4 ms·

Ask HN: Who's quit Amazon Prime or other formerly “must-have” services?

• woofcat 4y ago
  Cancelled Auto-renew on my prime membership and moved my photo/video backup to blackblaze. Shipping is still free over a minimum spend and when you're buying diapers and wipes. You'll hit it.
  • Paraesthetic 4y ago
    How do you find backblaze, I used it for a few months, but ended up going back to OneDrive
• recvonline 4y ago
  - Amazon Prime: I can wait a few days for my order. Their video and music service were just horrible to use. - Dropbox: Keep the free account for basic file sharing, moved to iCloud for everything. - Netflix: Not really good shows coming out. I rather pick and choose TV shows I get from somewhere else. I quit everything but iCloud for file storage and Apple Music because I like to have a changing workout playlist I can’t find anywhere else.
  • Paraesthetic 4y ago
    I dumped iCloud when I got a 365 subscription and that came with OneDrive which I find to be far better, and far faster when I need to download a whole bunch of files en masse (as I use On-demand for all my files now).
• coreyp_1 4y ago
  Personally, I'm on the verge of dropping Netflix, simply because I don't use it and they don't have any of the old content that I want to see. I hate most of the new stuff being produced. I'm also about to drop my Sam's Club membership. I only use it to buy gas, because I'm a single guy and I simply can't use stuff fast enough when I buy from Sam's. I can go across the street and pay 3 cents a gallon more (worst case, they are often the same price), which I often have to do anyway because Sam's closes their gas pumps at 8pm. I'm not going to renew my BestBuy TotalTech membership. It doesn't save me enough $$$ because I can't buy enough to make it worthwhile. I dropped Office 365, and have convinced family members to do the same. They just don't use it any more. LibreOffice and Google Docs fill the void. Things that I have refused to buy because they are rediculously expensive: anything from Adobe (gimp, inkscape, kdenlive instead). At work, we just passed on using Anaconda, b/c the business license that we would need was $2k per dev, per year. We came up with our own solution for CVE tracking and license auditing.
• jjgreen 4y ago
  I had an Amazon account from 1999, closed when I discovered they were tracking me with a 1-pixel image. Moved to fnac.
• stolenmerch 4y ago
  I quit Facebook in 2010, despite being told I'd need it to keep in contact with anyone in my life. I immediately lost contact with a small network of casual acquaintances. For friends and family, I just started texting, phoning, and emailing them. Stayed in contact just fine. I quit Instagram a few years after that and nothing of value was lost in my opinion. I've deleted and recreated a Twitter account about 7 times since 2007 because nothing else could really replace it fully. I quit Netflix because I never watch it but immediately resubscribed because my wife was deep into Virgin River and The Great British Bake Off. woops.
  • ojame 4y ago
    We use Facebook Marketplace pretty frequently to buy and sell things. We've tried using alternatives (local listings, Gumtree, eBay) but nothing is ever as quick and the options are far more limited. Generally we like to buy all of our 'material' items second hand if we can, and Marketplace really enables that. I wish Facebook had a 'Marketplace only' type profile but they don't. It might be geographic specific or maybe quitting so early means you never experienced it. I look around my house and Marketplace has had a pretty big impact on our life, and I hate it, but that's the network effect I guess.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  I quit Amazon Prime. You might still get two day or faster shipping but Amazon promises five day delivery to my home that is maybe a 4 hour drive from their warehouse. In he last few years shipping has gotten better from other retailers, I get packages from Japan faster that I get them from AMZN. I just can’t get paying for a ‘premium’ service which is worse than average.
• diebeforei485 4y ago
  I wasn't ordering enough on Amazon so I quit. If I need something in 2 days I can always re-join for a month. I don't miss it though. Amazon Prime was ultimately costing me money, not saving it.
• blibble 4y ago
  cancelled Amazon Prime after they tried blaming me for their delivery "service" ruining a shipment of high value books by leaving them behind a wheelie bin in the rain "delivered to reception" apparently
• WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  I had prime since the start but with the last price increase it didn't seem like it was worth renewing so I dropped Amazon Prime and moved to Walmart+. Walmart+'s delivery is not as reliable and the prices are a bit higher. I'm unlikely to renew it. I'm still ordering from Amazon but I'm waiting until my cart is over $25.00 so I can take advantage of the free shipping. It's not as convenient but I can live with it. I probably won't ever return to prime. I also cancel my Netflix account after 10yrs. I wasn't using it much. Netflix has lots of content but the quality was not there for me. I've switched to HBO. I'm using it and I like the content so I'm staying for a bit.
