I have friends who are no longer buying from Amazon. Especially friends with kids. You can’t trust anything safe for your kids when crap like this is allowed. Amazon is in a race to flood the market with availability at the cost of consumer confidence.
Remember all the hoverboard fires you saw on the news several years ago? They weren’t knock offs, but items sold that didn’t have any real safety certifications in mind. Amazon only cares something bad happens on the news and they’re involved.
My neighbor bought a set of woodworking clamps from Amazon. When the ~25lb. box arrived, the driver threw them up onto his porch (his house is quite raised from the street), and he has video of it damaging his siding as it took three attempts for the driver to get them over the railing onto his porch. When he contacted Amazon, they said to contact some insurance company they had. When my neighbor called the insurance company, they never returned the call.
He proceeded to begin researching the insurance company, which was owned by Amazon, but wasn't listed as a valid insurance company in Massachusetts. He contacted Amazon again, and said, "would you like me to call the insurance commissioner and attorney general that you're operating a non-registered insurance company in Massachusetts." Someone was out to fix his siding in 3 days, and they painted the porch as well (due to some paint matching problem).
Despite how much I love being able to order stuff, and not have to go out, Amazon is pretty scum-tacular.
I too learned that the best way to get your problem solved with Amazon is to resort to threats. It took ages to get my account closed -- I was sent by 5 different chat agents to the same "click here and send an email to confirm" page -- until I threatened to complain to the California Attorney General under CCPA. Then suddenly the agent had all the power in the world to close my account.
Did your neighbor call the insurance commissioner and attorney general to tell them that they were operating a non-registered insurance company in Massachusetts?
Amazon sold us a defective and/or counterfeit refrigerator water filter that leaked and damaged our hardwood floors. Homeowners insurance gave us an estimate of $5300 in damage. I sent a demand letter to Amazon legal dept. detailing the claim and threatening a lawsuit. They wrote us a check in about two months from mailing said letter.
I had an experience like this with them recently too--In order to save $15, I bought a part for my Whirlpool washer on Amazon. It was the in-flow controller which the water hoses hook in to. I ordered it from "Sold and Fulfilled by Amazon" which used to be my mark of a decent product (or at least I know I'll be able to get a refund if it has issues directly from Amazon). It arrived in unbranded cardboard, but the plastic wrapper did have "Maytag" stamping. Unfortunately my washer refused to recognize it despite it being extremely basic in design (a couple servos and a tiny switching board connected to some plastic tubes for water inlets). I requested a refund from Amazon which happened with in hours and went down to a local appliance repair place and paid the extra $15 for another.
The one from the local shop was not wrapped in plastic, but it was in Maytag branded cardboard with part-number and SKU. Took it home and compared it to the Amazon part which I hadn't yet boxed up and the Amazon part was visibly of lower quality plastic (edges were poor, you could see where welds had been done at the corners) and the circuit board with the switching components was completely different despite having the same molex-type connector. BOTH units had the same part-number molded in to the plastic in the same spot, yet the actual Maytag version I got locally worked instantly the first time.
Does that Amazon owned insurance company have any clients other than Amazon? If it only serves Amazon, it might not count as an insurance company for purposes of regulation.
I went from being an enthusiastic fan of Amazon Prime and a $50k spend one year [+] to closing my Amazon account and then warning other people away from it in the space of about five years.
I can't recall any other business from which I've moved so quickly and so far from one end of the spectrum of enthusiasm to the other.
[+] Most of it was for business -- parts and equipment for customers, it was often cheaper that way than my wholesale supplier.
Google has been about the same for me. I went from total Google fanboy to migrating a lot of my life away from them and advising others to do the same.
(I say this as a longtime user, and this is not meant to be damning with faint praise). Their email is best of class outside of gmail. It even beats in certain ways: It syncs faster. It's not made by a surveillance company. As a paying user, I've gotten very competent tech support. They have very good privacy controls re: image loading. They seem to permanently grandfather rates, which is nice.
Downsides: their label system is, to someone who really likes gmail, not as good. Calendar syncing on Android with their preferred sync app breaks every couple of months until you hit resync. Fastmail is in Australia, and I'm not sure the impact of Australia's police assistance laws.
Same: They support u2f.
Their product has improved a lot in the 5 years I've been using it, and is very worth the money. I think it's critically important that there exist high quality alternatives to google services, so that's a nice secondary reason to pay them.
In the case of Fastmail I don't know what you mean with "their preferred sync app" but I've used CalDAV-Sync in the past and now DAVx5 (because it's easier to use (used to be DAVdroid)) and I've never had these problems you mention.
If you have a domain name registered, sometimes your registrar will offer built in email. For example, I have a domain registered with Gandi and they provide a free email service.
Google search results have been deteriorating in the past couple of years. It feels like the algorithm has been deliberately tweaked to produce larger quantities of less relevant results - it will often substitute words for "synonyms" that are much broader in scope, to the point of rendering the query pointless. I can't help but think that the purpose is to then show more "relevant" ads.
Even so, the deteriorated results I get from Google tend to be better than what I get anywhere else. I have DDG set as my default engine, and frequently need to fallback on Google.
