Submitted 9 months ago by AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://slate.com/technology/2024/01/quit-amazon-prime-how-to-free-shipping.html
Archive link: archive.ph/3M27c
I haven’t used prime in idk how long. 2 day shipping hasn’t been 2 days or even 4 days in years now. Every order with or without prime is at least a week. The only reason I use Amazon is ordering odd ball stuff you can’t find in a store or the price difference is substantial enough to justify. I never need to pay for shipping since if I’m ordering it’s a bulk order of stuff I need and it’s free shipping over $25. I hate Amazon but i also gotta get by some how
I buy from Bezoco maybe once or twice a year, if I really can’t find something anywhere else, and they always, always offer a free Prime trial.
If you don’t know this already: you can cancel the Prime trial immediately and still get the full 30 days (or week or whatever) out of it.
I live in an area where lots of stuff can get there same day or overnight which has legitimately saved my ass a bunch of times. If it was just 2 day I would definitely consider cancelling, especially now that prime video has ads.
same. i feel gross using it but it’s literally figuratively magic being able to lie in bed, realize i need a specific cable for something, order it on my phone, and have it the next morning
sometimes i’ll try to go to an actual store instead, but then often they won’t have the specific thing, or it’ll be out of stock, or they’ll only have expensive ones, and either way i have to drive there and back and talk to the guy which is a pain
What things do you all need so fast? The convenience is undeniable, but once I forced myself to stop using them i found I don’t actually need to sacrifice my morals and the planet to get something the next morning
I’ve cancelled several years ago.
The bastards still try to charge me about 4 times a year and I have to do a charge back with my bank.
Just use privacy.com and set the card to disabled. Then you don’t have to worry about charges.
I don’t even have an Amazon account anymore. If I need something, I just give the money to a friend and have them order it for me. Definitely saves me money because I don’t want to go through the hassle of doing that for most things.
If I need something, I just give the money to a friend and have them order it for me.
This is awesome. Amazon is as unscrupulous as a drug dealer, so you need a “connection” to deal with Amazon.
Lol, i never thought of them as a dealer, but i like it
oh, so you’re that guy.
but yeah, perfectly understandable. many people i know use the prime benefits of a single person, i was said person once.
To the best of my knowledge, my friend does not have Prime, but I am not totally sure on that. I just don’t have an Amazon account at all.
Prime Video was nice, but I don’t like the move with including ads. Since they fucked me over as a linux user by using dumb DRM, I don’t really miss it.
Shipping: same as the author. I will likely get used to increased wait time. Shipping was never my main use case.
I will miss my free monthly twitch subscription. So I will likely not support my favorite streamer anymore (via twitch sub at least).
I’ll see how it goes. But fuck the industry for their ad-ridden shit tour. I will rip any service out of my life that tries that bullshit.
Prime sub is the only thing keeping me from cancelling, I watch Kitboga exclusively and paying for the yearly sub is almost as much as paying for prime.
The Prime shipping isn’t really any faster most of the time, in my experience. I don’t bother with paying for Prime but once in awhile they offer it for free and I’ll take the offer and order a few things.
Amazon moved a distribution center near me and now I basically get what prime delivery used to get me without prime. I can still get free shipping so long as my cart total is high enough, and I think that will remain because even independent retail websites and shippers offer that, so Amazon doesn’t want to give people more reason to use them less. Getting rid of prime was easier than soooooo much other stuff I’ve ditched.
I think it actually costs Amazon money to have separate shipping plans for prime and non-prime, and artifically holding goods later costs warehouse space. I suspect the dirty secret is that prime is no different to normal shipping now.
They constantly deliver ahead of schedule for me and I assume it’s exactly because of what you said. They can deprioritize non prime shipments but at some point it just doesn’t make sense, and infact costs money to not move it. Why spend wearhouse space on already sold goods when you could fill that space with things that can make you money you haven’t received yet.
My family holds a prime membership and recently I’ve been seeing how long I could go for without needing to use it. Most things I was able to purchase on eBay. Most recently, I decided to buy pen stuff and JetPens was a good option. However they needed like $50 or something for free shipping so I splurged a little. The one pen ink refill I needed (Jetstream Prime SXR 600 0.5) was way too expensive on both jetpens and ebay so I had to purchase it on Amazon. Nonetheless, I think you can still buy on amazon without a membership so maybe deal with the longer shipping times but that’s no biggie.
