More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.
Got a substitute?
No?
…
Great argument. How about buy your shit from actual stores, whether online or brick and mortar. Believe it or not, we actually managed to get by for millennia without amazon
A lot of those stores actually closed down because of Amazon.
Many that offer specialized equipment are located in locations that are far or difficult to access and/or have opening hours that are the same as my work hours.
I do my best to buy local and from physical shops, but sometimes nobody had what you’re looking for and Amazon can get it to your door in 24 hours.
I hate the company but fuck is it practical. They need a serious competitor but nobody wants to even try with the amount of money Bezos got.
Use Amazon, only when you have no other option.
Not “no other option with 1 day shipping”
Not “no other option that delivers to my door”
Not “no other option that doesn’t cost $10 more”
That’s what I try to do at best at possible.
And you will end up using Amazon most of the time this way anyway.
also the amazon truck drives by my house every day anyway. it’s far more efficient for them to drop off another package on their route than me making a special trip to a physical store.
But I mean we all get why this is wrong. It’s becoming a major monopoly. And that’s not good.
This is why trust busting is supposed to exist.
“becoming” yeah
I bought some 3D printing filament direct from the manufacturer. It got shipped to me by… Amazon. From an Amazon warehouse. I guess that’s how they do fulfillment. 🤷♂️
Huh. In my large city I have difficulty finding things in brick and mortar stores. Want a silicone tray for your air fryer? Walmart’s website says they have them, but when you call the stores, they confirm they absolutely do not. Hobby lobby has it for 5x the price. No local stores come up as stocking them period, None other listed locally. I have this issue quite commonly. Maternity clothes sections just don’t exist locally with any variety or consistency with sizes. Baby necessities, toys, and clothing is truly hit or miss in stores. You drive to the one store you think will have what you need and they closed two weeks ago.
I don’t live in the boonies. If you live in the US, you’ve heard of my city. I am constantly running into the issue that things are only available online, and then Amazon is always the quickest shipping, and almost always the least expensive.
Fuck bezos and screw Amazon, but unless you’re able to wait a week or three for everything you need, you don’t have any good substitutes. I’d love to run out and buy it same day, but it’s just not reliable to go to the store anymore.
I just bought a bunch of onesies and toddler clothes directly from Carter’s and the Children’s Place. They do seasonal sales and loyalty points so I actually got a better deal than on Amazon. Got the packages within 5 days each. I bought diapers from Target, they came in two days and I got a $20 giftcard as part of the deal. Next time you need something, try going directly to the brand’s website, or literally any other retailer. Amazon spams search results but they aren’t the only store on the internet.
I wish I could. Most of the stuff I buy from Amazon I can’t find anywhere else. They’ve become the Walmart of online stores and driven everything else out of business. He’ll even Walmart doesn’t have what I want 99% of the time. It sucks. I hate contributing to Wish version Lex Luther …
Such as?
AWS is the big one. And they are indeed somewhat unique in the scale and flexibility that they offer. You could leave them, but then you have to build those services and data centers yourself.
They literally aren’t unique at all. Those services are offered by plenty of competitors.
At better prices, with better service and APIs.
It’s like people enjoy the abuse? 🤷♂️
The only true competitor is GCP, and Google is trash company too.
Azure, oracle, digital ocean etc. there’s 100s of providers of varying sizes.
No way in hell you’re trying to compare digital ocean to GCP or AWS.
There are technologies that are entirely out of reach until you get to a certain size. Just because you can provision a VM for someone who gives you a credit card doesn’t make you top tier cloud provider.
And azure comes close, but from a technical perspective their offerings are not competitive. Like it’s 2024 and they still don’t have s3 support.
gcp, azure, hetzner, digitalocean, linode…
Google’s as bad as Amazon.
100% agreed. Azure too. Honestly Hetzner as well, to a lesser extent
AWS is unique in its high profit margins. Have you explored the world of non-cloud hosting? It’s cheap as!
You could pay someone else who wants to create them?
I’m delighted to hear that you can afford the prices of goods from modern brick and mortar stores. What about us 99% though?
Idk wtf stores you’re going to, but prices are very similar between online and B&M, and where it’s not, I haven’t been to a store in years that won’t price match.
To answer your question, the 99% of you just need to think about it for a second before parroting some dumbass take.
This cannot be true unless the price of commercial retail real estate where you live is next to literally $0. I have never heard of a store, online, nevermind B&M, price-matching Amazon because this is economically impossible.
But idk, I’m not American. In the UK we basically don’t have any actual stores anymore for anything other than food and/or clothes, and they are closed after 5PM, so good luck getting there just to pay 5x the price or sell a kidney for delivery fees.
I’m the US many stores like Best Buy and Home Depot will price match Amazon.
Fair, you have my envy. Here in the UK that’s definitely not a thing because we have no real competitors to Amazon.
You are not a serious person
I’m thinking you’re telling on yourself there
?
MORE FUNDING FOR USPS! FUCK CORPOS!
Sure, we did lots of things for a long time. We used to send mail instead of phone calls too. But the reality is Amazon is going to offer a bigger selection, with more convenience, usually cheaper prices, and the ability to see reviews of the product. It’s got a lot of merits that make it attractive.