  • EricE 4y ago
    The big selling point for prime used to be next or two day delivery - but that has gone out the window for me for at least a year now - I still occasionally get fast delivery, but it's no longer the guarantee it used to be so I'm with you - just wait until you have enough for the free shipping - or just order elsewhere. And the increasing amount of counterfeit crap with amazon seeming to not care has really shifted me away from them.
    • ss108 4y ago
      Where do you guys live where there isn't free next or 2-day delivery? I am in NYC an still have that option, and have been getting the option for same day delivery for an extra $3 (which I have not had reason to use yet).
      • 8note 4y ago
        In Seattle delivery is usually a week out of so, with no options
        • jhbadger 4y ago
          That's particularly ironic given where Amazon is based! I guess the East Coast has better Amazon service than where it is native -- pretty much everything comes the day after you order it in the Washington DC area.
• fwungy 4y ago
  I can often find much better prices than Amazon elsewhere. I don't care that it takes a few extra days sometimes.
• hotpotamus 4y ago
  I come and go on Spotify. I really like the service but I mostly listen to podcasts (not on their app). But if I go on a road trip or for some reason the mood takes me and I want to listen to a lot of music, then I'll re-up it and they have had deals for people re-joining in the past so that was a bonus. I used the free Dropbox account for a long time and never needed much storage, but cancelled it when they limited it to 3 devices. I understand it costs money, but I just used it for a small shared storage space, and while I would have been happy to pay them $10-20/year or something like that, they didn't really have a small plan that appealed. I moved to pCloud, but it started getting pushy with the ads and stuff, so now I'm on a self-hosted Nextcloud which I like a lot and has lots more storage than I would have got before. It's running on Oracle's free tier cloud which is pretty impressive (and I'm far from an Oracle fan), so technically it's still free I suppose. I'm glad to say I cancelled Lastpass for a few reasons, but mostly it was the principle of the thing when they tripled the price over 2 years or so and didn't add any functionality that I could tell. I made a point to delete my data from them several years ago, so I hope it was actually purged in time for me to avoid their recent shenanigans. I moved to Bitwarden at the suggestion from some colleagues and so far, so good on that. I'll be canceling a decade old Prime membership when it expires in July for the obvious reasons - the cost has increased but the shipping has slowed down quite a bit to where 2 days doesn't seem to mean anything anymore. I also don't use the additional services that they've added (and I'm not looking to tie myself into Amazon if at all possible), so they don't bring me any value. But the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak was when they unwittingly signed me up for a paid subscription music service when I completed a recent order. I assume I left some box checked or something, but I'm not clear how it happened and I don't care - this is one dark pattern too many and makes me fear what they might try next.
• nozzlegear 4y ago
  I’ve quit using Amazon Prime and canceled my subscription a few years ago. I live in rural Iowa and their promise of 2-day delivery was never reality for us here, it was more like 4-5 days. When I recently resubscribed to try it again I noticed that we don’t even get the option for it anymore, instead we can choose free shipping or an “Amazon delivery day” that clumps up our packages to be delivered on a certain day of the following week. We don’t order from Amazon enough to warrant paying a subscription for 7+ day delivery timeframes, so instead we pay for Walmarts service. There are Walmarts everywhere, so I can just order something on their app and go pick it up, or get it delivered in two days if it’s not in the store. It’s a much better value for rural living.
• thedailymail 4y ago
  I quit Facebook and Twitter in 2012 out of a combination of bad feelings about where social media was heading as an industry and about its effects on me (i.e., whether I was wasting too much time, oversharing personal info, etc). I quit Costco around the same time because I despise their receipt-checking policy. Quit Dropbox around 2017 in a shift to iCloud. Quit (at least mostly quit) using Google as a search engine around 2018 to support Duck Duck Go and data privacy principles; around the same time I tried switching from gmail to protonmail, but left my gmail account intact and still use it pretty frequently (not out of love for the service, just insufficient motivation to notify old contacts and update old subscriptions.) I quit Microsoft Office last year because I don't like the subscription payment model (now happily using LibreOffice). For many of the services, I never sought out a real replacement. Instead of named social media, I use pseudonymous accounts on reddit and HN. I stay in contact with family/friends/colleagues using mail and chat. Instead of Costco I go to the local supermarket. I would love to quit streaming services (Netflix, Disney+) and Amazon Prime but my wife/kids still use them regularly. Also sometimes fantasize about making the leap from the Apple ecosystem to Linux, but am still waiting for some decisive nudge to push me over the edge. Inertia, the sense of captivity and anxiety about learning curves and possible regrets are real factors, but in my experience for most products it is easy to learn the basics and I have never felt any real regret at leaving services I didn't enjoy or feel were compatible with my principles/priorities.
