Skip to content

The Prime Reasons to Avoid Amazon

Technology
52 42 0
  • I have yet to see a single item have a significant discount on prime day, it's not even a sale.

    www.Camelcamelcamel.com for all your Amazon price comp needs.

  • Your looking at gross income not net. By net income, AWS is over 50%.

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    I dont agree with every point made, but agree with the overall sentinent. My problem is that the same thing can be said about other retailers, especially the brick and mortar ones. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, ...whoever. They've all done it, and continue to do it.

    Small business? Yeah, those essentially don't exist in this context.

    I have always said, ecommerce isn't killing brick and mortar retail. They are killing themselves. Why? Because I've never felt like a valued customer at any of the retailers out there. I've been absolutely shit on by all the big retailers out there. And that's not even getting into their policies, politics, and other behind the scenes stuff that I do care about, but it doesn't directly impact my shopping experience.

    So then I can buy something online, from a wide selection, with competitive prices, have it delivered to my door quickly, and if there's any issues have zero problem with returns? That works for me.

    Now in modern times I can argue that they don't always have great customer service, don't always have great pricing (for what you get), and its not all sunshine and roses. But I don't see a viable alternative.

    Find me another retailer online or brick and mortar that can supply me well and treat me well and I'll go. But small business cant compete. And big retailers when they had all the money and power they didn't do that so now that they are the underdogs why would they do it? So it's just not happening.

  • I dont agree with every point made, but agree with the overall sentinent. My problem is that the same thing can be said about other retailers, especially the brick and mortar ones. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, ...whoever. They've all done it, and continue to do it.

    Small business? Yeah, those essentially don't exist in this context.

    I have always said, ecommerce isn't killing brick and mortar retail. They are killing themselves. Why? Because I've never felt like a valued customer at any of the retailers out there. I've been absolutely shit on by all the big retailers out there. And that's not even getting into their policies, politics, and other behind the scenes stuff that I do care about, but it doesn't directly impact my shopping experience.

    So then I can buy something online, from a wide selection, with competitive prices, have it delivered to my door quickly, and if there's any issues have zero problem with returns? That works for me.

    Now in modern times I can argue that they don't always have great customer service, don't always have great pricing (for what you get), and its not all sunshine and roses. But I don't see a viable alternative.

    Find me another retailer online or brick and mortar that can supply me well and treat me well and I'll go. But small business cant compete. And big retailers when they had all the money and power they didn't do that so now that they are the underdogs why would they do it? So it's just not happening.

    I've never felt like a valued customer

    I only have once, and it's made all the other ones seem so much worse by comparison.

    Thank you Ace Hardware. You fucking ruined me.

  • Prices mysteriously go up about a week before prime day sales, then drop to a few dollars below normal, scream “39% off” and you feel like you beat the system.

    I remember at my first job in high school in a store on Main Street. We had a sidewalk sale with other business owners.

    My innocence was lost when my boss instructed me to place higher prices using our ordinary white stickers and then cover them with ‘discounted’ orange sales stickers at slightly higher prices than normal.

    These dicks just do it at scale. Amazon is a tawdry crime organization. We all know it.

  • I've never felt like a valued customer

    I only have once, and it's made all the other ones seem so much worse by comparison.

    Thank you Ace Hardware. You fucking ruined me.

    Story time?

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    I’ve gone 3 years without ordering a single thing from amazon. I never intend to give them anymore money.

  • Story time?

    Not OC, but here's no single story. Any time I pop into my local Ace I can instantly get help getting what I need, which is not always what I think I want when I enter the store. Consistently knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly staff, combined with my money staying in the neighborhood, makes it worth it.

  • Prices mysteriously go up about a week before prime day sales, then drop to a few dollars below normal, scream “39% off” and you feel like you beat the system.

    Or sometimes they remove a 25% off coupon that usually shows all the time and for the "sale" they just reduce the price of the item to that same amount without and then remove the coupon from the page. It will then look like it has gone on sale from camelcamelcamel because it wasn't accounting for the price after the coupon it was only showing the item price.

  • Story time?