I’ve wanted to get a nice pen for a while. Checked out JetPens. $800 for a fountain pen 💀. I’ll stick to Amazon for now
Bruh. I make pens as a hobby. Happy to make and ship you one. Image
I still have the four on the right on hand. Can also make whatever.
I’ve never had one. I’ve never bought anything from Amazon.
I’m fine.
I don’t have access to amazon at all, ao don’t get the ravw about amazon itself either.
In the US it’s basically the everything store with fairly competitive pricing and very fast shipping. It’s very convenient if nothing else. The company is still evil tho.
I can get basically anything I want at cheaper prices than locally available by the next day. I can get an increasing amount of things delivered to me same day as well which is pretty nice. The return policy is also a big part of it. There’s basically no fuss or questions asked for anything you want a refund on. You don’t even have to put it in a box, you can just drop it off at the UPS store.
They’re evil, but it’s pretty great from a user perspective.
The return policy is really what seals it for me. I’ve never had an issue with returning something, ever.
Other places make it such a hassle and make you pay to return it.
One of the final nails in the coffin for me was when I tried to specify the delivery date to a day I would actually be in, and they completely ignored the instruction and delivered immediately. Like, I pay for that option, and you’re not delivering the service.
I’ve also been getting free trials for Prime every so often, so I still get the benefits when I might need them (eg before Christmas). They did make it very hard to cancel, though, half the links didn’t work and the instructions were out of date and didn’t match the pages.
Was it an Amazon branded delivery truck? Sounds more like a shipping company fuck up if not
No idea whether or not it was a branded truck (it was a while ago), but it wasn’t under any other sort of brand - Amazon deliveries are done by people employed by or directly contracted for Amazon.
Amazon Prime exists for me to run a 30-day trial around Christmas, when I happen to come up with a few gift ideas I can’t find elsewhere, and then to let it expire and never use it the rest of the year.
I get Prime for free as part of a subscription I have to something else. Otherwise I would be hard pressed to subscribe. It has driven up our impulse purchase amounts, though. My eldest daughter got hooked on that shit for half a year. She needed literal detox in a clinic hahaha j/k
Joking aside, retail therapy is a thing. Some people shop when they are lonely/bored. Ask my exwife.
Holy carp… I do believe that. My condolences about your marriage. I don’t even consider myself invulnerable. I have barely scratched the surface of what’s on Amazon. I could one day stumble upon a whole universe of knick knacks that I would find immensely desirable. Everyone has a breaking point, it’s all about finding that button to push!
I just bought new name brand tires from Amazon for $200 cheaper per tire than my local tire shop was selling them, and about 80 cheaper than other online stores that I checked. Plus free shipping.
Hate Amazon or not, they do still have good deals and free shipping for certain items is huge. Plus they ALWAYS have better selection than any local or big box store.
Was the brand name SZZXYY?
Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, 275/35/19
A lot of companies now offer two day shipping for free (if you spend enough of course), and it’s just as good. Hell, I bought some batteries for a UPS that died on Monday from a battery wholesale site, and they arrived today. And that’s with the shipping saying it could at least a week. The competitive advantage of Amazon doesn’t seem like it’s there any more.
Another thing you realize when you quit Amazon is that you don’t really need to be ordering so much junk. You just don’t. I promise. And when you do need something, I feel like I’m more confident buying the jacket or whatever from the company that makes it instead of sitting through a thousand knock offs and hoping I picked the right one among all the AI written reviews and titles.
When I lived in NYC I could not even understand the appeal of Prime. Now that I live in the burbs I can’t live without it. I hate that I keep throwing money at Bezos but abusing their return policy is my little solace.
As somebody who lives on an island, I don’t understand the appeal of Amazon Prime. It’s a bogus product - if you live outside the mainland USA, you still get slower shipping speeds (usually like 1 week with Prime vs 2 weeks without it). It’s literally just an instant gratification thing - if I need something now, I’d just go out and buy it from a store instead of ordering it through Amazon or any online retailer.
Speaking from my experience in Australia, Prime is quite good for ad-hoc ordering.
For AUD6.99 a month I can order something that will usually turn up tomorrow morning, meaning that if I need a light bulb or a dishcloth or weed killer it’s just a 30 second search with the app on my phone and I can get on with my day.
