[ianferrel]

I recently discontinued a Prime membership we'd had for years and it was eye-opening how annoying and persistent the attempts to get us to sign up for it again are. Every time I buy something, I have to find the tiny link instead of the big button. One time the tiny link was broken and I literally could not complete my purchase until I tried a few hours later.

On the other hand, it was not difficult to cancel.

[massysett]

With that obnoxious behavior, why bother buying from Amazon if you don't have Prime? Amazon is a flea market trafficking in commingled imports from numerous unvetted third parties. The advantage of Prime is that it brings this flea market to your door.

Without Prime I don't see much of a value proposition in the flea market. Actually, even with Prime the value is questionable. If my wife didn't like Prime I would shut it off, and then I doubt I'd buy much from Amazon at all. For US customers, Walmart and Target do a decent job these days, without the commingled flea market (Walmart does have third party sellers, but they also tend to keep staples in their own inventory better than Amazon does, and they don't commingle.)

[gmd63]

A few years before COVID I bought a dresser on Amazon. The box had a Walmart receipt in it. The guy had made his own UPC code, copied images of the dresser, and just bought the Walmart dresser shipping it to me and pocketing 30 bucks.

I cancelled Amazon years ago and have enjoyed not wading through the desperate side hustles and scams that Amazon essentially farms for data they can use to enter markets that they can then dominate.

How Doordash/Uber/etc exploit their drivers' lack of sense for depreciation costs / maintenance etc is just how Amazon exploits small business hustlers' lack of understanding of the power of omniscient market data.

[ianferrel]

I agree. I buy from them much less often than I used to. But it's sometimes still the best price/option.

[rdschouw]

Yea it's pretty awful. They also by default select a faster shipping method which costs $6.99 (most of the time per item, sometimes multiple shipping charges for the same order). Every checkout I have to go through:

1. no, I do not want a prime membership for $1.99 for 1 week

2. no, I want free shipping on these items (careful check if the order is split up in multiple shipments)

3. no, I want free shipping on this item.

8 out of 10 orders my stuff arrives earlier than the paid shipping option offered during checkout.

[tredre3]

Same, I get two full screen ads for prime with a little "No thanks" when I try to checkout. Even at the final step you get the paid shipping option selected by default, then you have the prime option flashing "SAVE $19 and get it tomorrow!!!", and finally the free but not prime shipping option (which I actually want).

I personally accidentally resubscribed to prime once because of all this nonsense, so I can't imagine someone who is less careful.

[redundantly]

I recently went through the same. I've stopped purchasing from Amazon altogether because of this.