I wish I could say DDG was as good or better, but outside of the privacy perspective, that unfortunately hasn't been my experience.
Once I had great Google Fu. I could find really niche topics. Currently, it's completely useless for that. If it's not something that many people want to find, you cant find it.
I went from being an enthusiastic fan of Amazon Prime and a $50k spend one year [+] to closing my Amazon account
I used to spend about as much as you. Now I almost never buy anything from amazon.com.
The only value my Prime membership has to me now is discounts at Whole Foods, and Prime Video. Otherwise, I bet I spend less than $500 a year at amazon.com.
How on earth can you possibly spend so much on random consumer products sold on Amazon? Are people really buying so much junk that it costs more than most peoples yearly salaries?
I have a friend who buys nearly everything aside from perishable food via Amazon because they will put it directly on his porch and he doesn't have to go to a physical store. I laughed when he told me it was cheaper to have 50 lbs of cat litter delivered to his porch via Prime than to drive across town to the Walmart.
Whole Foods is another one I have gone from super fan to hating. Every time I shop there now is compounding failures of poor stock consistency, more online order shoppers than actual customers clogging the isles, and overall drop in quality
> items sold that didn’t have any real safety certifications in mind.
The amount of electronics sold without an UL/ETL cert on Amazon is staggering. Many companies no longer bother getting one because there's noone to stop them from selling uncertified crap. Also, we have seen unscrupulous dealers slapping a fake ETL cert on their product and even when Intertek contacted Amazon they didn't take it down!
Hell, there's an "international" power strip sold under many different names which provides three NEMA 5-15R from a single IEC C5/C6 coupler (the IEC standard is up to 2.5A but the UL certifies it up to 13A but still, the NEMA connector is 15A) and to top it off, it is sold with an ungrounded cable. I often see it recommended on travel forums, for real. I can't even decide whether shock or fire is the bigger hazard with this. Someone eventually will burn down an airbnb with it and then will the finger pointing start.
> a single IEC C5/C6 coupler (the IEC standard is up to 2.5A but the UL certifies it up to 13A but still, the NEMA connector is 15A)
The UL missed the point of C5/C6 entirely. Yes, the contacts are totally fine for that kind of current. But the point of having it with C13/C14 next to it is that because C5/C6 is only rated for 2.5 A you can use thinner coper in the cables. Meanwhile all compliant C13 cables have to use a 1.5 mm² cross section to carry the full continuous 10 A load current. If this is correct, then a "fine according to UL" load would actually melt most C5 cables (generally 3x0.75 mm²).
Cancelled my prime this year, haven't looked back. A lot of retailers offer free shipping if you order a certain dollar amount and while they have a smaller selection, I can be pretty sure I'm not receiving anything fake. They also tend to have a lot less noise in search results.
main downside is I'm having to order from multiple places, but it hasn't been too bad.
I was tired one night and looking for a replacement brake set for my car (oem has a known problem with seizing I was experiencing). Followed a link from a reddit advice post to some company's site with the parts. Said it would take weeks but I needed it so oh well. Realized the next day Amazon had the same exact thing for less and 2 day shipping. Emailed support of the other site to cancel and days later they said they'd "try" but some of the order was "already printed" and there was "nothing they could do" (BS). Amazon one got here in 2 days, other one got here in 2 weeks, all of it. Returning would leave me out their "free shipping" cost so I'm just keeping it.
I'm never going outside Amazon ever again unless the product or a suitable alternative doesn't exist on Amazon.
Another thing i'd like to note is I've ordered dozens of "Amazon Basics" products and I've yet to be disappointed. The company overall has been great for me. Painless returns with no gotchas, lower prices, superior shipping, better ease of use, 5% back with the card.
Yeah, amazonbasics stuff has been great for me too. I'm not boycotting Amazon, I just don't think Prime is worth it anymore for me. Amazon is truly better in some cases, but I just don't mind using saver shipping for the most part. Most of the typical household stuff and packaged foods are typically available for free 1 or 2 day shipping at other retailers. Worst case I can drag my butt over to a physical store, but I'm usually pretty good at ordering ahead.
One of things that pushed me away from amazon is their increased usage of "add-on item" labels. If I have to batch order anyway, Prime isn't actually that great of a deal.
Also for prices, I've actually found that for some items the prices are not always lower, but ymmv. Factor in that you're paying an annual fee. IMO, the 2 day shipping is almost not a factor anymore, since other major US retailers are starting to offer it for FREE. So for me it comes down to, is it worth the price so I don't need to batch order ~sometimes~ ? We could also be using Amazon very differently, so it may actually be a much better deal for you.
I'm amazed that a person making "negative ion wellness bracelets" would go to the effort and expense of putting a radioactive material in there to actually generate negative ions! Why not just put a copper-colored thread in there and claim it makes negative ions?
I'm astonished no competitor like Walmart or Wayfair has gone on the offensive yet with TV ads stating flat-out that you can't trust Amazon anymore because their counterfeit problem is out of control. They'd make a killing with defectors.
Remember all the hoverboard fires you saw on the news several years ago? They weren’t knock offs, but items sold that didn’t have any real safety certifications in mind. Amazon only cares something bad happens on the news and they’re involved.