The Prime Reasons to Avoid Amazon
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.
... a suction cup thingy that mounts my smartphone to a car dashboard.
Try your local phone store. Most carriers have brick and mortar locations.
Beyond that, if it's a national carrier brick-and-mortar spot, it could be argued that it's a case of the lesser of two evils.
Calling retail stores to do anything other than to see if they're open or, in the case of restaurants, get a reservation is just wasting time. At least for the retailers that I've communicated with.
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.
Your username suggests otherwise
Funnily enough though Best Buy loved us and provided real time data via API and daily CSV data dumps just for us. They were like that, along with Toys R Us and AutoZone. Most others hated us, including Guitar Center after we accidentally DDOSed their web site with our scrapers.
via a partner like doordash
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
That you can do groceries, order flowers, drinks, or dinner makes it great for dates.
Downside is that apparently Wolt charges stores something like a €250 fee a month. It’s ridiculous how much any of these services charge small businesses.
I hope automated drone delivery becomes a thing and make it easier to bring up competitors.
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.
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 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.
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...
I no longer buy anything from Amazon that could be faked.
https://lawyerinc.com/biggest-kroger-lawsuits-in-company-his...
So I’ll add “if you need to guarantee the accuracy of the information in whatever you’re buying… avoid Amazon as well”
Why would someone go out of their way to produce different content if they are going to violate intellectual property anyways, be it trademarks or copyright?
Good rule of thumb is that if it goes on or in your body do not buy it from Amazon.
If I do that, I always make sure I'm buying from the seller and not a reseller or distributor; I meant to say no other party besides the Seller and Amazon.
It’s really a renamed PillPack[1] which they acquired in 2018 with (I assume) Amazon Pharmacy launching on top of their licenses in 2020
all the buildings you enter: houses of friends/family, supermarkets, hospitals, transport, restaurants, offices, all with potentially fatal fake electrics
hopefully the fire door and extinguishers weren't bought from amazon
You certainly could buy material off Amazon but if you’re passing the cost onto the customer, why not just buy the real thing?
I read that they made internal changes to tag shippings properly to reduce the risk of that behaviour, but am not sure it is true or has been effective.
When I researched this a while ago I was unable to come up with much compelling evidence that it was an actual thing. It certainly has not happened to me over thousands of purchases - or anyone I know for that matter. Of course a fake could have been so good none of us could tell, but I do actually attempt to inspect carefully.
I have found counterfeit items from other web stores not on Amazon so it’s not like my detection skills are zero. Third party marketplace of course is different.
Heck, even Costco sent me an unsolicited refund for a counterfeit item they unknowingly sold me - so supply chain issues are bound to happen.
I don’t want to defend Amazon too much here, but this one is almost at urban legend status to me. Likely happened at limited scale some time ago, but it’s strange everyone says it’s endemic but no one IRL I know across probably tens of thousands of purchases has noticed it.
F-4 Storage
We will provide storage services as described in these FBA Service Terms once we confirm receipt of delivery. We will keep electronic records that track inventory of Units by identifying the number of Units stored in any fulfillment center. We will not be required to physically mark or segregate Units from other inventory units (e.g., products with the same Amazon standard identification number) owned by us, our Affiliates or third parties in the applicable fulfillment center(s).
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...
That combined with years and years of anecdotal reports of this happening certainly suggests a "where there's smoke there's fire" situation to me.
I also know from direct second party experience (I also personally saw the terms) that at least at a certain level of “brand” you can decline this option with Amazon for your registered product skus/ASIN even for FBA. I don’t know if this is offered to everyone though - I know it went through some sort of “deal reg” process in the one case I saw. I imagine this came through some sort of lawsuit or threats of one for a major brand at some point - but that is speculation on my part.
I’m specifically talking about a case where a sold by Amazon item came from co-mingled inventory from a FBA seller.
The FBA terms I quoted specifically say that Amazon can co-mingle FBA inventory with their own (if the FBA seller doesn't opt out of "virtual tracking").
The FBA terms I quoted specifically say that Amazon can co-mingle FBA inventory with their own (if the FBA seller doesn't opt out of "virtual tracking").
The wording in the quote explicitly states that an FBA unit can be substituted by owned by Amazon unit or other FBA units. But the wording is not clear whether SBA (Sold By Amazon) unit can be substituted by an FBA inventory. The terms covering Amazon's "first party inventory" (SBA, a.k.a. Amazon retail) are internal to Amazon and are not shared, AFAIK. But i can be wrong :-)
It's all one big pile.
I don't believe this to be true. SBA in theory has it's own "pile" that they can of course use to substitute with a FBA third party seller if they deem it cheaper as they are confident that they are substituting like for like.
Given how FBA items are labeled differently (the Amazon required ASIN sticker) than SBA I can't recall a time I've received a third party item when buying direct from Amazon. I also can't really say with any certainty it does not or did not happen, but it was not obvious at least.
I've also seen contracts the explicitly forbid the co-mingling for brands that sell direct to Amazon. By necessity these would need to be under different piles on the backend - and it's easy to see different ASINs for the same SKU by searching for common big brand items. There will be a SBA listing, and then many other listings gaming the qty/size of the item that are FBA. An item that comes in the same size and packaging often is listed twice (or more) times with one being SBA and the rest third party.
It's definitely clear as mud, but I think the "sold by amazon/fulfilled by amazon" being co-mingled is largely urban legend. It's all speculation like this thread here, and very few verifiable facts when you dig into any of the reporting/social media accounts. I'm 100% sure it happens by mistake and very well may have happened as routine business in the past, but these days I cannot come up with an example that shows this happening on any scale.
