I Cancelled My Amazon Prime | Hacker News Reader

I Cancelled My Amazon Prime

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71 pointslaurex101 comments

We canceled Prime about 3 months ago. It's been quite tough (relatively speaking) having to re-train ourselves. You realize exactly how dominant Amazon is. Every other retailer either takes 5-7 business days or charges you the earth. Home Depot messes up your order about 10% of the time. Things come in 3-4 days from Amazon instead of two days now. Not too bad.

We got a free ShopRunner subscription through Amex and I was excited about that but they seem to be mostly for clothing.

But the biggest annoyance is that we no longer go straight to Amazon to buy something, we actually have to shop around, google for things, etc. And Google Shopping isn't as useful as it used to be. A good shopping aggregator would go a long way in helping.

Edit: We were frequent users of the shipping, by the way, and never used streaming. Unlike others that use mostly streaming and not shipping.

My biggest frustration is how many orders I make get email replies telling me the item is not in stock. I think a lot of retailers just aren't very good at syncing their inventory to their storefronts. You would think everything would operate off a centralized inventory database, but there pretty clearly are multiple systems that don't check in with each other nearly often enough given how often this happens.

Yup basically if we're talking about building a distributed sort-of vendor-neutral fulfillment system and storefront, that's basically what Amazon is. :)

So there's pretty much nobody that can catch up to this level of dominance, not even the second place players. Which is a clear sign that Amazon should be broken up by the government.

This happens even with WalMart, BestBuy, and Target though. So it doesn't even need to be vendor neutral. Even within a single vendor they're screwing it up.

Yeah because they are all traditional retailers and have that brick and mortar mentality. They have to pay the "but we have all these properties already" strategy tax every time.

The other companies can compete with Amazon, they’re just too incompetent to do so.

Depending on the store, it's not as simple as the systems not talking to each other. It's more likely that the system for the store front is either out of sync or incorrect. The systems that multi-tenant warehouses use were made for a time before e-commerce and has had more modern updates shoe-stringed on.

Even if the software is well implemented, there's still issues of items being damaged during the pick/pack step, items being labeled incorrectly, put into the wrong bin, misplaced, or even stolen. These are things that smaller shared-warehouse store fronts don't have the capacity (in space or money) to cope with it.

I'm pretty sure some 'on back order' emails are a deliberate attempt to get you to call so that you can be upsold.

> A good shopping aggregator would go a long way in helping.

For some European countries there's PriceSpy that scrapes prices and shipping costs (I suppose it scrapes as I would guess e-commerce entities would not publically expose API to query their products). It works OK most of the times, but sometimes it reports old or not updates prices, so I would say it's not foolproof.

>> I never got used to the emails Amazon sent a day or two after I viewed but didn’t purchase a product. “Hello Ali,” Amazon would say, like we were friends. “Are you looking for something in our Charger & Adaptors store? If so, you might be interested in these items.”

That's weird, I've never gotten one of those emails from Amazon, and I look for stuff ALL the time on Amazon without buying. Did I opt-out of this and forgot, or do they only send these out for certain searches? I do get these once in a while from other sites and HATE those emails, but I'm sure I never get them from Amazon.

Same, I can't recall ever receiving something like that.

I get them from amazon, can't really say how often as I don't use Amazon much anymore but when I do actually do a specific and deep search for a type of product but don't purchase anything I'll typically get an e-mail of items similar to those that I was looking at.

I suppose it's something I opted out, because I don't recall receiving suggestions, but I've seen them on my mother account, and in her case it happens also simply when browsing some products, not only on purchases.

Thinking about it, I would guess it happens when she uses the Amazon application on her phone/tablet...

I get 'em constantly. Sure you didn't filter-rule them away years ago and forget about it?

Nope, just double checked.

Huh. Wonder what the difference is. Just checked, they seem to hit me with about 1/day, choosing something "relevant" (to what I've been looking at) when possible.

check your subscriptions page and make sure you opt-out from everything you don't want amazon to email you about

https://www.amazon.com/preferences/subscriptions/your-subscr...

