They give me “Prime free for 30 days” every so often. The only difference I notice is that I can send in an order for one little cheap thing and get free shipping, instead of waiting until I have $35 worth of stuff to send the order.
The “faster shipping” with Prime isn’t faster most of the time - frequently promises fast and actually delivers slow, which is worse IMO than promising slow and usually delivering faster.
They run bogus discounts for “Prime members only” that just steer me away from the products altogether - add up all the “Prime discounts” I might have bought in my lifetime and it’s less than two months Prime subscription cost.
If I need something “right away” - that’s what local brick and mortar stores are for. Prime is a sucky attempt at competing with a 5 minute drive to the hardware store.
Truth is, there’s precious little I need from Amazon, let alone need in a hurry. It mostly comes down to wants, supplies for projects which are themselves entirely optional, etc. As such, I will let a “want” item sit in my cart for weeks until it is joined by enough other want items to make the $25 or $35 or whatever arbitrary limit they have set to erase the arbitrary $6.99 small order shipping fee.
I don’t like to think about how much I have spent there, and elsewhere online, for things I don’t really need. I do like to take arbitrary months off from buying anything optional, kind of like intermittent fasting - gives me time to finish out things I have started, clean up stuff I have abandoned, do things that don’t require “stuff.”
If I am typical, the world could boycott over 80% of their amazon.com purchases without even bothering to get the stuff from elsewhere, and 80% of the remaining 20% could be sourced elsewhere, perhaps for 10-20% higher cost, perhaps not even that.
They give me “Prime free for 30 days” every so often. The only difference I notice is that I can send in an order for one little cheap thing and get free shipping, instead of waiting until I have $35 worth of stuff to send the order.
The “faster shipping” with Prime isn’t faster most of the time - frequently promises fast and actually delivers slow, which is worse IMO than promising slow and usually delivering faster.
They run bogus discounts for “Prime members only” that just steer me away from the products altogether - add up all the “Prime discounts” I might have bought in my lifetime and it’s less than two months Prime subscription cost.
If I need something “right away” - that’s what local brick and mortar stores are for. Prime is a sucky attempt at competing with a 5 minute drive to the hardware store.
I hate how free two day “super saver shipping” went from $25 worth of stuff to $35 to “maybe a week? Lol we’ll deliver it whenever we want”.
I have spent maybe $2k total there now in the last year? Mostly things I can’t buy locally or elsewhere.
Truth is, there’s precious little I need from Amazon, let alone need in a hurry. It mostly comes down to wants, supplies for projects which are themselves entirely optional, etc. As such, I will let a “want” item sit in my cart for weeks until it is joined by enough other want items to make the $25 or $35 or whatever arbitrary limit they have set to erase the arbitrary $6.99 small order shipping fee.
I don’t like to think about how much I have spent there, and elsewhere online, for things I don’t really need. I do like to take arbitrary months off from buying anything optional, kind of like intermittent fasting - gives me time to finish out things I have started, clean up stuff I have abandoned, do things that don’t require “stuff.”
If I am typical, the world could boycott over 80% of their amazon.com purchases without even bothering to get the stuff from elsewhere, and 80% of the remaining 20% could be sourced elsewhere, perhaps for 10-20% higher cost, perhaps not even that.