    ACE is awesome compared to the competition. Especially if exchanging your propane tank.

  • Story time?

    The staff was friendly and helpful without being overbearing. They also knew what they were doing and could advise on projects. They weren't understaffed, and they generally all seemed to enjoy working there.

    It was strange.

  • The staff was friendly and helpful without being overbearing. They also knew what they were doing and could advise on projects. They weren't understaffed, and they generally all seemed to enjoy working there.

    It was strange.

    That sounds so pleasant! Here, you go to Rona / Lowe's, you ask them a question and you're met with an "iunnodude". Maybe home hardware is comparable.

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    Amazon is a parasite. That's all the reason I need.

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    Enshittification.

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    Nah, if buying from Amazon is the cheapest and easiest way to get something, I’ll buy from Amazon. I don’t care if they’re faking sales or anything if it’s still the cheapest and easiest.

  • I dont agree with every point made, but agree with the overall sentinent. My problem is that the same thing can be said about other retailers, especially the brick and mortar ones. Walmart, Target, Home Depot, ...whoever. They've all done it, and continue to do it.

    Small business? Yeah, those essentially don't exist in this context.

    I have always said, ecommerce isn't killing brick and mortar retail. They are killing themselves. Why? Because I've never felt like a valued customer at any of the retailers out there. I've been absolutely shit on by all the big retailers out there. And that's not even getting into their policies, politics, and other behind the scenes stuff that I do care about, but it doesn't directly impact my shopping experience.

    So then I can buy something online, from a wide selection, with competitive prices, have it delivered to my door quickly, and if there's any issues have zero problem with returns? That works for me.

    Now in modern times I can argue that they don't always have great customer service, don't always have great pricing (for what you get), and its not all sunshine and roses. But I don't see a viable alternative.

    Find me another retailer online or brick and mortar that can supply me well and treat me well and I'll go. But small business cant compete. And big retailers when they had all the money and power they didn't do that so now that they are the underdogs why would they do it? So it's just not happening.

    Strictly, over consumption is the enemy. Less so where you buy, but the rampant rush to the bottom in price and quality is what the issue is. I shop where I get the best quality, rather than the best price

  • I've never felt like a valued customer

    I only have once, and it's made all the other ones seem so much worse by comparison.

    Thank you Ace Hardware. You fucking ruined me.

    ACE is more like a franchise than other retailers. Most are locally-owned. Some are employee-owned.

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    If I lived in a city where there are lots of different retailers that carry varieties of products then maybe I wouldn’t use Amazon. But when you live in a more rural area where the selection is limited and you like better stuff, there’s really not many other options.

    It also seems like a very one sided criticism of Amazon. No corporation is good, and Amazon might very well be evil™️ but not everything about it is negative. It has also brought thousands of jobs to rural or semi rural areas that pay better than anything else in the area. They increase access to products that people like me wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. And they are actively trying to disrupt the healthcare industry by lowering prices and giving greater access to healthcare to people who are far from cities.

    I also suspect that these descriptions of working conditions at Amazon centers seem to be cherry picked and might be attributed more to bad managers than company policy, because I’ve met people who work at Amazon warehouses and they don’t complain about this kind of stuff at all. In fact they seem to generally like their jobs.

  • If I lived in a city where there are lots of different retailers that carry varieties of products then maybe I wouldn’t use Amazon. But when you live in a more rural area where the selection is limited and you like better stuff, there’s really not many other options.

    It also seems like a very one sided criticism of Amazon. No corporation is good, and Amazon might very well be evil™️ but not everything about it is negative. It has also brought thousands of jobs to rural or semi rural areas that pay better than anything else in the area. They increase access to products that people like me wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. And they are actively trying to disrupt the healthcare industry by lowering prices and giving greater access to healthcare to people who are far from cities.

    I also suspect that these descriptions of working conditions at Amazon centers seem to be cherry picked and might be attributed more to bad managers than company policy, because I’ve met people who work at Amazon warehouses and they don’t complain about this kind of stuff at all. In fact they seem to generally like their jobs.

