing. When the competition raises their prices, the algorithm automatically raises the other seller's price. When you have multiple sellers using the pricing algorithms, you end up with a positive feedback loop where everyone's prices for the product keep climbing and climbing, sometimes to truly ridiculous amounts.

Amazon is particularly useful for buying assistive/disability equipment and supplies. That stuff runs pretty pricey in local stores, because there's low demand and little competition. On Amazon, it's the other way around, so the prices run much lower than you'll generally find locally - assuming you can even find what you need locally.

I signed up because of Prime Video, which is one of the cheapest online streaming platforms with one of the largest inventories of videos. The free and supposedly fast shipping is just a little lagniappe.

Good eldergay advice, r42.

Love Prime video and 2 day shipping/delivery time.

I'm noticing more and more some of Amazon's prices are outlandish. You have to be VERY careful before clicking that "place order" button. Case in point. I bought a 7 oz. bottle of Corn Husker's Lotion for my eczema recently at Target. I paid less than $3.00 for it. I looked it up on the Walmart website and they sell it for $2.79. I was thumbing around on Amazon last night and decided to see what they were selling it for. The cheapest I could find for 1 bottle directly from Amazon on Prime shipping was just under $6.00 a bottle. Ludicrous.

This may be the last year I keep my prime membership.

Hate hate hate hate this company. I never get the stuff that I ordered, and it’s just not that cheap. Give me a brick-and-mortar store any day.

I LOVE AMAZON!

I still use Amazon for some things, particularly their digital content, but there is no question that they haven't solved at least a few problems:

1. The review system. In theory, you can no longer be given a free product in exchange for a review. Amazon announced that change with much fanfare a few years ago. However, I used to be a top 25 Amazon reviewer half a dozen years ago and I'm still getting offers for free merchandise, reviewers clubs, etc., even though I haven't written a review in years. The most prevalent scam is that I place the order and pay for it and they give me a refund via PayPal.

2. The knockoff merchandise. There are entire categories of products that I will not buy on Amazon because I cannot trust that what I ordered is what I will receive. Amazon has been trying, and failing, to deal with this problem, as well.

3. Their new Amazon-owned delivery system. The drivers are under unrealistic pressure with unrealistic deadlines. As a result, they never consult the delivery instructions and they dump the package off wherever they can and as quickly as they can.

4. The unrealistic explanations and low pay also apply to their warehouses, where horror stories abound. I'm hoping those workers can unionize, as that would alleviate at least some of that pain.

The first two aren't Amazon's fault, although it is their fault that they didn't think of this and build in better protections. I honestly don't think they will ever be able to solve it. They are too big, the money to be made there is too much, and for every one of those they stamp out, there are another dozen starting up.

The third and fourth are absolutely Amazon's fault and will likely only end if/when the workers and drivers form a union or when enough customers leave to cause them to rethink their strategy.

R48 As a customer, I left because of #3 and #4, but mostly #4. I think it's a disgrace that a company that makes that much money and whose owner is THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD, and counting, treats their workers so poorly.

It's all about the £1 T-shirt (for those who have seen Years and Years). For almost 10 years now, I've only bought my T-shirts from organic, regional makers. I love their design, they feel great, and I know people are paid a decent wage to make them. Sure, they're not cheap, but it's not as if I'm getting bankrupt from T-shirts either.

This thread has prompted me to cancel my Prime membership when it renews next May. I would go ahead and cancel it today if they would give me a refund of my unused membership fee, but they won't. I'm grossly under-using it. I rarely watch anything on their video channel, and quite frankly most everything I've ordered from them over the last several months I've found comparably priced in a real shops. Plus there are other places I can order the same things from online if I can't find them in the shops, at lower prices sometimes.

I only purchase from Amazon items that I can't find locally. In a few cases, it was cheaper to buy from Amazon than locally, so I did. Good customer service, quick, no-hassle refunds. Packages always arrive way before the estimated delivery date. In all the junk I've ordered, one package and its contents was damaged in the post. Amazon refunded the full amount of the order within 12 hours.