Vanity: I'm done with Amazon, how about you?

January 11, 2021 | From the Deer Stand

[From The Deer Stand]

Amazon's censorship is too much. Got along okay before Amazon, can get along without them now.

[woodbutcher1963]

Are there any independent hardware stores/lumber yards/home centers in your town?

I agree that Amazon offered superior service to other shipping companies 5-10 years ago. Now, most other companies have caught up. Do you have an EBAY account? An ETSY account?
Even buying from Lowes, Home Depot or Tractor Supply is better IMHO.

[cuban leaf]

I don’t do eBay. I don’t do paypal, and I’ve not really researched etsy. One thing about Amazon - returns are ridiculously simple. Frankly, the frustration of the return process is one reason I always avoided any “in person” purchases in the first place. Amazon changed that.

[Mcroc71603]

My wife and I use Amazon a lot. We are now going to sincerely try to limit our purchases. This is just one family’s effort to put a dent in Amazon’s business. Let’s hope we all can make a dent turn into a major collision.

[Shadylake]

Yes they do, it ends up being far more monthly though.

[palmer]

I was on monthly but gave it up years ago. Some people are still grandfathered in. I assume I was going to buy all my stuff then drop it, but I ended up sending them money for months without ordering anything.

[Subcutaneous Fishstick Blues]

I was going to say, "if you've never made that argument (that they're private company" and "can do whatever they want"), I sincerely apologize.

But then I read that you commented:

Sue the ever-loving sh*t out of those communist bastards.

So you can forget everything I wrote before the second comma; I sincerely apologize.

[Tennessee Conservative]

I did too but I will stop or at least cut back. I hurt my foot two years ago and since no Ortho’s here can seem to fix it I’m not able to physically walk around in a store. I do all of my shopping online. I use the Wal-Mart grocery pickup and they just put them in my truck. I know that’s almost as bad but I can’t give that one up yet.

I did go in and cancel my subscriptions for supplements at Amazon when I cancelled my Prime. I figure not using Amazon except in an emergency will hurt them but cancelling Prime and the subscriptions will hurt them more.

[semaj]

No free speech? No Amazon. Dirty traitors.

[central_va]

I never did Amazon.

[Dan in Wichita]

All is forgiven! :)

[woodbutcher1963]

EBAY is not just individuals selling things anymore. Lots of brick and motor business also sell on EBAY.
All of my recent purchases on EBAY were made with my AMEX card. It is the only credit card I use.

[Sans-Culotte]

Can anybody tell me how you cancelled prime?

1.) Login to your account.

2.) Click on Prime/View Benefits and Payment Settings.

3.) Once you have clicked on that, you should see some tabs at the top of the page, one of which is Membership: Update, Cancel and More. Once you click on that decide what you want to do. I did not cancel mine, but told it to alert me when it comes up for renewal in March.

[BusterDog]

“In Texas, you can get lots of FREE online books and audio books using public libraries.”

*****

Thank you, I’ll look into that.

[cuban leaf]

I have to confess that when eBay stopped allowing buyer ratings and left the online auction paradigm, I stopped going there. I’ve not been there in over a decade except when a google search accidentally lands me on something there. Their treatment of my seller friends was so appalling I’ll never do business with them. It’s not about politics at all. It’s about how they do business.

And, to be frank, that’s how I usually choose who to do business with.

[Jane Long]

😂

I guess that’s one way to disable a Kindle.

[sauropod]

I’m looking for alternatives to it.

So far, except in individual cases for individual things, there really isn’t any except possibly fleabay.

[Responsibility2nd]

Boycotting Amazon for me as a bad idea. If someone can reimburse me the hundreds of dollars I save by using Amazon, then fine I may reconsider. If someone can pay me back the hours and hours of time Amazon saves me from not having to go to the store to buy the product I need, then fine I may reconsider. If somebody can show me another corporation that is not evil as Amazon is, then fine I may reconsider.

Boycotting is a useless and futile endeavor.

[MalPearce]

I guess it’s an OK idea idea if you are using those services to buy cheap mass produced foreign tat instead of using it to identify new, local, home spun businesses.

I know many small businesses that are on Amazon and Facebook in order to sell niche hand-crafted products further afield than just their immediate community. Without those platforms they wouldn’t have a shop window.

There are already serial negative reviewers (some of whom are doing it as an extortion tactic) in operation, and it’s got to the point where I know local companies who are paying investigators and lawyers to take those assholes down before they trash their good names.

One local firm has been trading for over 70 years multi generation, their millennial decided to set up an online presence and they got a lot of new business but they’re now owed thousands by three customers who are holding them to ransom by spamming the review sites with “rogue trader” reports.

If you start doing this you are going to give yourself a seriously bad reputation and the worst part of it is, you could damage the reputations of perfectly fine businesses.

If I were affected by this I’d not consider “please ditch a proven online marketplace that I don’t approve of, for a nonviable alternative that would kill your online sales, or I’ll spam you with negative reviews” a reasonable (or even coherent) proposition.

Anyone blackmailing me with that would be meeting with my lawyers, or possibly the business end of my baseball bat, before I’d re-engineer my business model to suit them.

[JonPreston]

Anyone blackmailing me with that would be meeting with my lawyers, or possibly the business end of my baseball bat

Now, now, now, you sit there at your computer terminal and let people like me kick communist China in the shin, via their distributor, Amazon.

ok?

[pabianice]

DITTO!!