I used to get them all the time, really annoying when you've just bought the (typically non consumable) product from them.

Yes Amazon, I'd love to buy a kettle 3 days after I just bought one from you.

I have found myself often ordering from Target.com recently. They also have 2 day shipping on most items and unlike Amazon when I order a brand name item from them I actually can expect to get a genuine product. Their supply chain seems to be much more reliable in that regard.

Plus if you get a Target Red Card you get 5% every purchase.

Amazon has a similar offering.

only on credit? if youre not a credit card person you can still use a redcard. and despite their cartwheel coupon games, it is nice being able to combine your card, gift cards, cash withdraw settings, and coupons into a single barcode to scan at the register.

I wish target let me add everything to the cart as I shopped and check out like Sams.

Interesting, I had no idea Target had a debit-only option.

This is a huge reason we use Target over Amazon for skin care products and household items. Trying to find an item, then determining if it is legitimate, if the reviews are real or fake and then comparing prices and shipping options its much easier to use Target. Of course in-store pickup with Target is even better if you need something faster than two-day shipping.

I solely get Prime when I can abuse it, or more specifically, not really pay for it.

For instance, when they used to give a hefty $12 discount on new games... I'd buy a month of Prime for what was $11 at the time. So the Prime cost me effectively nothing, and I'd only have it months new games I wanted to buy came out.

I did actually just grab Prime today... because there's a "buy $25 get $5" gift credit offer... and a week of Prime costs $1.99. So I made three bucks on it.

You only "made three bucks" if you were going to spend the $25 either way. So did you save $3 or did you make an unnecessary purchase because you were offered a $3 discount?

I am pretty much always going to eventually spend Amazon credit. I didn't buy something because I now had Amazon credit that I wouldn't have otherwise.

I intentionally shop a lot of places that aren't Amazon, and given the same price somewhere else, I will always pick "somewhere else". But I'm still pretty regularly at Amazon just due to either price or selection.

Author declares there was not enough value and that’s why he cancelled. No analysis on how much he depended on Amazon, at what point it might become worth, his entertainment consumption etc. Usual information-free opinion pieces with linkbaity title that HN crown often upvotes without reading ending up on front page.

*she, but yes it's nothing more than a well-timed personal anecdote to generate clicks. All the comments here are also anecdotal. It's a shame our readerbase is that susceptible to shallow clickbait.

I had a trial membership for 3 months and it was nice to get a couple of orders super quick but far from worth the annual cost.

Spotify beats them in music, Netflix beats them in videos and if really need an item on the same day, I can just go to the store. It's also cheaper to pay for shipping once in a while rather than pay for an annual subscription. There is of course something about paying for shipping which makes you feel like a great injustice...

Netflix does not beat them in videos. Netflix's library has moved towards very specific titles and original programming done by Netflix. Amazon has still retained a lot of movies in addition to their original programming plus they have plenty of options you can pay for which Netflix doesn't even offer. Amazon Prime has around 18k titles to Netflix's 4k titles.

> Netflix does not beat them in videos.

Whether or not they beat them in videos is very much a matter of subjective preference for the videos one has that the other does not; if someone says they do in explanation of a personal decision, you need unusually personal information to argue that they are incorrect.

> Amazon Prime has around 18k titles to Netflix's 4k titles.

As most people won't watch a significant fraction of either, the counts are mostly irrelevant in deciding which wins for any individual; what matters most is who has more of the usually very small number of titles for which the individual has a strong preference; everything else ends up being mostly noise in the menus, more likely to be a cost (unless masked by personalization) than a benefit.

I almost never use Amazon's streaming because they mix in paid crap with free-with-prime crap so it's hard to browse. Also their UI tends to perform poorly on any given platform, compared with Netflix (I suspect more use of Web frontend tech in Amazon's apps).

