[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.