Today I canceled my Amazon Prime subscription.
Why? · As I wrote in Not an Amazon Problem (and please go read that if you haven’t) I don’t see myself as an enemy of Amazon, particularly. I think the pressures of 21st-century capitalism have put every large company into a place where they really can’t afford to be ethical or the financial sector will rip them to shreds then replace the CEO with someone who will maximize shareholder return at all costs, without any of that amateurish “ethics” stuff.
To the extent that Amazon is objectionable, it’s a symptom of those circumstances.
I’m bailing out of Prime not to hurt Amazon, but because it doesn’t make commercial or emotional sense for me just now.
Commercial? · Yes, free next-day delivery is pretty great. In fact, in connection with our recent move, I’ve been ordering small cheap stuff furiously: (USB cables, light switches, closet organizers, a mailbox, a TV mount, WiFi hubs, banana plugs, you name it).
But the moving operations are mostly done, and there are few (any?) things we really need the next day, and we’re fortunate, living in the center of a 15-minute city. So getting my elderly ass out of my chair and going to a store is a good option, for more than one reason.
Second, for a lot of things you want to order, the manufacturer has its own online store these days and a lot of them are actually well-built, perfectly pleasant to use.
Third, Amazon’s prices aren’t notably cheaper than the alternatives.
Emotional? · Amazon is an US corporation and the US is now hostile to Canada, repeatedly threatening to annex us. So I’m routing my shopping dollars away from there generally and to Canadian suppliers specifically. Dumping Prime is an easy way to help that along.
Second, shopping on Amazon for the kinds of small cheap things listed above is more than a little unpleasant. The search-results page is a battle of tooth and claw among low-rent importers. Also it’s just really freaking ugly, hurts my eyes to look at it.
Really? I have no idea what they were.
Finally, one of Prime’s big benefits used to be Prime Video, but no longer. There was just no excuse for greenlighting that execrable Rings of Power show, and I’m not aware of anything else I want to watch.
Amazon is good at lots of things, but has never been known for good taste. I mean, look at that search-results page.
Yep.
Is it easy? · Yep, no complaints. There were only two please-don’t-go begs and neither was offensive.
No hard feelings.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Rodney Topor (Mar 06 2025, at 21:00)
Amazon Prime does have The Expanse, a wonderful scifi series. I subscribed for a month to watch this and then cancelled my subscription.
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From: Tim (but not THE Tim) (Mar 06 2025, at 22:51)
I see more companies becoming way better at online shopping, but I don't see a lot of improvements, lately by Amazon. I've sent suggestions but large companies seem to have inoculations against outside ideas. For the most part their 'orders' UI works for me, but I'd really, really like them to put the projected arrival dates of stuff into an iCalendar file that I can import to my local calendar software, and couldn't find anyone to take that suggestion.
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From: ophasnoname (Mar 07 2025, at 01:39)
We already did that a year ago. The prices here in Germany were increased, and somehow the fast delivery didn't work most of the time anyway. We also canceled Netflix and Spotify at the same time. Kindle replaced by Pocketbook and we only buy DRM-free books. We're now going back to yard sales and buying CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays. It's working much better than expected.
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From: John (Mar 07 2025, at 02:47)
I recently moved to a small market town, and have started to shop more locally, rather than throw more money at Amazon. The difference in price, has closed substantially over the past few years. The only thing of interest for me, that Prime Video has, is Reacher, and that’s being made available to purchase, I can wait….
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From: ed (Mar 07 2025, at 02:48)
I'm curious as to what you would define as "ethics" or "ethical" and to be even more specific, as it pertains to subscription based companies/services like prime, where you also have the alternative to use them ad-hoc i guess. I have similar thoughts but I am wondering if ethical is the right word to describe the companies who, basically, offer a little more than what you would get if you did not have their subscription? Or maybe you meant something entirely different.
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From: Laurence Lumsden (Mar 07 2025, at 07:02)
I’ve also just canceled my Prime subscription, but for me the deal-breaker was Amazon’s sudden and immediate closure of all warehouses and delivery operations in Quebec. The company says it’s a cost-saving measure. That’s corporate BS - it’s been done because the workers wanted to unionise.
See the coverage in La Presse, for example. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2025-03-01/des-manifestants-appellent-au-boycottage-d-amazon-a-montreal.php.
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From: Doug K (Mar 07 2025, at 11:57)
Amazon from the very beginning has been Relentless.com
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2011/09/29/amazon-workers-rediscover-the-grapes-of-wrath/
When Bezos was just selling books, he used the Walmart playbook to dominate the market.
"Amazon loses money on a lot of books it sells-- and that's why publishers are so upset about it. Amazon is pulling a Wal-Mart... on books."
from a comment at Charlie Stross' place,
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/11/cutting-their-own-throats.html#comment-223032
so I've avoided Amazon all its life.
Did suscribe to Prime to watch Rings of Power, well fool me, cancelled.
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