It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription
Maybe it’s time to consider quitting!
The idea that people think it would be difficult to live without an Amazon Prime subscription absolutely blows my mind. Are y'all really that hooked on buying stupid shit and getting it as fast as possible?
I don't understand some people who swear by it. If there's really something I need by the next day, I probably need it the same day and will just get it myself at a store.
Where I live, getting anything at a store besides basic food isn't a thing. You can't find ANYTHING at Walmart. Hardware stores are the last semblance of being able to find stuff in a store in person like the olden days. If it wasn't for the fact contractors buy entire houses worth of shit for "pro delivery" , even those would stop existing.
I think it's also different internationally? For eg. in India, I already use credit cards, but there's a lifetime free credit card for Amazon that allows you to earn up to 5%. But without Prime, I earn only 3%. Ofc, this is only worthwhile because I already shop from Amazon without Prime and without the credit card, admittedly, but in my scenario it's far more worthwhile to have Prime than to not, because it pays for itself within a month or two even without me consuming a single piece of media from Amazon (whether it's Prime Video or Prime Music or Audible, etc).
Idk if this exists in every country where Prime exists, but I assume they're just trying to gain more market share in India so it's an option here. 🤷🏾♂️ But it certainly makes it worthwhile for me in my specific case.
It is surprisingly easy to not order things off of Amazon, too.
True, you do have to be wary of drop shippers on eBay though. A handful of times down I order something on eBay only to get it in Amazon packaging and with an Amazon gift packing slip - then I look up the item name on the gift receipt and find that the Amazon listing was cheaper and the eBay seller just skimmed off the top.
It helps to not click sponsored listings, and avoid listings with expedited shipping for free + free returns. Also if you do get drop shipped, mention it in your buyer feedback so others can search for it.
I really wish there was a non-profit or coop or public utility like replacement for amazon and ebay. Yeah you need a website and infrastructure and warehouses but this is becoming so fundamental to our economy that it's not good to let this "rent seeking" to continue. Make it a fair marketplace that is democratically controlled and optimizes for customers and sellers and workers instead of for shareholders. There is no need for amazon or ebay to exist.
Similar to paypal, all they did was make wire transfers easy. At least I can finally wire money immediately in the EU without extra costs making paypal and their tax on the internet economy superfluous (damn lazy banks!).
Governments ignoring ecommerce as a vital infrastructure has created these completely useless plutocrats.
PS: Sorry for the tangential rant lol
I stopped Amazon Prime because it when from being "your package will be at your house in two days" to "your package might leave our facility in two days and arrive to you some indeterminate time later."
I also feel like anytime I get on Amazon now, I might as well be on Alibaba, but it's 10x the price. It's hard to find good things because there are so many cheap factory direct products with smashed-my-face-against-the-keyboard brand names. There's a Jansport backpack for sale, but you have to sort through all the bags from JDOEBG, AHIXBX, and PRJAGG first.
Amazon: the dropshipping website white people named.
This is the reason I hemmed over my subscription for a few years, and after they announced they were adding ads to Prime Video, that was the final straw. I've ordered maybe 1 or 2 things without a subscription since, but I'm really happy with how much I'm able to get much faster and better elsewhere.
This is so annoying cuz it happens to me as well, yea its 2 day shipping.. . After it spends 4 or 5 days in processing
Shipping is the other way around for me. It's still two day shipping but doesn't ship for 2-3 days. So they're technically true to their prime benefit.
Since they added commercials to prime video we have been considering dropping prime. Video was really the only thing keeping us lately.
Was one of the people who dropped it after the commercials were added. Started using our library instead and haven’t really missed the video streaming. I’ll log in via a browser every so often and get offered a free month or week of prime and immediately cancel. Was able to access prime day deals without paying for anything.
I had been considering getting rid of prime. The commercials were the last straw. I haven’t had it for 3 months now and haven’t cared at all.
What is Video? Prime member asking...
Amazon Prime is also a video streaming service like Netflix. It is included with your Prime shipping subscription but they recently started showing ads.
That's when I dropped prime. It's been just fine.