Compare that to:
eBay - free shipping, a week or so, “express” , 3 days and AUD12-18 per purchase.
Small online retailers - generally no free shipping, usually an Australia Post option at AUD12 or so that takes about 4-5 days, “express” via various couriers that takes that to 2-3 days for AUD18-30.
Large retailers - a week or more for delivery, AUD10-40 depending on size.
Say what you want about their treatment of workers, from a consumer point of view Amazon’s warehousing and delivery logistics are pretty effective.
Similar to the person who commented below. I live in a very rural area so it would be 10 bucks in gas just to drive to the closest Target to buy a pack of pens that I need for work the next day. And I know that I could just swing by on my way home from work and pick them up, but then it becomes a time thing. I mean my entire plan is to ditch Amazon prime after my current subscription expires. But man, there are some interesting things that have just become normalized with the convenience of getting things mailed to me that I'm totally going to miss. But fuck bezos
Where I live it’s either Target or Amazon Prime. And give how crappy the Target selection is there’s no real choice.
They started putting commercials on Prime Video.
Nope, not paying for that. Certainly not paying EXTRA to remove 'em. Dick rocket Jeff can go eat shit.
‘Please allow 6-8 weeks shipping from Pueblo, Colorado…’
I had prime for maybe a year or something, but it just seems daft to pay more to avoid shipping charges when half the things ship free anyhow. Buying things remotely through the mail or whatever used to take weeks to get to you and there was no tracking to sit there monitoring the arrival in real time. It sucked, so people would buy things from the store nearby and skip all that. Now take your amazonian primates and get off my lawn…
I had an issue recently where they sent me the wrong item (it was coded wrong in their system- their fault) and when I contacted support they wanted me to either be at home for an entire day for them to pick up the item or have me take it to a drop off location for them, then wait for several weeks for the return to be processed.
I’m one of those people who always hated amazon, but since moving out to a rural area without a car it ends up a lot easer, quicker and often cheaper to get most of what I need from there :(
My wife has it and exceedingly rarely I’ll ask her to order something for me on it because it’ll be the best price/quality/feature ratio I can find or it’s just like one small cable and that’s the only place I’ll get free shipping but that’s also extremely rare.
I do have the luck of living somewhere with countless alternatives, and they all deliver next day for free most of the time, maybe a limit of 20€ and over or something.
Amazon Prime is the biggest scam.
I had amazon prime for free for 10 years. It was free for students back then. Then i finished uni and they never bothered to check. This went on for a very long time. Only 2 years ago they killed the subscription and i never subscribed again.
No mention of the free shipping?
I’m no fan of Amazon, but not mentioning the free shipping as part of the benefits of being a Prime member is not presenting an honest argument to people.
Yeah, all those shipping costs add up over time and 100% cost you more than having Prime would. Granted not everything is on/off the Amazon store
Lots of mentions. Most of the article is about that in particular.
Lots of mentions. Most of the article is about that in particular. Don’t trust summary bots
Well I depend on the summaries to decide if I’m going to read the article or not. /shrug
Wait, read the article? This is Lemmy, I thought we were just supposed to read the post comments and talk about what we think might be in the article.
I can’t speak for the US, but at least in Canada Amazon has just been getting worse since I started using it. In 2019 I used it to get some great camping equipment at a ridiculously good price. During Christmastime last year I got a 50$ gift card from my company and I struggled to spend it after buying a $20 crystal ball. My household cancelled our prime subscription last year and I doubt we’ll go back.
I think I’ve used Amazon a grand total of twice in my life. Got a cheap knockoff of what I actually ordered both times.
I could kinda understand this if you live in a rural area and have had it for years…but still, first world problems, my god.
I’ve noticed that without prime you can still get free shipping if you just have a big enough order, so as long as you don’t buy a ton of small purchases individually but instead save up what you need for bigger purchases then the only advantage prime has is the shorter shipping time. Which I’ve also noticed sometimes that the shipping without prime will often arrive a day or two earlier then it’s original estimate, probably cause Amazon has optimized for that shorter 2 day shipping. It’s still not usually 2 days but for most stuff it’s either a week or less which is usually plenty fast for anything I get on Amazon.
Basically a “it works for me but not for some people” statement. Such a waste of my time to have read that.
Chessmasterrex@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There’s only 24 hours in a day and I have plenty of things to do other than watch commercial-plagued programming on Amazon.