  • volfied 4y ago
    I have done the mail switch with fastmail. Now my gmail account is a catch all for websites I don't care about.
  • mostlysimilar 4y ago
    What do you despise about the Costco receipt checking policy?
    • Cpoll 4y ago
      I looked up why Costco has that policy, and their stated reason is to be a second factor checking that the cashier correctly counted all items. They say they don't want to overcharge customers, but it probably goes both ways. It'd be interesting to hear from a Costco employee about what they're told to look for during training. (I'm not the parent, and this doesn't answer your question).
• toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Gmail and Google Calendar -> FastMail Google Voice -> Twilio forwarding to FastMail (doesn’t support receiving SMS from short codes, but I see that as a feature) No final straw, just made the time because it was important to me to get off Google.
• blueridge 4y ago
  I canceled Prime a few years ago and haven't looked back. I buy books from Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org, or directly from the publisher. If I need electronics, I go to my local Best Buy. For regular household goods and cleaning supplies I go to your average supermarket. I canceled Netflix, Disney Plus, Spotify, and Dropbox forever ago but I do subscribe to iCloud, Apple Music, and HEY.com for email. I don't own a TV, but I'll buy or rent movies on AppleTV from time to time and we'll stream those on the laptop before bed. I haven't had social media accounts since high school—no LinkedIn, no Twitter, no Facebook, no personal website. It's better this way. I did buy good speakers for the living room, and these days I try to treat music listening as an "event" of sorts, instead of mindlessly putting in ear buds and compulsively skipping songs, bouncing between playlists, or listening to podcasts that I immediately forget. There was no "final straw" for me, these services just weren't needed. There are so many ways to consume and create that don't require a subscription.
• FalconSensei 4y ago
  Spotify after the whole Neil Young/Joe Rogan thing. Using Youtube Music instead, which is nice because I watch Youtube mostly on the TV, so I don't get ads. The Youtube Music app is not that good, but it's ok enough to avoid Spotify
  • a_bonobo 4y ago
    I've moved to Tidal for the same reason; can't find any difference in the music library in my taste-niche
  • Paraesthetic 4y ago
    Same, and apart from the recommendations being a bit more fast and loose on Youtube Music , they have way more out there recommendations that I like, but would never have normally listened to.
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    >which is nice because I watch Youtube mostly on the TV, so I don't get ads. How do you avoid ads on the TV? I have a TV running GoogleOS (Android), with YouTube as an app of course, and it's full of ads. I finally learned about SmartTubeNext and installed it and it's bliss. But the regular, out-of-the-box experience was horrible with the regular YouTube ads.
    • dankwizard 4y ago
      I think he's saying he quit Spotify for YouTube Premium which includes YouTube Music and has the benefit of no YouTube ads
    • AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
      https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
• Paraesthetic 4y ago
  I've just quit Amazon Prime, and Paramount+. I realized I'm not getting anywhere near the value I am paying for as the free accounts now almost always have free shipping anyway, so the expedited shipping doesn't really hold any value for me. Paramount+ was just because I had it on my prime account, and haven't used it in months.
  • Paraesthetic 4y ago
    Oh and lastpass because they upped their fees, moved to Bitwarden a few years ago, and have not missed it.
• steponlego 4y ago
  Prime is the only service I'm subscribed to and since they dropped the free two day shipping (and SHAT upon Tolkien) I won't be renewing. Chinese scammers have taken the site over too, eBay is now much more reliable.
  • schappim 4y ago
    > eBay is now much more reliable They've really fallen that much? Yikes!
• poly_morphis 4y ago
  I would quit, but I'm currently a student and pay $7.49 monthly, which is worth it to me because in addition to the delivery times, I find some value in prime video. If I wasn't paying that rate, I would quit, because it just isn't enough value for the money for me. Same deal with Spotify. If there was no such plan for students, I would not pay for either.
