Comment by gdulli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gdulli | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I've had an account since 1997 and I'm close to canceling, not getting started. I've weaned off, only making a few orders a year, which I still do because I get Amazon credit card rewards.

I was okay with missing out on fast free shipping unless I paid $100/year, because I could still get slow free shipping. But now that I don't get the best price on a given product without Prime, shopping there feels like a bad value. The competition competes well on price now without extracting an annual fee.

As of a few weeks ago my Amazon rewards card gives me lower rewards than if I paid for Prime, so I'm looking for a new card. I'd chosen a card without an annual fee for a reason.

For the first 15 years Amazon trained me to buy online from one place. But in the last 5 it trained me off of that behavior. I have the added motivation to reject Amazon because of its treatment of employees and its business practices, but as just a customer and not an activist it's become a bad deal anyway.

I haven't yet seen any online retailer compete on time to ship compared to prime. One of my few online purchases OFF Amazon was some Vet-only cat food - and it took them 2 weeks. Not only that but I ordered it on a Thursday, and there was a label that was generated that day, but watched thet tracking - it didn't get into UPS' hands until Tuesday. I would have shit a 1000 bricks if Amazon did that.

I do get however that the company itself has a lot of internal problems to fix.

If you are ordering product(s) that weigh less than 13 ounces, any seller in the USA can get you 2-day ("Prime") shipping via USPS First-Class mail for between ~$2.50-~$4.00 depending on weight.

Almost all Prime products are marked up $2.00+ over the non-Prime listing, plus Amazon is taking a 15% fee of the purchase revenue. They don't actually have any edge for low-weight items as far as I can tell.

If you impulse buy 6 2oz items, Amazon is certainly convenient, but you'll be overpaying an extra $10+ for shipping if Amazon doesn't package them all in one bubble envelope.

I've been exclusively an Amazon customer for basically my entire life because I thought ebay was scammy and confusing and I thought no other retailer online could compete with Amazon's shipping. Now Amazon is just as scammy as ebay and I realize that actually most other retailers can compete in various niches. Now I only buy from Amazon when I absolutely have to or I'm impulse-buying, and I'm pretty close to canceling my Prime account. By the way, it turns out ebay is pretty awesome. Ebay is way cheaper for all commodities.

Chewy.com ships prescription cat food in two days for free. It's free shipping if you spend more than $49 (easy with prescription food...) or sign up for auto-delivery (which also gets you 5% off). They also have excellent customer service, easy to use website, and great prices. Auto-delivery is stupid convenient too since my cats eat exactly the same amount each day so my usage is very constant.

I'm not affiliated, just a happy customer. I didn't even know about it until I got an AMEX offer for them a few years ago.

Amazon "free" shipping seems very costly to me amortized unless you impulse order a whole bunch of cheap stuff very often. Paying for upgraded shipping on an as-needed basis seems like a better value. Or simply reduce consumption...

You're also comparing apples to oranges.

Can confirm. Chewie also handles subscription deliveries in a much more predictable way than Amazon. Amazon monthly deliveries occur on unpredictable dates (+- 5-7 days). Chewie schedules a shipment on a particular date and sends you an email before the shipment in case you want to make changes.

EDIT: Chewie's prices are lower too. So it is possible to compete with Amazon if you're focused. I do wonder why Amazon is so bad at stuff like this though. Chewie's procedures seem to be the "obvious" way to do things from the customer's perspective.

For scheduled monthly deliveries, Amazon does not notify you of any price change. In one instance, there was a 30% price increase month-to-month, and I just happened to notice it out of sheer luck. The same product did not change prices on Chewie.

Thank goodness chewie.com redirects to Chewy.com -- the discrepancy between your comment (which says "Chewie" five times) and your parent's (which says "Chewy" once) was worrying me.

Try, if you can, to find a retailer that ships/fulfills from a location near you. I am an Amazon Prime customer, but I still order most (if not all) of my outdoors stuff from Backcountry.com or their affiliate site Steep And Cheap. Their warehouse is in Salt Lake City and even non-expedited (ie "standard") items show up in 2 days. I'm in Seattle.

I don't know if this extends to other e-tailers but Backcountry is consistently great for us, and many west-coasters I imagine.

You're comparing Amazon to one random e-tailer that you picked somehow. I've stopped most of my Amazon buying in the last year or so, and most e-tailers are just fine with their shipping times. They have better prices too.

AFAIC, Amazon is a has-been. It's a great place, however, to get crappy Chinese counterfeits at inflated prices, if you're looking for that kind of thing.

Why not buy Prime? It's one of my favorite no-brainer subscriptions apart from music streaming. Just curious what your reasoning for not having it is given that you seem to be a pretty big Amazon user.

I've averaged fewer than one order per quarter for the last few years, so $100 would amortize to be a very expensive shipping fee. (I wouldn't use the streaming.)

If I spent $100 I'd feel pressured to shop more at Amazon rather than shop for the best price, and to do more consuming in general. Neither of which I want.

Amazon is removing the friction from and incentivizing impulse buying. The aggressiveness with which they push Prime should be a big warning sign. My original disinterest with Prime has become stubbornness to avoid it. The more Amazon resembles a monopoly, the worse off for consumers in the long run. So I believe spreading my support to other businesses is a good idea anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com