I can never find anything to watch on Prime Video. My subscription is any to renew in September and I'm about to turn off auto renew. I'll still order my regular things from Amazon but now I'll wait until my cart has $35+ in it for free shipping.
OMG YES. I canceled my subscription 2-3 years ago and I've never once thought about resubscribing!!! Highly recommend. 99% of the time I still get free shipping because I exceed the $30 threshold. If I don't, then I'll just add an item to the cart and wait until I need something else. If it's something urgent, then I do pay for the shipping, but it's still way cheaper than $139 per year. Bro, it's fine.
I don't care about Prime Video or Music, so for me it 1000000% made sense to cancel.
I hate that Amazon tries to trick me into signing up for Prime on every purchase, but that just pisses me off even more and makes it less likely for me to consider signing up.
Killed my Amazon account last decade. Shitty company that mistreats workers, sells crap.
Every dollar they get does damage.
It’s filled with Temu level shit now as well.
I thought I cancelled 2 months ago and I was billed this week. I went through the same steps and when I got to a page that said something like “confirm cancel” I hit it again.
The top of the page said “you have 364 days left to enjoy prime benefits”
This time I scrolled down and there was another box to click. A second confirmation. Such bs
This is an example of dark patterns. It can also include multiple steps to 'confirm' a decision, where the confirm button is beneath the decline button, only for the final step to have the button locations (or colours, shapes, etc) reversed. It's done on purpose to confuse people into giving up. Unfortunately, even if it works one time, it's justifiable for the company to continue the practice.
Reach out to their customer support and get a refund.
If you haven't used any of the benefits since its renewal, you can call to get a full refund. It did the same to me, and I was able to get the newest renewal fee back.
I cancelled two years ago and they renewed it somehow.
Then this year I let it use a cancelled card as the default and my one working card was on a list of 20 or so cards. It kept warning me that my card would not renew my prime subscription. Nah, they just ran an if statement over my cards to renew it.
I didn't really fight it because my family uses my prime video which has ads but I'm prepping them that it's not gonna be there next year.
Dumped prime years ago and never missed it. Here’s a secret: they will keep offering you 30 day free trials. I think I’ve had it five times now since I stopped paying.
Oh, for real? I've been "saving" mine for the next time I need to buy computer parts in bulk to build one.
I always look elsewhere and use Amazon as a last resort, especially for expensive or easily scammed stuff like PC parts. I prefer B&H for that in the US. They ship free and faster anyway over $50. And I save time by not needing to inspect everything to see if it’s used or counterfeit.
I really just hate the marketplace models Amazon and Newegg use.
Good to know! Thank you
So you pay triple at local stores. Bravo.
Not OP but we dropped prime and basically stopped using Amazon a few years ago when they started trying to put a giga-warehouse (their branding) in our residential neighborhood and we found that aside from the useless junk we didn’t need anyways, most local stores are the same price or less than Amazon. Target especially if you have a RedCard can have great deal on decent things.
Amazon prime forcing ads was my final straw.
Before that, two day shipping became six day shipping became two month shipping became fuck you it's lost forever shipping while the US patent office slowly burnt to the ground via the tens of thousands of gibberish brand names sellers were using to pedal their counterfeit child slave labor fell off a truck shitty fall apart in one day products.
Lack of Amazon has done wonders for preventing me from impulse purchases as well. Win/win.
Yep, canceled back then too, for the very reasons.
Crazy. I was out of town last week, annoyed I couldn’t order stuff as I discovered I needed it, because it would have been delivered before I got home. I did finally order last night, but had to specifically avoid the overnight delivery in favor of fewer trips/boxes. ….. if Amazon is giving you these ridiculous lead times, maybe you want to take a box,over look at who you’re ordering from
Is this satire?
I think most people think you NEED the Prime subscription to use Amazon and that's false.
It's pretty wild how deeply some people integrate products into their lives.
Now granted, I don't live in America, but I have never even considered using Amazon, and I don't understand why anyone would..
Amazon was really great when it started out, you'd find what you were looking for, at correct/very good prices, fast shipping and good service if something was lost or broken. The whole experience was top notch.
But that was over ten years ago.
I did stop using it when it was still very good but all the abuse popped up on media.