• midoridensha 4y ago
  I wonder how many people have quit the convenient streaming services that became not-so-convenient and returned to sailing the high seas.
  • AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
    I did. At one point I was paying for Paramount+, HBO-whatever, Netflix (for me) and a traditional cable subscription (for my elderly grandfather who lived with me). I'm not adding up how much I was paying. I cancelled cable after he passed, realized I missed nothing. Cancelled Paramount+ and HBO-whatever at some point and cancelled Netflix about a year ago (and I was an early DVD subscriber and a streaming subscriber from day-1). Paying for the services was marginally easier than sailing, but, with arr services it's easy enough. Mostly I was happy to support services producing great content, but, there's a marked decline in quality and such fragmentation of the services that I'm just not into it anymore. I don't want to doomscroll things on netflix, I want to watch what I want to watch and get out.
    • midoridensha 4y ago
      Netflix was really nice 10+ years ago when almost everything you wanted was on it. Now, you need to be subscribed to a separate streaming service for every show you want to watch (because each service will only have 1 show you care about), plus you have to worry about it being removed at some point for some arbitrary reason.
• burgerrito 4y ago
  Spotify, I just can't work without listening to music anymore (espescially Radiohead haha). But, I've been thinking about buying an album directly, without relying on subscription service, and definitely without DRM. I just can't figure out where to buy it. I haven't seen any music CD shop in almost a decade in my country.
• HomeDeLaPot 4y ago
  I quit health insurance. I always thought it was a "must-have", and a lot of my friends and family still tell me that, but I just can't support the system as it is today. Haven't found an alternative yet, as the US health care system seems to have a de facto monopoly on health care in the US. I do miss going to the doctor, but hey—people lived for hundreds of years without health insurance, I'm going to be fine.
• TheAdamist 4y ago
  My disney+ sub ran out, and they have nothing new on the release schedule. So im not subscribing again until theres a backlog to watch. Netflix is coasting, once stranger things final season comes out i think thats unsubscribed for good. They no longer do prestige tv, its reality tv nonsense or good shows cancelled on a cliffhanger. My prime just renewed but i set an alert for next year because i will probably cancel then. Other than "the boys" its mostly a wasteland. And the free shipping is of dubious use when things that used to be 1-2 day are now all 5-10 days anyway. Hbo max is through a grandfathered cell plan, but theyve been trying to destroy themselves too, so if that goes away i wont sub. I admire the people that rotate their streaming one month on at one a switch frequently but thats more planning than i can do.
• summertime42 4y ago
  I try my best to shelter my brain from social media, but I am not perfect by any means. I quit Facebook a decade ago, Twitter recently. Tried CoHost but no one is there and now dislike Tumblr's lack of multiple feeds, so I suppose I do miss a bit of "endless scrolling and seeing what cool people are up too", but honestly Discord + reading/mindfulness is starting to replace it. Slowly, anyway. Reddit sometimes gives me a dope rush, but I need to knock that off, too. I try to read news headlines once a week to not get emotionally bogged down. It's all just noise in the end. Still pay for Dropbox, still pay for Amazon Prime. Occasionally have CrunchyRoll/Disney+/HBO turned on for a few months before we cancel it after we mine the well dry or a show finishes up.
• iamthepieman 4y ago
  Had prime for 7 years. Quit over a year ago. If there's a show I want to watch and it's not available anywhere else I just buy it now. As for the shopping part of prime, I only get things I don't care about from then now. Coat hangers, garbage bags etc but less and less as time goes on. Same with Netflix. I just borrow a friend's login or pirate it. Spotify is a must have for me that I haven't quit. I have a dream of finally setting up my home cloud instance and ripping all my old CDs and just buying a couple albums a month DRM free but there's always something else that takes priority for time and money. I miss nothing from the services I don't subscribe to. I can always sub for a month to Netflix if it's "in the moment" and I am feeling lazy.
• lrvick 4y ago
  I quit Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, cell phone, using credit cards IRL, etc. Words can not express how much more in control of my life I feel.
• darthrupert 4y ago
  Media streaming services are not must have in any sense. They can be dropped the second there's nothing to watch there or when you have actual things to do in your life. Also, the hugely increased amount of competition has somehow made everything worse for the customer. Everything is more expensive, and it's more difficult to find things. Is that a first?