alt Hacker NewsThe Prime Reasons to Avoid Amazon
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> 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 would love to avoid Amazon, and indeed I would love to support local retailers, but more often than not it is simply impossible. The only way I can find out if a local vendor carries an item I'm interested in, and if they have it in stock, is to physically go there. The amount of time that requires is orders of magnitude more than what it takes to order the item on Amazon, where I am all but guaranteed that it will be available.
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 good first step is not paying for Prime.
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.
I wish our local postage carrier was more efficient. Amazon provides next day delivery, whilst other online stores dispatch your purchase within 2-3 days and the package arrives is a further 2-5 days.
None of these are good arguments to convince the average person to not use Amazon (or any other service provided by a megacorp). A better argument (well, maybe not as of May 2025) is that most crap on Amazon is available for 1/5 the price from websites like Aliexpress. Nothing on Amazon is sold for less than ~8 dollars, meanwhile you can buy the exact same product from Aliexpress for less than a dollar.
Myself I can't stand the media blitz that tries to talk up Prime Day every year.
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.
Am I missing something, the article randomly says: "For context, the US federal government spent $53 million on public education in 2022." and links to: https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... which says K-12 schools spend $857.2 billion.
Related: Reasons not to buy from Amazon - https://www.stallman.org/amazon.html
When I lived in the US, I tried to order stuff from Amazon as less as possible. The problem was the lack of decent urban areas and public transport. Going to a shop in my city where they had the same thing which I wanted would take the better part of a day.
I can almost always find a small company - often thing-i-want.com that has just as good deals and they provide useful advice about which version is best - often I have bought the more expensive version for those reasons. (I think for the better though I rarely buy enough of anything to have an informed opinion on relative merit)
One of the people I follow on tiktok suggested abstaining from shopping from large corporations for Lent except for sundays. I tried it and ended up finding out some things about myself I did not realize, which I guess is kind of the point.
For LPs specifically: it's much better than paying import fees now that preorders are instant with RSS alerts. Also AWS Science/Dev Program Training is nice. Supplement labels can be cross-referenced elsewhere. Just use Nootropics Depot, Science Bio, Cosmic Nootropics,iHerb, Syntharise, etcetera. All legal/not iillicit.
"Do you think police have too much funding?" No.
"For context, the US federal government spent $53 million on public education in 2022" Hilarious, the federal government probably spent more on photocopiers for the department of education in 2022 than that.
Would you consider Target or Walmart more ethical? Or better at policing counterfeits?
I refuse to boycott Amazon, but I do try other sites and local places first, but I'm not going to to a 100% boycott that doesn't really prove much; I just don't run to Amazon first to get stuff.
I understand hyperbole is a useful rhetorical device, but it's very hard for me to take anyone who uses it seriously or trust anything they say at all.
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.
I feel like the author is undermining their own complaint in regards to Rekognition. Anyone can just sign up for an AWS account and start using the service, pretty much the same as anything else AWS sells. Then in response to specific bad behavior by US police departments Amazon cut off their access, a practice they've kept up to this day.
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.
Honestly I hate Amazon because they are a mega corp that just gets bigger and bigger. But on the other hand they are just the best online store hands down. I ordered an electric toothbrush yesterday at 23:30 and it arrived today at 15:30 - that's just amazing. Also returning stuff is hassle-free and they often are the cheapest.
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 not enough to be against Amazon. You need to be against everyone who - sells tech to the gov, - undercuts prices, - exploits employees, - lobbies for regulation.
Not to mention the real reason we hate Jeff Bezos. Because you wouldn't like it if I mentioned it.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything said, fine sentiments, well said
But I am unsure that this will convince anyone not already convinced.
We need good political messaging to bring them, them all, down and to get economic freedom
This honestly may as well have been a paid ad by Amazon. It served as a reminder for me that Prime Day is coming up. That reminder was followed up with several extremely weak arguments that Amazon is the pinnacle of evil. Also felt like it was written largely by AI
It’s like some Soviet-style retailer where everyone is supposed to shop for everything. It’s about as contrary to competitive capitalism as a company can be. I signed off two years ago and haven’t missed it for a minute - though you should make your own decisions, as with everything.
Many of the things the author accuses Amazon of doing are troubling, but the logic the author used in the Chris Brown music buying example to tie it all together shows of a lack of distinction between types of cooperation with evil.
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...
I guess, but Amazon gets me stuff tomorrow or the next day, reliably, week in and week out. Yeah, I could find this stuff elsewhere on the internet. But not for Tuesday delivery. And not without opening another account. Also, right now, often only by paying a tariff-adjacent fee to cover the import costs of the vendors that didn't have the foresight to pre-stock imports like Amazon did.
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.
Amazon manipulates your product searches. When you search for a product, it will push a few select brands and you won’t get past that, except you deliberately search for a specific brand. So it will limit your options. But it will give you the illusion to show you a large amount of various brands.
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.
Many commenter's here saying they cannot avoid Amazon. I am not here to deny their reality, but I have a different story
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
As someone who is very personally interested in the intersection between different political opinions, I really like how this article side-stepped individual issues to present the argument that Amazon is bad as a whole. “Ok, you don’t connect with BLM? Let’s talk about something else.” I find very, very often that conservatives & liberals are talking past each other and cannot even understand why the other side is making the argument they are. This is the first time in a while I’ve seen that side-step motion applied productively.
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.
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The only standard I hold Amazon to is if they can get me the things I want in the fastest time. Until someone does that better, I have no reasons not to use Amazon.
Regardless of what one thinks about Amazon, one's actions have approximately zero effect on it.
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.
A real reason to avoid Amazon is fake merchandise. I'd been buying a vitamin supplement from them for years. Then they sent me a notice that it was being recalled as a fake.[1] (Archive [2]) They paid a refund for the last purchase. But that's all. Amazon won't respond to questions about what was in it or who the real seller is.
I no longer buy anything from Amazon that could be faked.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/ask/questions/Tx2Q5O0C84HF1GU/
[2] https://archive.is/rN8B9