3 ms·

This is why Amazon is still winning. The competition needs to compete better.

_jal 3y ago
Amazon is at least as awful. I cancelled Prime about a year ago - delivery sucks at my location with their logistics and I just don't want to deal with it. I still occasionally order some things that are hard to find elsewhere, I just ship it to an address where things won't be immediately stolen. And after the huge "subscribe prime" interstitial with the tiny "not now" button, they still add prime to the order, not as a regular line-item, but as something you have to hunt around for to remove. They're cramming, just like telecom used to. Amazon is awful if you have the temerity to fail to tithe them as they believe they are due. Fuck them.
- tredre3 3y ago
  I agree with everything you said and almost got tricked back into Prime myself. And yet, somehow, Amazon is still the least bad option for me.
- sombragris 3y ago
  Confirmed. I needed to purchase something from Amazon Spain and was put into Prime despite choosing "not now". I just cancelled (after hunting thousands of options) and now all the cancellation I have is that "my free period won't be renewed". So I actually have to wait until September 1st to verify I am actually out of the subscription and that no charge is made to my card. Extremely slimy and awful if you ask me.
fivre 3y ago
Amazon isn't necessarily competing better (though they often are--even if im okay getting a slower delivery, not-Amazon vendor sites will do shit like require signature confirmation without the purchaser requesting it, which makes the package all but undeliverable to certain apartments), but they win on the guarantee that buying a product through Amazon isn't going to sign me up for an endless stream of marketing email. Granted, Amazon has much less need for that endless stream of marketing email because they're already the de facto first choice shop. It's a lose-lose game if you're a conscious consumer and both want to support a non-Amazon monoculture for internet retail but also don't want to have to yet another drip feed of marketing email. Ideally there'd be competition among email service providers to recognize the modern landscape of CAN-SPAM compliant but entirely unsolicited and unwanted email and provide user tools that aggressively bin non-transactional email and penalize senders that send 10 "transactional" emails for a single interaction ("here's your confirmation! here's a shipping update! here's another shipping update! are you satisfied with your purchase? leave a review!) as shadow marketing. Either they're knowingly doing this for brand reinforcement reasons or are honestly clueless and don't recognize that a single email that links to a continuously-updated order status page is preferable. I figure mostly the former, but either way there are limited mechanisms to encourage vendors to make judicious use of email.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
Amazon actually didn't win in my country. And it's because of their terribly shitty website. And their terrible commercials.

_jal 3y ago

Amazon is at least as awful. I cancelled Prime about a year ago - delivery sucks at my location with their logistics and I just don't want to deal with it. I still occasionally order some things that are hard to find elsewhere, I just ship it to an address where things won't be immediately stolen. And after the huge "subscribe prime" interstitial with the tiny "not now" button, they still add prime to the order, not as a regular line-item, but as something you have to hunt around for to remove. They're cramming, just like telecom used to. Amazon is awful if you have the temerity to fail to tithe them as they believe they are due. Fuck them.

tredre3 3y ago
I agree with everything you said and almost got tricked back into Prime myself. And yet, somehow, Amazon is still the least bad option for me.
sombragris 3y ago
Confirmed. I needed to purchase something from Amazon Spain and was put into Prime despite choosing "not now". I just cancelled (after hunting thousands of options) and now all the cancellation I have is that "my free period won't be renewed". So I actually have to wait until September 1st to verify I am actually out of the subscription and that no charge is made to my card. Extremely slimy and awful if you ask me.

fivre 3y ago

Amazon isn't necessarily competing better (though they often are--even if im okay getting a slower delivery, not-Amazon vendor sites will do shit like require signature confirmation without the purchaser requesting it, which makes the package all but undeliverable to certain apartments), but they win on the guarantee that buying a product through Amazon isn't going to sign me up for an endless stream of marketing email. Granted, Amazon has much less need for that endless stream of marketing email because they're already the de facto first choice shop. It's a lose-lose game if you're a conscious consumer and both want to support a non-Amazon monoculture for internet retail but also don't want to have to yet another drip feed of marketing email. Ideally there'd be competition among email service providers to recognize the modern landscape of CAN-SPAM compliant but entirely unsolicited and unwanted email and provide user tools that aggressively bin non-transactional email and penalize senders that send 10 "transactional" emails for a single interaction ("here's your confirmation! here's a shipping update! here's another shipping update! are you satisfied with your purchase? leave a review!) as shadow marketing. Either they're knowingly doing this for brand reinforcement reasons or are honestly clueless and don't recognize that a single email that links to a continuously-updated order status page is preferable. I figure mostly the former, but either way there are limited mechanisms to encourage vendors to make judicious use of email.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

Amazon actually didn't win in my country. And it's because of their terribly shitty website. And their terrible commercials.