I'd been meaning to cancel, actually, and this reminded me to. Looks like they already got me for a year a couple months ago, but I've got a reminder set to cancel next time. It's really, really not worth it.

I don't know how much of it is the recommendation algorithms vs amount of wheat and chaff in that 18k and 4k, but from my experience looking for something new to watch I would easily believe a claim that the additional 14k is all complete crap.

Prime has the things I want to watch much more often than Netflix, and it's how I watched things like Game of Thrones or Ash vs. Evil Dead without needing cable which was nice.

I also find their `x-ray` feature to be very valuable. It's not on every movie, and some movies utilize it better than others.

But it's really nice when I see an actor and go "Wait a minute, I've seen them before, who is that?" Like Laurence Fishburne in Ant-Man 2, who I knew I recognized but couldn't place because he looks so different now.

I also like seeing the trivia and production errors, I assume they're just sourced from IMDB but they're synched up to the current timestamp so they're usually relevant when you see them.

> Netflix beats them in videos

Idk... I feel like good video options are pretty well split between Netflix and Amazon with Amazon Video on the rise and Netflix in decline. Amazon still has random esoteric stuff I want when I look and they picked up The Expanse, which is a huge win. Netflix almost never has what I want if it isn't a Netflix Original, which are becoming increasingly mediocre (looking at you Stranger Things 3).

The difference I see is that Netflix has had only one job and they've gotten worse at it while increasing the price. Amazon prices have gotten worse, but they still deliver me any esoteric thing I want in less than a week, and it's usually something I can't get at a local store (usually books, and I live walking distance to Powell's and many other book stores which won't have the title I'm looking for).

For me it's a no-brainer, mostly because Amazon has a student prime price of $59/year which I can get as a 37-year-old grad student, but even without that Netflix wants the same amount per month for their basic streaming ($13/mo) as Amazon wants for a full Prime membership, which includes al their video streaming.

Another good reason to drop Prime is the amount of waste it promotes: https://depts.washington.edu/sctlctr/news-events/in-the-news...

I think it really depends, I use amazon prime as my primary shopping method, without it I would definitely need a vehicle.

> Experts say that e-commerce could actually, if optimized, be beneficial for the environment. Getting into your personal vehicle and going to the store isn’t very efficient, but consolidating multiple shoppers’ deliveries into one vehicle can be. Anne Goodchild, director of the University of Washington’s Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center, told BuzzFeed News, “Broadly speaking, delivery services have the potential to dramatically reduce miles traveled.”

Definitely a valid point. Though as a customer I will say that they've made improvements recently. It's not perfect, but its getting better. I often get small products in envelopes now that don't use and plastic padding but instead use a paper-filled wall. There's also an option to have your items shipped all together at a later date if you're not in a rush and want to reduce the number of trips/amount of packaging.

But I have honestly not dug further. I imagine one of the greatest costs is the amount of fuel burned for those 1/2 day deliveries.

I think my all-time record was receiving a tiny metal pencil sharpener all by itself in a box large enough to fit a computer monitor.

I also cancelled Prime a while ago. Wasn't really worth it and after Amazon bought Whole Foods, the tracking and data linking desire just became too obvious to me.

Now a year later, I am positive I made the right decision- and it's okay to wait for an item a few days for delivery. Really makes no difference in grand scheme of things.

I canceled mine last year sometime, whenever it was they announced the most recent price increase. I thought I would miss it but I haven't really. I don't mind waiting a bit longer for the standard free shipping. In the rare occasion I need something fast I just pay for the two day shipping, which ends up being significantly cheaper than paying for Prime.

I might have kept my subscription if "next day delivery" wasn't all-too-often "day after next day and maybe even the day after that, depends if it's a weekday or not." I don't miss it.

Similarly I'll get something I order in a day or two even when it is the 5-7 business day option - it's in their interest to make everything as efficient as possible and not be holding onto inventory.

I think the main benefit is your orders get higher priority during holiday season when it's busy and regular orders may take a long time to fulfill.

