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Apologies in advance for the self-referential commentary: I've put down a long list of reasons for why I've cancelled prime after almost ten years of consisten

Apologies in advance for the self-referential commentary: I've put down a long list of reasons for why I've cancelled prime after almost ten years of consistent use. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17568320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17568320 If you-the-reader need good reasons to quit prime, I hope these help.

chrisper 8y ago
Did you ever end up installing the Helium10 extension?
- eganist 8y ago
  I don't recall this being on my list. Remind me?
  - chrisper 8y ago
    It's the first response to your second link.
    - eganist 8y ago
      Ah, sadly I'm not a seller, so that's not something I've explored. You should follow up with the original commenter.
jsight 8y ago
I don't necessarily agree with the bits about 2-day shipping. TBH, I've had positive and negative experiences with that for years and don't really see a trend one way or the other. When it works well, it can be amazing (next day on a weekend!) and when it fails can seem really weird. But I'll still mostly agree with your list and add another. A lot of clothing items now only have a reasonable return policy when bought as part of a Prime Wardrobe. What if I just want a pair of shoes and am worried about them not fitting? Some offer free returns for this and others don't. Ugh.
awaywopassd 8y ago
I am also not about to renew my Prime membership. You list gave me a lot of confidence. But one of important benefit I use Prime for is Amazon Photos. Unlimited backup of your photos. When I look at other solutions such as Backblaze, they will all cost at least $50 a year. Then another benefit I like is Prime Music. Which again is going to cost money if I get music subscription from Spotify or somewhere else. So when I add cost of these two benefits on their own, Prime becomes pretty good deal. What's your opinion on these benefits?
- jdeibele 8y ago
  You can substitute Google Photos for Amazon Photos. I have several Google accounts that have soccer photos, family photos, etc. I want to keep pictures of other people's kids from trying to be recognized as my own. And the family photos account can be be given to someone else to control without giving access to my email. You get 15G of storage with unaltered originals, unlimited if you let them compress. If you set up a separate account, you probably don't have to worry about hitting the 15G limit unless you have many, many photos or are taking them at very, very high resolution. We pay for family subscriptions to Google Play Music and Spotify. My wife and kids listen to music on our Google Home device and they do a lot of Youtube. I didn't want to do Spotify, too, but the older two asked for Spotify for Christmas because of the playlists only available there. $14.99/month x 2. I was a devoted Google Reader user and I don't trust Google very much to keep things around. But it's easy to share the links with family and let them download the photos to their own storage. I was also using Amazon storage to backup when they stopped doing the free backup storage, cutting it to 5GB (I think) for free. So I don't trust them, either.
  - prostoalex 8y ago
    Amazon is free for uncompressed, though.
    - rossjudson 8y ago
      Amazon Photos offers unlimited full-resolution online photo storage, and 5 GB free video storage, to Prime members I hear video is pretty popular these days.
0x00000000 8y ago
> Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days. This is the most egregious thing. For items sold by a bunch of different 3rd parties it somehow picks one to buy from as the default. And sometimes that one isn't Prime eligible when another seller is. Sometimes it's not even the cheapest new option. Sometimes the default one is fucking backordered for two weeks but there are other sellers where it isn't AND they have Prime shipping. I have never had a more infuriating online shopping experience than the last 3 times I tried to use Amazon. I don't want to search through 60 different sellers to find the best one. I don't want to gamble on if they will even send the right item. I don't want to be lied to about "Prime Shipping" which is 100% meaningless now.

chrisper 8y ago

Did you ever end up installing the Helium10 extension?

eganist 8y ago
I don't recall this being on my list. Remind me?
- chrisper 8y ago
  It's the first response to your second link.
  - eganist 8y ago
    Ah, sadly I'm not a seller, so that's not something I've explored. You should follow up with the original commenter.

jsight 8y ago

I don't necessarily agree with the bits about 2-day shipping. TBH, I've had positive and negative experiences with that for years and don't really see a trend one way or the other. When it works well, it can be amazing (next day on a weekend!) and when it fails can seem really weird. But I'll still mostly agree with your list and add another. A lot of clothing items now only have a reasonable return policy when bought as part of a Prime Wardrobe. What if I just want a pair of shoes and am worried about them not fitting? Some offer free returns for this and others don't. Ugh.

awaywopassd 8y ago

I am also not about to renew my Prime membership. You list gave me a lot of confidence. But one of important benefit I use Prime for is Amazon Photos. Unlimited backup of your photos. When I look at other solutions such as Backblaze, they will all cost at least $50 a year. Then another benefit I like is Prime Music. Which again is going to cost money if I get music subscription from Spotify or somewhere else. So when I add cost of these two benefits on their own, Prime becomes pretty good deal. What's your opinion on these benefits?

jdeibele 8y ago
You can substitute Google Photos for Amazon Photos. I have several Google accounts that have soccer photos, family photos, etc. I want to keep pictures of other people's kids from trying to be recognized as my own. And the family photos account can be be given to someone else to control without giving access to my email. You get 15G of storage with unaltered originals, unlimited if you let them compress. If you set up a separate account, you probably don't have to worry about hitting the 15G limit unless you have many, many photos or are taking them at very, very high resolution. We pay for family subscriptions to Google Play Music and Spotify. My wife and kids listen to music on our Google Home device and they do a lot of Youtube. I didn't want to do Spotify, too, but the older two asked for Spotify for Christmas because of the playlists only available there. $14.99/month x 2. I was a devoted Google Reader user and I don't trust Google very much to keep things around. But it's easy to share the links with family and let them download the photos to their own storage. I was also using Amazon storage to backup when they stopped doing the free backup storage, cutting it to 5GB (I think) for free. So I don't trust them, either.
- prostoalex 8y ago
  Amazon is free for uncompressed, though.
  - rossjudson 8y ago
    Amazon Photos offers unlimited full-resolution online photo storage, and 5 GB free video storage, to Prime members I hear video is pretty popular these days.

0x00000000 8y ago

> Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days. This is the most egregious thing. For items sold by a bunch of different 3rd parties it somehow picks one to buy from as the default. And sometimes that one isn't Prime eligible when another seller is. Sometimes it's not even the cheapest new option. Sometimes the default one is fucking backordered for two weeks but there are other sellers where it isn't AND they have Prime shipping. I have never had a more infuriating online shopping experience than the last 3 times I tried to use Amazon. I don't want to search through 60 different sellers to find the best one. I don't want to gamble on if they will even send the right item. I don't want to be lied to about "Prime Shipping" which is 100% meaningless now.