Fighting Back

[Thorgalaeg]

I was going to cancel before all this but always forget it. Price has been going up every year (it was like 20€/year at first and now it is 50). I don't buy in Amazon that much anyway.

Question: if I cancel it now I will stop getting prime video and such now or it will last till October, when the subscription is renewed?

 

[Arakhor]

It would have to be a particularly scummy "contract" that instantly cuts off services without a refund for partial credit.

 

[Perfection]

I have some amazon gift certificates in a drawer, should i redeem them now just to hurt their bottom line?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Why is Amazon suddenly much worse than it was a few weeks ago?

 

[Samson]

Why is Amazon suddenly much worse than it was a few weeks ago?

Of all the targets of "cancel culture" amazon as a representative of american oligarchs seems as good a target as any if one wants to show their disapproval for what is going on over there.

 

[Farm Boy]

Why is Amazon suddenly much worse than it was a few weeks ago?

"Reeee."

 

[Birdjaguar]

It would have to be a particularly scummy "contract" that instantly cuts off services without a refund for partial credit.

The prime contract stays in effect until its expiration date and then doesn't renew. No prorated refunds.

 

[danjuno]

Why is Amazon suddenly much worse than it was a few weeks ago?

So because people weren't doing anything before, they should never do it ever?

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

We call that a "fad"

 

[danjuno]

Got it. Everybody needs to just sit around and do absolutely nothing. Brilliant, Klaus!

 

[Birdjaguar]

The prime contract stays in effect until its expiration date and then doesn't renew. No prorated refunds.

We dug through multiple layers of Amazon website linked trees until we found the customer service AI chat; when we had exhausted that, we got to the real person chat line and they canceled our prime subscription immediately and give us a full refund on the annual fee. They wanted to know our reason and we told them: Jeff Bezos support for Trump.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Got it. Everybody needs to just sit around and do absolutely nothing. Brilliant, Klaus!

well that's how most boycotts tend to go.

 

[danjuno]

Citation needed.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

That boycotts don't do anything? Well you could look at the US embargo against Cuba, for one.

But what is one trying to achieve with boycotting Amazon? If it is to make them less rich just because Bezos likes Trump or whatever, well, that has to be able to run counter to their success which made them rich in the first place. That is, offering lots of products from retailers on an online marketplace. I don't think you will have much luck there unless you find a replacement for Amazon entirely. (Too bad about Sears).

But if you're trying to improve their work and pay conditions, that's going to be the result of the people who are employed there. Because I don't know any supervisors at Amazon enough that my not associating with them is going to change their habits.

 

[danjuno]

You're speaking about alternatives as theoretical when there are literally thousands of e-commerce sites.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

So do I boycott Mcdonalds whenever I go to Wendy's?

In such an instance there is no visible difference between a boycott made to actually affect the target into changing, and, enacting one's own shopping preferences because you prefer an alternative.

So if Amazon goes under because you don't buy from them, it would only be because it happened an infinite number of times before to other businesses who didn't innovate. No need to pat yourself on the back.

 

[danjuno]

So do I boycott Mcdonalds whenever I go to Wendy's?

In such an instance there is no visible difference between a boycott made to actually affect the target into changing, and, enacting one's own shopping preferences because you prefer an alternative.

So if Amazon goes under because you don't buy from them, it would only be because it happened an infinite number of times before to other businesses who didn't innovate. No need to pat yourself on the back.

You moved goal posts. You said that boycotting Amazon isn't practical, I gave a reason for why that isn't true, and now your are trying to litigate the definition of a boycott.

If people stop buying a product or service for social reasons and not because they can get a better deal elsewhere, then yes, that is a boycott.

 

[Birdjaguar]

So if Amazon goes under because you don't buy from them, it would only be because it happened an infinite number of times before to other businesses who didn't innovate. No need to pat yourself on the back.

It is unlikely that such boycotts will bring down Amazon, but the company is share price driven and declines in sales do have an impact on stock prices. In addition, boycotting can make the boycotter feel better. Eating at Wendy's rather than McDs is not a boycott, but deciding to not eat a McDs and then eating at Wendy's would be. Bezos will remain rich, but we can only do what we can do.

Sears used to be the a huge national retailer and mail order company. It started in 1889 selling watches by mail. It reached it's peak in the 1970s and built the Sears Tower in Chicago (tallest in the city at the time) and had customers throughout the Americas. It's catalog had hundreds of pages and sold just about anything one could want. By 2021 after ~130 years it was gone. In our faster paced world now, Amazon could fade (be broken up?) at a much faster pace. All that would take is for some big investment company to buy a controlling share and dictate significant changes. That is what is happening right to Southwest Airlines. I expect them to fade or be gone within a few years.

 

[Farm Boy]

Stocks? Sears? The internet didn't charge for many things. Like taxes. Like it's hard to run a cab company when your competitors are allowed to classify drivers as customers.

I find it absolutely boggling to consider that this... ?change?... in people who were already using Amazon is going to drive them into the storefronts of local sourced businesses even if it long endures. The people willing to do that were already doing that. This? This is frog noises from people worried their fancier boozes are going to get more expensive and their investment portfolios aren't going to give the returns they hoped for.

No?

Edit: looks like, if anything, maybe Dollar General will trade up on some customers.

Dollar General says some customers can no longer afford basic necessities

Dollar General's core customer base of low-income Americans are still getting hit by inflation, with retailer seeing little improvement ahead.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[danjuno]

It is unlikely that such boycotts will bring down Amazon, but the company is share price driven and declines in sales do have an impact on stock prices.

More to the point, the sort of anger Trump and Musk inspire people can do significant damage if channeled into economic action. It's only a question of getting the millions of non-terminally online people who are angry about the administration to connect the dots to Amazon.