Just not using Amazon? Somehow I’ve managed to survive without needing to buy anything off Amazon in over a decade. How badly do you need to buy random shit online that you can just shrug at the human rights violation that is Amazon?
Exactly! I also haven’t bought more than ten items from Walmart in the last fifteen years.
It can cost a little more, and requires patience, but I can think of very few times I’ve actually needed (versus wanted) some item before I could get it not via Amazon or Walmart. Even with the added expense for some individual items I’d wager I’ve spent less overall since it makes impulse purchases easier to avoid.
It’s probably not amounting to much in the way of resisting these mega corps, but it isn’t as difficult as some folks imagine.
bhphotovideo has been very good to me
Second this… If they have it available, they’ve been great to me.
Additional to backfill more “basics”, target is at least less crap than Bezos.
Agreed. Target isn’t perfect (no corpo is) but I buy from them still
Sure,
Just live with things taking like 2-5 days instead of 1-2
Yep, for just about everything you get on Amazon there are alternatives. You just go to the supplier that sells the thing you need instead. Amazon hasn’t had real 2 day shipping in a long time. If you really need that “everything store” experience, Ebay, Target and Walmart all have decent online marketplaces but might as well use the smaller stores. What’s keeping you on Amazon? It sure as hell isn’t its search, and tons of sites offer free, fast shipping. I have to assume it’s habit.
Maybe this is true in the US, but in the UK the difference in shipping is Amazon same-day or at the very latest 1-day for free, or easily £5.99+ for something between a week and never because they use the most cost-cutting human slavery looking ass parcel carriers. That’s before the fact most things just are flat-out not available outside of Amazon, and if they are, cost 5x.
I happily pay more for local, and I basically bought clothes only on Etsy for quite some time despite being scammed a number of times, but that’s crashed too now and is impossible to use, and even before there’s no persuasive economical argument to make.
Most suppliers only sell directly on Amazon, or also on AliExpress if it’s chinese made stuff, but that in itself is a very different beast because shipping from there is in the month+ range.
I think if you had just left it at “Got a substitute?” and left off the snark you wouldn’t be downvoted into oblivion. I’ll try to give you my honest take. It’s a fair question. Amazon is a really nice service. I was a prime member for many years. About 3 years ago I cancelled because: the price kept going up, the usability of the site keeps getting worse, (alphabet soup pop up “brands” poisoning search results) and the customer service has gotten worse.
My process now is, search for what I want with one or more search engines, or, a website with reviews I trust like wirecutter, seriouseats, rtings, gamersnexus, etc. Once I decide on the item, see if the manufacturer sells it direct. Then, I price compare using a google shopping search. If Amazon comes in at MUCH cheaper than everyone else, I might still buy from them. If it’s close, especially if it’s a small business, I try to go more direct. If your cart is over USD $35, shipping is still free but slower. If I have smaller things less than $35, I sit on them and wait until I need enough to put me over or stock up on basics like garbage bags. If I need something fast and Amazon is the only place to get it, I can still pay for shipping several times a year and spend less than I would on the prime subscription. I typically only need to pay for shipping once or twice a year.
You can make Amazon compete and behave better without completely cutting them out of your life. Cancel prime, and shop around.
I’m not aware of being downvoted into oblivion, but I have a massive block list, so that might be why.
I wonder why you would need that?
I am confused by people’s shopping habits. How often are you buying online and what is it?
Groceries and pharmacy are all local. Clothes are a local boutique (I don’t buy clothes more than one or twice a year and I like to try things on and buy quality items). Shoes are from a local redwing store that I’ve been wearing for over 8 years. Computer parts I do tend to buy online, but I’d never risk buying from Amazon. I typically buy from b&h, cdw, or directly from the manufacturer.
Vape supplies are 5x the price on the street compared to Amazon, I buy from some shady online retailer instead but it also takes much longer.
For pharmacy stuff things I need are impossible to get in any pharmacy, even as I have it on prescription and should be able to get it for free in the UK, in practice it’s just never in stock, online pharmacies require bizarre kafka-esque labyrintha of consultations ans approvals, and one that I was recommended by my gf that she uses tried to selectively scam me by asking for.my card details over the phone, including CVC for the excuse that it was some third party supplier, meanwhile on Amazon it can be delivered the same day for a pretty decent price.
For computer parts in 99% of cases Amazon is much much cheaper. Any hobby stuff like music gear all comes from Amazon because it’s much more expensive with the manufacturer (if even available directly) nevermind retailers, nevermind in store IRL. Print books (can’t stand reading electronic copies) and especially manga are almost never available outside of Amazon, where again it’s all 1DD.
I’m in the top 20% earners in the UK so I can somewhat afford IKEA as long as I use it for many years, but for most there’s no real alternative to Amazon price-wise despite the poor quality. Same goes for kitchenware, options in stores are far too limited, e.g. plate drying racks were all too big or too small unless I got the one I got from Amazon.
Clothing varies, if I only ever go with brands I already know and take days off to actually be able to visit the stores before they all close at 5PM, maybe, but otherwise the best way to buy any brand of clothing is prime wardrobe’s try before you buy thing if you filter to legit brands only.