I'm in the EU BTW.
Mail order has historically been a large part of US consumer buying. This is due to the number of people that lived in remote rural areas for most of this countries history. Access to goods was severely restricted due to that problem. And didn't really start changing much until post WW2 and the growth of urbanization. Mailing a cheap catalog to everyone was the best way to show off your goods and get necessary goods to those who wanted them and would have no access otherwise.
Amazon is merely the latest in a very long line of those businesses that developed that marketing stratagem. And since I live in one of those remote areas, Amazon does provide me with easy, fast, and generally competitive priced goods that I would simply never be able to access without making a 600 mile round trip to get. But if you live a large dense city, there is little need for Amazon. But then, people order uber eats or whatever it's called to get supper when they could cook something to eat cheaper instead.
I could spend hours googling for items from small and possibly sketchy websites and wait times than can stretch to several weeks or more, and sometimes I do out of boredom, but time is money as they say, and I do have other things to do.
As someone else who lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, I use Amazon for stuff I can't find locally. Our local (and family owned) grocery & hardware stores are not much more expensive, so I tend to buy essentials there and save Amazon as a last resort. Amazon's pricing isn't anything special, and being able to talk to a knowledgeable shop owner is more than worth the extra few cents in price.
Same here. Never ordered anything off Amazon. Not sure about the U.S., but I've never had trouble finding anything in other places, so I never had to resort to Amazon. Maybe certain things are harder to get in the U.S. except on Amazon? Some kind of monopoly thing?
Sort of. For me, it is the trouble finding things elsewhere part, but maybe not quite how you’re thinking.
There are all sorts of stores, way too many stores, stores in all directions, stores of all sizes, but especially really big. If I want to get something, I need to go to one of these stores, more likely multiple of these stores. Even the biggest store will only have a limited selection and only at a specific price. Back in the old days, I might spend a day shopping to find what I wanted, I might look for it many weekends in a row, I might pay attention to sales so I can get a better price, then go in as the store opened so I could get it before it sold out. Why do that to myself? Why waste so much of my time and attention? Why drive around so much? It doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile Amazon has it, every brand and variation (even if most are identical), usually to be delivered in a couple days. If it’s not a good price point, I don’t have to click on it.
Amazon has made my life much easier by reducing the time and travel I spend on various necessities. Now in a typical week, my only “chore” driving might be to goto the grocery
I can order stuff from Amazon and ship them to my house for cheaper than walking 100m to a store. During COVID this was a game-changer, post-covid it's still super convenient.
I'm not even talking about the Amazon drop point that's across the street from the store. I mean to the 24-hour BlueBox drop in my building for no-contact deliveries I can pick up any time.
The only reason is not having to register to thousands of crappy webshops that don't know shit about itsec and get data leaks all the time. There are other platforms than Amazon but I don't think their business practices are significantly more ethical.
I miss those Sears outlets, mere kiosk windows on the sides of warehouses where you pick up your catalogue selections.
If Sears could have held on for just a bit and gotten on that Internet ordering wave, its presence in every town across 5 time zones would give it a massive head start.
Maybe they woulda had to up-armour the wickets like a NJ white castle drive-through but even a "go pick it up" workflow would have been great.
There was a time in the long ago times when it was a really good, customer focused service that didn't have all of the issues it has today. It then of course got worse every year like everything else but now many people use it out of habit or addiction.
Yeah but those fuckers stay trying to trick you back into it.
They're also trying to trick you into staying.
I specifically remember canceling a few months ago but they decided to just charge me for another year anyways. It's a total mystery to me.
Duh?
I dropped it months ago. Only had it for 2 shows and you can get free shipping if you look elsewhere. Plus got tired of being ripped off with fake clothes and junk. The time for Amazon has passed.
Canned mine the day they announced ads in Prime Video.
They'd already ruined the music service earlier in the year.
I have my amazon account since 2005 and i've been fine without prime ever since.
Guess I just never really bought something thats so critical to have asap ¯(ツ)_/¯
And in other news: the sea is wet and the sky is blue.
Living without amazon prime is easy; living without amazon at all is more challenging with various manufacturers using amazon as their only storefront
Then the eff with them. If something isn't available retail, there's a million other online retailers more local, more specialized, or just plain out of the manufacturer itself.