You're likely right it does put you in a higher tier of priority, however how that plays out practically be a relatively slim advantage or speed increase - as is my and OP's comments allude to. Comes back to the rule of efficiency and lower cost with adequate planning, planning ahead of time, detriment of impulse or last minute buying, and stability of supply-demand systems.

Living near a warehouse or on a major shipping artery means things show up very quickly basically no matter what. The post office / shipping companies don't stall orders just for the heck of it. If it takes two days to go from here to there, even though you paid for slow shipping, you'll get it in two days.

Sometimes I wonder. I've definitely noticed packages sitting in the local post office for a day or two to simply get past that 2 day limit. There's even been times where I was able to call the post office and go pick it up, because they didn't send it out for delivery despite arriving the day before. Could be innocent, but it always struck me as suspicious.

This was the original reason I started Prime — guaranteed two day shipping. Now both the offering and price has been bloated to the point it has little value to me anymore, especially because the delivery windows are all over the place and the Amazon delivery courier is a sub-par experience compared to UPS/Fedex.

It’s no longer an easy shopping experience, you have to scrutinize the entire process.

I always go for their 2 day delivery because choosing same day or 1 day delivery would frequently end up in an email saying that the package is running late, and it should arrive some time in the next 10 business days. Not sure what caused 2 day delivery to be fine, but 1 day delivery to turn into 2 week delivery so often.

> There’s no way to turn off this auto-renewal short of cancelling your account

I've turned off Prime plenty of times with no trouble at all. I'm not sure what he means.

I've also contacted their support after an accidental auto-renewal and they completely refunded it (I hadn't used any of its benefits, either, though).

I think their subscription model is hard to beat, frankly.

I just tried and your options are "cancel now", "remind me 3 days before it renews", or "switch to monthly next time it's about to renew". I didn't see a way to say "keep what I've already paid for, but never charge me again".

[EDIT] incidentally if someone finds that option, please let me know because I'll go select it right now. I've got a reminder (of my own—like I'll notice a reminder email from Amazon, haha) set to cancel in ~10 months but if I could click something now and not have to worry about it that'd be better.

"keep what I've already paid for, but never charge me again" == "cancel now"

This is the same on every subscription service I've cancelled recently, they let you carry on reading / watching / whatever until the end of the month.

The associated copy is identical to what it might be if canceling cut you off immediately. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the marketeers would lie, since that's their job ("well we didn't outright say it'd be immediate" yeah sure but you did more than just imply it, too, and even implying is a lie if you intend to mislead, which you 100% for sure do).

[EDIT] the first link you click to start the process is "End membership and benefits", for instance, and it just keeps that tone up for the rest of it. "By cancelling, you will no longer be eligible for your unclaimed Prime exclusive offers. Click here to see your offers." The cancel button reads "End my benefits", at the bottom of a list of all the stuff that comes with Prime. That's just saying you're losing all the stuff right now. If, when I hit this button, that doesn't happen, they were lying, period.

[UPDATE] can confirm, they're a bunch of lying liars.

I recommend cancelling prime for a small window of time and reevaluating, if you can manage. Partly to see how thirsty Amazon is for you to sign back up for prime. You could fill a textbook with the dark patterns. The article mentions one of them, needing to confirm your cancellation three different times. Imagine a conversation with a real human that goes like this:

Me: I would like to cancel prime.

Amazon: Do you want to cancel prime? Yes or no.

Me. Yes.

Amazon: Look at all these great prime perks. Say either "Nevermind" or "Cancel, I don't want these amazing benefits"

Me: Cancel.

Amazon:

Me:

Amazon:

Me: Cancel, I don't want these amazing benefits.

Amazon: Are you sure you want to cancel? What if instead of paying $199 for the year you pay $20 monthly?

You don't have to imagine it, just try to change your cable/internet provider.

Annual membership is around £59.99 here if bought at the right time.

