Emailing jeff@amazon rapidly solved the problem for me when I was in the exactly same situation.
Of course it'd have been nicer to tell them to fuck off, but living without Amazon would simply be far too inconvenient.
Of course it'd have been nicer to tell them to fuck off, but living without Amazon would simply be far too inconvenient.
I'm just always a little surprised to read things like "i couldn't live without Amazon," and i wonder if there are no other alternatives for two day shipping on other countries or what it is that keeps people stuck on Amazon instead of using other next-day deliveries
I'm in Austria (not Australia) and local retail prices are infamous for being 25% to 100% higher than in neighboring Germany for the same stuff because of cartel behavior of local retail industry.
Buying from amazon Germany means I can get the same prices as Germans (with +1% extra for higher Austrian VAT) for the same goods.
I'd love to give up Amazon in favor of local stores but local cartels are just as bad or even worse.
So to fix the Amazon problem you need to fix the competition problem first, which is caused by players other than Amazon too.
Sure, for every individual item there might be a better better local option. I'd have to spend time finding that, then go through the terrible order process and hope their delivery service isn't utter shit. Oh, and yeah, half the time they'll probably block my order because I'm using a non-european card.
Just being able to use Amazon for almost everything starting from bottled water and toilet paper saves me immense amounts of time. I can generally trust that the stuff I order reliably arrives at the concierge, which isn't a given.
And FWIW, most of the time I've shopped around, Amazon has been cheaper or essentially the same price. Doesn't really matter to me, but it is a plus. I'd happily pay more for a more convenient service, but in this case it seems I'm usually paying less.
But still, most people go to the shop to buy toilet paper. Once you get used to Amazon, it just saves so much time and effort. The prices aren't bad either, I just checked toilet paper on amazon.com and 30 rolls of good quality amazonbasics toilet paper costs $0.22 more than the equivalent kirkland product on costco.com
You can order almost everything you need in the same app, whenever you feel like it. Just a couple of clicks, no need to fill in delivery information or anything.
The only part where YMMV is receiving the parcels obviously.
There’s a corner store about a two minute walk from my front door, I’m certain their toilet paper is more expensive than Amazon’s, but I can have it right now if I want, and I’m not dealing with the stupid interface asking me if I want “18-count (345 sheet, 9 pack)” or the “XL 27 count (256 sheet, 5 pack)” version of the same product.