You can live without. Or you help them becoming even more dominant.
Fight it. Fight them.
We try to, but when you're living paycheck to paycheck, trying to find solutions to the moving target that is your wife's fibromyalgia, have a growing, energetic baby boy, sometimes you can't afford paying twice as much or more for the product that isn't sold on amazon, assuming such an alternative exists.
Unfortunately, lots of people can't afford to shop with a conscience
….so find different manufacturers. Why do you need those specific ones? Fuck Amazon, stop giving them money. What do they have to do to lose your business.
Is no one else using Prime for unlimited, uncompressed photo storage? I feel like it's a big thing and I'm not even a photographer. It's basically the same as Google had before they have decided to get rid of that feature on the free 15GB accounts.
I don't want Amazon or Google using ai to harvest my family's photo data and likeness so it's not worth it. You pay and still are the product
And as soon as they're done they'll pull the rug out from under you just like Google did.
That's basically the only reason I have it. I almost never use Amazon for ordering something
I've been doing it my whole life
The last straw for me was that Amazon drivers always seem to have some kind of problem finding my apartment. So even though instructions say "leave at my door," it always ends up in Parcel Pending on the other side of my complex.
NOBODY ELSE has an issue finding my apartment: UPS, USPS, Uber Eats, even fucking Door Dash! But I might as well be living in the Bermuda Triangle to Amazon, so WTF was I paying for Prime for?
And honestly, like so many others, I've found it not even the least bit tempting to go back. Ebay has been a reliable alternative.
It probably takes too long to go to each apartment, especially ones on the opposite end, and they probably are incentivized/punished more on time than accuracy.
Maybe they're using different map providers by default? Check Open street map, Apple, Google and Bing and see if some will route to the wrong side of the building, for example.
If you're that curious, of course. I'm not telling you what to do :-)
I bought a car stereo last Friday with Prime. It said next day delivery by 11am. At 11am I check and it says it'll be here this coming Friday.... I cancelled it because crap like this keeps happening. (about 75% of my orders) I live within two miles of a giant distribution center. I looked at other places for the same radio and Walmart had it (not a fan of them either but same price, same day shipping for free) so I ordered it. It was at my door four hours later.
I'm done with Amazon.
I've never had one, other than their free trials. Only then it was to make use of the next day delivery.
I mostly buy on ebay now and sometimes the main store. If I have no resort but to use amazon then I use someone else's account but that hasn't had to happen yet in a while (wanted to get the new pixel 8a and amazon had a promotion with a free $100 gift card)
After canceling Prime, I’ve been able to reevaluate the necessity of that ultra-fast, always-free shipping and have found it mostly unneeded. Amazon still ships free when your cart is above $35, albeit a few days slower. After leaving Prime, I’ve been happy to wait. The products still arrive relatively fast, and the selection is still excellent. I’m also less inclined to make impulse purchases. If the tech giants can have their years of cost-efficiency, I guess I can too.
Yeah I cancelled my Prime that I had for about 7 years a few months ago and... Its fine. Better maybe cause I don't buy something stupid online I didn't need. I try to find stuff locally first and free shipping makes me able to just buy something if I need to but haven't found anything I NEED to buy from them.
I missed Prime Video but honestly with ads I can also just use Tubi and it's the same jank cheap movie experience without supporting Bezos.
I do think it's funny that I know some people who did the whole prime day this year and complained they bought garbage and that the prces were the same when they had to return the items and buy a new one but also the waste still hurts me
I've never had one nor would I even consider it.
I’ve been doing it since December. Agreed
Did you ditch Amazon entirely or just wait until you spend over $35 for free shipping?
I haven’t bought anything from Amazon. Bet eventually I will but I’m just buying stuff from stores locally atm
I only really use it for the prime gaming free games :').
How does that work? Do they require another launcher or other kind of drm?
They have their own launcher. Other times its gog.com, steam or epic.
I got things like both KOTOR games, deathloop, the force unleashed series and a few others.