I don't like the company but for me Prime is good value. My children get to watch Dora, Paw Patrol and there's some decent grown up TV too. Twitch Prime is also included.

If I need to buy anything I can it delivered Same or Next Day.

Cancelling does involve the typical dark patterns you'd expect from them but it's not difficult to cancel in a minute or two.

I haven't had issues cancelling Amazon prime and it was pretty straightforward for me. For me, I cancel every few months and then come crawling back.

I don't get my money's worth out of prime shipping, especially as the price has gone up and the items I used to buy I now go to the manufacturer for because of the prevalence of counterfeits, faked reviews, and knock-offs on Amazon. I don't care about the music streaming, video streaming, whatever Fresh is, Twitch Prime, or Pantry one bit. That said, their whole foods discounts are worth it for me.

I order frequently enough, have the card, and shop at whole foods. It would cost me money to get rid of it at this point.

You don't need it, I cancelled my membership (which I had for at least 5-6 years) a few months ago, since i was not using the benefits enough. I shop there much much less now, but I ordered something the other day for 40$ and it still came in 2-3 days with free shipping.

There's a significant difference between "next day" and "2-3 days", and the valuable different is not getting it sooner, it's knowing exactly which day you'll get it.

I was rarely offered next day shipping for free, and often got my items in 3 days instead of the promised 2 days.

Oh, Prime in the UK comes with free next day delivery on everything.

Except there are plenty of people with prime who want next day but get two to three days because of the piss-poor couriers Amazon chooses to use.

There's also a significant issue with Amazon not actually meeting their SLA's in higher density areas, so "knowing exactly which day you'll get it" often isn't accurate.

I cancelled mine and switched to eBay. Shipping is “fast and free” and comes in 3-4 days on a lot of items. Much cheaper than 120/year, also I never used amazon video or music, or anything else they offer, so it made sense.

It also appears that prime items are marked up higher, often.

I cancelled prime and moved to eBay, Aliexpress (albeit slow) cuts out the Amazon middle-man since most stuff on Amazon is now just Alibaba/Aliexpress items, local big retailers price match Amazon and a few bigger sites online, local small business to support...local small business, and just go directly to the manufacturer which turns out often to be cheaper than Amazon wants for the item.

Same here. Although still utter crap, I find the search of AliExpress to be better than Amazon's.

I wish that there was a tool that calculated whether Prime was worth it in the past year and month, using my playback and purchasing history to determine whether the $10-13/month is delivering value. If I use Prime Day deliveries (which offer no financial reward compared to Prime 1-2 Day) then I could save a lot of money not using it, and if I haven’t watched any Prime media content this year, the tool would be able to show me that too.

Amazon surely has this tool internally, and just as surely would resent anyone else developing it to show consumers how many of them are paying for a service they don’t need.

Cancelled last May, so about a year and a quarter ago when I was abroad. Haven’t looked back and don’t miss it at all.

I get Amazon gift cards through work occasionally so I just choose slower shipping for the orders I make.

Everything else I order goes through B&H, or REI primarily.

Most of the time I need to shop, I just go to a store. Gets me out of the house, get to walk around NYC and people watch, gets me a little exercise and fresh air.

Works for me! Never liked the anti-union and warehouse labor stories I read about Amazon.

Do enjoy putzing around with AWS though (although I use Digital Ocean for my personal VPS’s.)

> Cancelled last May, so about a year and a quarter ago when I was abroad. Haven’t looked back and don’t miss it at all.

Huh, I thought the value significantly improved while I was abroad, for sending gifts with fast shipping.

It may in other countries, but not Portugal. There's a lot of things that don't reach Portugal like Netflix and HBO Go as well.

I'm so disappointed by Prime. The main reason I signed up for the trial were movies and TV shows. But it seems like 90% of the content is not available in my country (Switzerland) without buying or without proxying the stream through another country. Gosh Amazon, first you make me thoroughly excited and in the next moment you utterly disappoint me. Why couldn't you tell me beforehand?