    Their business model has been to undercut and extinguish their competition for as long as they’ve been around. The ‘good’ you talk about is about controlling the market and leaving you with no choice as they’ve already largely done with your ‘nicer stuff’. Workers will be shit-canned without a second thought if they realize their ai/robot dreams. Drugs will become more expensive again once they capture the market.

    The world depends on everyone voting with their wallets despite the inconvenience. You don’t have to be perfect, just make some changes. Pay more and support your small local businesses whenever possible.

  • Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. 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. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

    Thanks to my country here is no amazon

  • 26 Stimmen
    11 Beiträge
    2 Aufrufe
    F
    Absolute horseshit. Bulbs don't have microphones. If they did, any junior security hacker could sniff out the traffic and post about it for cred. The article quickly pivots to TP-Link and other devices exposing certificates. That has nothing to do with surveillance and everything to do with incompetent programming. Then it swings over to Matter and makes a bunch of incorrect assertion I don't even care to correct. Also, all the links are to articles on the same site, every single one of which is easily refutable crap. Yes, there are privacy tradeoffs with connected devices, but this article is nothing but hot clickbait garbage.
  • 36 Stimmen
    1 Beiträge
    1 Aufrufe
    Niemand hat geantwortet
  • 350 Stimmen
    72 Beiträge
    70 Aufrufe
    M
    Sure, the internet is more practical, and the odds of being caught in the time required to execute a decent strike plan, even one as vague as: "we're going to Amerika and we're going to hit 50 high profile targets on July 4th, one in every state" (Dear NSA analyst, this is entirely hypothetical) so your agents spread to the field and start assessing from the ground the highest impact targets attainable with their resources, extensive back and forth from the field to central command daily for 90 days of prep, but it's being carried out on 270 different active social media channels as innocuous looking photo exchanges with 540 pre-arranged algorithms hiding the messages in the noise of the image bits. Chances of security agencies picking this up from the communication itself? About 100x less than them noticing 50 teams of activists deployed to 50 states at roughly the same time, even if they never communicate anything. HF (more often called shortwave) is well suited for the numbers game. A deep cover agent lying in wait, potentially for years. Only "tell" is their odd habit of listening to the radio most nights. All they're waiting for is a binary message: if you hear the sequence 3 17 22 you are to make contact for further instructions. That message may come at any time, or may not come for a decade. These days, you would make your contact for further instructions via internet, and sure, it would be more practical to hide the "make contact" signal in the internet too, but shortwave is a longstanding tech with known operating parameters.
  • 528 Stimmen
    123 Beiträge
    134 Aufrufe
    B
    I'm not saying to waste space... but when manufacturers start a pissing match among themselves and say that it's because it's what the customers want, we end up with shit. Why does anyone need a screen that curves around the edge of the phone? What purpose does this serve? Who actually asked for this? I would give up some of my screen area to have forward facing speakers. I want a thicker phone that has better battery life. I also want to be able to swap out my battery. Oh, and I don't want the entire thing encased in glass. If we're so concerned about phone size then they should stop designing them so that a case is required.
  • Amazon Doubles Prime Video Ads Per Hour

    Technology technology
    126
    1
    624 Stimmen
    126 Beiträge
    172 Aufrufe
    V
    Me too, except I didn't get the email saying my pro vpn was about to expire, which might be my fault ofc. Gotta check the oarameters It's really good IMO and I'd recommend it fullheartedly, Switzerland has some of the best laws out there too concerning privacy too.
  • Napster/BitTorrent for machine learning?

    Technology technology
    3
    1
    27 Stimmen
    3 Beiträge
    21 Aufrufe
    G
    What would a use case look like? I assume that the latency will make it impractical to train something that's LLM-sized. But even for something small, wouldn't a data center be more efficient?
  • Have LLMs Finally Mastered Geolocation? - bellingcat

    Technology technology
    3
    1
    50 Stimmen
    3 Beiträge
    17 Aufrufe
    R
    Depends on who programed the AI - and no, it is not Kyoto
  • 11 Stimmen
    1 Beiträge
    4 Aufrufe
    Niemand hat geantwortet