There’s just no real alternatives, even if you pay more, you wait more, you choose worse options, sooner or later you just run into a wall because those businesses that used to sell this stuff were gone by the 2010s tops.
What? There is no need for a substitute. The concept is insanity. Just stop being a consoomer ffs
We don’t all live in mom’s basement playing [insert game] on a crusty Toshiba satellite here with every whim catered to.
Things break, things are needed, people live their lives. I don’t buy much, but when I need something there are rarely any alternatives to Amazon.
Sure buddy, if that makes you feel better.
Thats just not true anywhere in europe. If you live in NA, then my condolences. Idk how it is in south america but probably depends on the country.
I’m in the USA and it’s totally easy not to use Amazon. The first step is buying less shit though and people are pretty addicted to buying crap they don’t need.
Can you give us examples?
BDS:
https://www.bdsmovement.net/act-now-against-these-companies-profiting-from-genocide
Israeli Weapons Firms Required to Buy Cloud Services From Google and Amazon
Alternatives:
https://www.techradar.com/best/amazon-alternatives
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-alternatives/
I’ve found myself using Target for most home items; Newegg, B&H, or BestBuy for electronics; local stores for groceries and clothes; Etsy and the companies own websites for other misc items. Ending prime was a great first step for me.
Things don’t break in Europe??? Are you insane? In the UK most people buy all their stuff from fucking Temu, it’s literally top 10 free apps on Google Play here always, it’s much worse than even Amazon.
I’m anti-consumptuon as they come, I don’t have any subscriptions, most things I own are either 2nd hand, upcycled (repurposed), fixed by me, but you are either a sheltered baby or utterly out of touch with reality if you think it’s possible to avoid using Amazon here entirely, especially in Europe if anything, at least in the US they have some competition to Amazon but here? Nah.
Argos has a huge amount of stuff, is often as cheap as Amazon, and can handle same-day pickup and delivery. Saying that it doesn’t exist in the UK is definitely bullshit, especially when we are a tiny fucking island that has handled next day delivery at scale for DECADES.
Downvoters: “I hate you but you’re right.”
There’s a dozen responses stating why the person is wrong.
Did you read any of the responses?
…I stopped using Amazon at all about a year and a half ago. It’s not that fucking hard. Do you know how many places want to sell you shit?
Literally all of them.
There is literally nowhere to buy most things on Amazon.
I’ve literally never bought anything from Amazon ever, at all. Not once. Nothing. Zilch. … So I think it is more than fair to say that there are plenty of alternatives to Amazon.
Removed by mod
Plenty of alternatives, if you’re willing to look. Books? Try the library. Ebooks? Kobo. Audiobooks? Libro.fm Other products? Shop local (if you still can) otherwise, use Google to find another site that sells shit.
Don’t most brick and mortar stores also have websites that deliver? Just think of what store might sell what you’re lookng for and buy it from them or at least compare prices.
Ebay
I’ve used ebay before. Full of scammers. No thanks.
so is amazon
Seriously, feels like a crapshoot if I’m actually getting a quality product or garbage that falls apart. Doesn’t help that you can’t trust the reviews, fake reviews aside it feels like every other item tries to bribe you with a gift card for a 5-star review.
Open box shit sold as new, same/next/2 day deliveries getting delayed more often than not, counterfeits, genuinely dangerously unsafe products, a supply chain full of exhausted and burned out workers… Yeah it’s all so fucked. I can only hope their retail business collapses as it’s increasingly indistinguishable from aliexpress or ebay
What? What country do you live in where Amazon has downright scams on it? Sure you might get something that’s a bit dodgy but if you do your due diligence you can avoid it. With eBay not so much where most products live in at most the paralegal grey area space.
USA
Fair enough. Haven’t seen this in the UK. Plenty of scams on wish and Temu but on Amazon you always get the item as described, it’s just often fairly shit.
For prime video, just pirate whatever is their “must watch” show or movie. For online shopping, just stop being a spoiled bitch who can’t live with 2 day shipping. Google still works,
something you want to buy -amazon.comBuy less stuff?
Yeah bro you’re right let me just not buy medication or replace a busted hard drive or microwave… Degrowthers need to grow some fucking braincells istg
If you only buy essentials like that finding alternative suppliers can’t be that hard
https://ground.news
Get 40% off an annual subscription with Adam Conover’s code
factually, or go to ground.news/factually.This got reported, but its a joke, I think people just didn’t get it- including me. Because its a weird joke.
Are there hundreds of alternatives to online shopping on Amazon?
The same with logistics. Surely there are MANY delivery companies?
What about Amazon would you miss?
No, see rest of thread
There are thousands of online stores, not to mention brick and mortar where you can buy everything you need.
This question shows you’re either a troll or a moron.
Have you got a substitute for… A place to buy stuff? No not a single substitute? You really can’t think of any vendor other than Amazon? Be better
No, there are essentially no other online stores for most things.
So, a liar and a troll. Got it. Holy shit you’re actually responding to every comment with complete nonsense. What a loser lol.