I'd never buy 5 seasons of a TV show while knowing, that some neighbour in another country get them for a few bucks each month...

Isn't this a reason to be disappointed with whatever regulation prohibits Amazon from offering videos with prime in your country, rather than with Amazon? Surely Amazon would show you Prime video if they could.

Yeah sure. What bothers me though is that they know the country I live in and still give me the unlimited movies bait before signing up for Prime. You get so hyped and then they let you down.

No harm done though. At least there's a trial.

Cancelled mine one year ago and I think my life improved without Amazon. Amazon doesn't only sell you goods, but a lifestyle: non-stop shopping with no obstacles for satisfying your most fleeting material desires.

Ultimately, I preferred to reject the convenience that Amazon is encouraging for a lifestyle of reduced consumption. While, in theory, one can have Amazon Prime and consume very little, it's hardly worth it in this case.

I dropped Amazon Prime about a year ago and every single time I go to buy something they offer me a free week trial. I start a trial, buy what I want with free 2 day shipping and then cancel before I get charged.

Something else I noticed is that whenever I order something with 5-8 shipping and is a relatively common item it arrives within 2 days anyway. It's like they no longer have the logistics to delay shipping of some items.

It has occurred to me that one could probably get a whole year of video streaming services by just getting a month trial, cancelling, then doing it again with the next service. By the end of the year some of them might even be spamming you with offers of another trial month.

For awhile you were able to start an Audible trial, get your free token, quit and then start another free trial endlessly for infinite free audiobooks. I got 30 free audiobooks this way and they didn't even take them away after they fixed this.

Something that might still be there is whenever you quit a trial or payed service they will 100% of the time ask you to stay and offer it for 50% off. You can simply get the same service for half the price forever.

I live 20 minutes from: the nearest supermarket, and, a prime distribution center. ~3 min ago I just dropped 170$ on a whole foods order.

To each their own, I guess.

Wow 20 minutes away. That's impossible to get to. I feel your 2019 pain.

Heeheehee wow. Who are you so injured on behalf of? Multiple comments are talking about scamming Amazon out of 3$.

Whose in pain? Why can't I want those 40min (+shopping time) and just be happy I have found a way to keep them?

Although I agree that more people should cancel Prime, this author isn’t the target market exactly because they live in a city. I also live in a city and can easily get by without Prime. I can walk to everything I need.

Prime makes the most sense if you’re in suburbs and/or have kids. It’s a huge time saver for those people.

Does it make sense to have big smelly UPS trucks driving down your dead-end street 10 times a day in the middle of summer?!?!

I agree it could be more efficient, but isn’t there an argument that it’s better than all those houses firing up their individual cars to go to Target Or Walmart?

Depends, I usually stop at a store on my way home from work. Also, my neighbors tend to drive a bit more friendly then some of the strangers delivering random packages. The delivery trucks are always in a complete rush. I realize this is not just from amazon but it is the bulk and it is driving the behavior change.

Nah prime is great even if ur in NYC. I lived there and used it all the time.

That’s not what I meant. Of course it’s better, but not as much of a necessity when you live in a city.

I have a “prime month” every now and again, just joining then quitting at month end. I subscribe because I want quick shipping on an item then end up ordering a few other things. Full year prime doesn’t make sense unless you’re ordering everything off amazon.

They even recently had a free week trial where I joined then canceled

Ohh, the audacity!

I've cancelled Amazon altogether couple years ago (which is an even more ridiculous process than cancelling Prime) and can't say I even noticed it. Apart from not getting any fakes in those two years.

Lately I have been using prime membership for Video more than shopping.

I can only say Amazon India now sucks, the products aren't growing.

Neither you can buy screws, threaded rod, 2 part epoxy, MDF boards, there.

Not sure what Amazon India is selling exactly

For me the yearly cost covers the amount I'd spend on shipping for xmas gifts alone. I HATE xmas shopping and so being able to do it all there is great.

You can cancel your auto renewal.

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