In the "cannot be faked" category, you can have:
- products so cheap that making a fake wouldn't make sense. for example an unbranded glass jar won't be faked because anything that looks like a glass jar but isn't a glass jar will be more expensive than a glass jar.
- products too complex and/or too low margin to be worth faking. For example, you will probably never find a fake desktop printer, as even the most simple printers are hard to make and sold at a low margin, maybe even at a loss. However, consumables are (very) high margin and you will find fakes, lots of them.
- products that have effective anti-counterfeiting systems. For example, Nintendo Switch games.
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But we shouldn’t be surprised that these liberal journalism outfits consistently fail the public. The same thing happened in Germany in the 20s and 30s with Ullstein. And in Italy with their liberal papers. And with the Times running cover for Hitler’s regime under Ochs.
It’s all fake. Every bit of it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DJUK8HS/ref=ask_ql_qh_d...
PreserVision -> I've never heard about that brand, so I would have never bought it. What was the reason behind your purchase decision?
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.
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
Amazon often costs 5 cents less and you might find that all the issues of Bocci the Rock are at Amazon and one is missing from Walmart, but Walmart is taking the fight to them.
For photography stuff in particular, I buy from B&H, Adorama or direct from vendors such as Red River Paper. Often the prices are better than Amazon and the service is much better (e.g. the owner of the later has schooled me on details of papers and printing that most people couldn't imagine)
[1] Not against giving the tip, just against saying I don't like the comparison against free shipping from other vendors.
But even so, I just checked and of the last 12 items in my Amazon purchase history, Walmart.com loses on every one of them before shipping is included. They're not really in the game absent externalities like location or specific product.
[1] Not hyperbole: those are the sections in the linked article!
Since then I’ve taken them up on offers of a free month of Prime or a week for $2 which is attractive if it gets me free shipping on a purchase. Now I get the same service as everyone else but if they wanted to be a loyal customer hey should have treated me as if they wanted to impress me as an earlier.
Notably Walmart has a + service which is a little cheaper than Prime but doesn’t have the video and other benefits that I’m indifferent too. I agree with the direction of that guy’s critiques of Amazon but not the magnitude but I’m a strange case in that I’m an amateur political scientist who works as a software dev with real political scientists that I have to be deferential to.
That time I needed a game camera immediately and AMZN said 5 days I got it at 7am the next day at Walmart. Most of the bread at the bakery is that awful stuff people accuse of being “ultra-processed food” but they have something like the Vollkornbrot you see in German Bäckerei that is 100% honest and delicious to my taste. The pharmacist there is a real eager beaver who never fails to tell me something I didn’t know about a medicine I take and that’s not easy. On the other hand I ride the bus with someone who used to work there who says it was a shit place to work.
Walmart didn’t have a representative sitting behind Trump at his inauguration and even if it’s evil it’s better to have two evil competitors than one evil monopoly.
Or you could compromise your morals for convenience, I guess.
Canceling my Prime account mainly meant I bought less stuff overall.
Which sounds like an agreement with my point, no? Buying stuff without Amazon was in aggregate "more expensive" for you in the broader sense of value that includes effort/experience/whatever. So you didn't.
And, bravo? I'm all for efficiency and reasonable asceticism, and likely agree with you about the general consumerist bent of our society.
All I'm saying is that constitutes an argument in FAVOR of Amazon as a retailer product, and not an indictment.
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.
They're winning because they're the best.
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.
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.
In particular, if you have an urge to make a difference on a regular basis, that's a great urge, but you need to make sure you don't fall into the trap of doing something that feels good but has negligible effect and thinking the job is done.
OP says stopping Amazon purchases have near zero effect, but might make you feel better, you said you don't do it for feelings but instead to avoid hypocrisy. My 1st comment was directed ONLY at the hypocrisy statement.
Hypocrisy is not a quantifiable thing, and is actually ONLY about how two decisions are interpreted. What is hypocrisy to one person is not to another. So it's subjective. Yet your subjective analysis of your own actions takes precedent, justifying your decision to avoid Amazon. Fine. The term I use for "subjective analysis that forms a most-likely-post-hoc justification for an action" is feeling. It feels right to do it is all we can really say about that. This is important and good and unassailable. It's morals and character. Good stuff definitely but not quantifiable.
As for the rest of the stuff about voting. Taking one dollar from Amazon is quantifiable, but we don't know how many dollars are required to make them change. It comes down to how the board or CEO or analysis or market feels about Amazons p/e or profit. So, not helpful. Will cutting another 100$ out of Amazons profits bring us closer to a change? What will that change look like? How much more do we have to cut to create a change? Are there better or worse changes if we cut more now vs more later vs quickly vs gradually? Etc etc.
Unlike voting which has a very precise decision point and an exact measure of progress towards that decision point for each vote cast. Perfectly quantifiable.
It seems like all the real-deal movements and protests died out or were neutralized by the late '70s.
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.
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.
ps. Amazon employee #2,
wow, that must have been quite an interesting experience. Do you have any anecdotes that you were willing to share about the experience. Thanks
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."
If they wanted instant gratification, they'd buy it from a local store and get it immediately rather than having to wait a couple days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Standing in line for 2 hours to buy milk with my grandma is a childhood memory that's burned into my brain.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...
Not to mention the real reason we hate Jeff Bezos. Because you wouldn't like it if I mentioned it.
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?
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?)
To learn more about this principle of double effect:
https://thinkingthoughtout.com/2021/01/24/cooperation-with-e...
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Amazon only stopped for PR reasons at the start of the George Floyd protests, and even then they only issued a “one-year moratorium.” This has since been extended indefinitely, but frankly that doesn’t matter."
So he's... blaming them... for doing what he wishes they would do?
I can only assume the author didn't think anyone would read the links they provided.