Sometimes the games are given via their DRM storefront, many of them are codes to Steam, Epic, and Humble
You need their launcher to install them, but I believe there is no "DRM" as such.
Once you claim the game, it's yours to keep even if you unsubscribe from Prime.
I really need to cancel my membership. Most things I really want can be bought on Ebay open-box for cheaper. Any daily essentials I just go to Sam's Club or Aldi.
Ignoring the other benefits to prime outside of shipping, this is a major caveat:
"Amazon still ships free when your cart is above $35, albeit a few days slower. "
Most people are fine with slower, but if you're forced to make your order $35 to get free shipping, you're likely buying stuff you don't want/need just to get to that amount.
Just to save like $10 a month?
I don't think you save money by cancelling, unless you actually don't buy stuff from Amazon to begin with.
For me, having Prime is still worth it. Several grocery items are still cheaper from Amazon, and ordering for same/next day means I don't have to waste time/money/energy going to a store to get that same item.
But that doesn't mean I won't cancel the moment Prime stops being a good value.
I cancelled Prime about a year ago, and so far it has had zero affect on our lives. Sometimes I'll put something in my cart that's under $35 and just wait until I want something else that brings me over $35. Maybe I'm more disciplined than other people? If I need something urgently, I'm not ordering it online anyway.
Quite a few times, a long period of time goes by before I add something to my cart to get above $35, and in the meantime I decided I don't even want the original thing. I'm ordering from Amazon a LOT less often, and it's great.
If I need something urgently, I’m not ordering it online anyway.
Is that because you don't have prime? I get same day, even overnight (literally 4 am delivery) from Prime, so it's often faster to just order from Amazon than to schedule time to visit a local store. Obviously, if something is needed NOW, I'll go to a local store. This happens maybe once or twice a year.
But what do you do? Go to a local store for semi-urgent things every time? How much time/energy/gas does that cost, and is it significantly less than $10 a month?
If I had to defer just three items to our local grocery store or Walmart, it would actually cost MORE in gas than the Prime fee.
For us, it saves money, which is why I'll continue using it.
If it doesn't for you, then cancelling was a good decision, and I would have done the same.
We buy as little as possible from Amazon, though it sort of doesn’t matter because our choice is basically Amazon or Walmart (where we live there aren’t any other retailers).
Basically we buy as little from all of these shit companies as possible. We keep a running list of things we do need to buy from Amazon and when the tally is $35 or more, then we make the purchase. It doesn’t cost us anything extra because it’s stuff we can only get from Amazon and it’s all stuff we need.
I've posted this elsewhere in similar comments. The value of Amazon has shifted from "buy anything" to "buy something that's annoying to find".
Unfortunately local brick and mortar stores are to blame as well.
Say you're looking for a 3-ring binder. You likely know where to go for it at your local Walmart. You aren't tied to a particular brand (or you are) and it doesn't take you long to find it.
But now let's say you're looking for something small like car wax. You're not sure what you need. You'd think it's in the care care section but you're not seeing it. The Walmart app says it's in aisle K44 and your in, what the hell? Z4? Map does you no good. And when you get there there are so many small products that you can't find it.
Amazon has done studies and the majority of shipped products weigh less than something like 5 pounds. People find Amazon search better than the in-store experience.
Walmart, and most B&M stores unfortunately have no incentive to change because they want you to browse. For Walmart, it's basket size (items per cart) whereas Amazon is the speed of checkout.
if you’re forced to make your order $35 to get free shipping, you’re likely buying stuff you don’t want/need just to get to that amount.
Nnnnooo. I'm pretty sure I need toilet paper. My order was $33 for the main stuff I needed to buy and then I threw in toilet paper to push the order over $35. I needed that anyway.
Also, you could ask your spouse if anything else is needed around the house. Also, also, you could just wait until you need something else and batch the orders into 1 order over $35, instead of ordering a bunch of single $5 items.
If you really need something urgently, then it's perfectly fine to pay for shipping. But this probably doesn't happen very often.
It's really not that hard. You should try it. Cancel Prime for 3 months. If you hate living without it after 3 months, then you can resubscribe. There's no penalties.
the third party delivery companies using Amazon painted trucks is a new form of racketeering for organized crime.
