Amazon cancelled their charity Smile program

[PistolsAtDawn]

So I cancelled my Prime membership! I fucking hate Amazon so much these days. Greedy, soulless hacks.

They want $150 for a Prime membership now! However they still offer free shipping over $35, so I just don't see the benefit in having the membership. It's very easy to spend more than $35 with them if I just stop placing so many separate orders and group strategically. And from now on, I'm going to try to giving their competitors more business whenever possible.

They've also drastically scaled back the other benefits of the membership at the same time. They have 3 shows that I like, but I couldn't give a shit about the rest of their catalog.

I am so ready for a French Revolution style shakeup in this country.

[Loveandpeace]

So I cancelled my Prime membership! I fucking hate Amazon so much these days. Greedy, soulless hacks.

They want $150 for a Prime membership now! However they still offer free shipping over $35, so I just don't see the benefit in having the membership. It's very easy to spend more than $35 with them if I just stop placing so many separate orders and group strategically. And from now on, I'm going to try to giving their competitors more business whenever possible.

They've also drastically scaled back the other benefits of the membership at the same time. They have 3 shows that I like, but I couldn't give a shit about the rest of their catalog.

I am so ready for a French Revolution style shakeup in this country.

name checks out and totally agreed!

[e_poison]

Are they raising the cost of Prime? Right now I only pay like $16/mo but that includes streaming service and free shipping on all orders. I normally order a few times per month and get good use out of the streaming, so seems worth it at the moment.

But if they raise rates, I might have to reconsider. I’m already paying for a few other streaming services… seems like everyone has their own streaming service these days.

[herbalhippie]

I just went in an checked the box for a 3 day notice before renewal so I can cancel if they've jacked it up and I'll cancel if they do.

I've got a little less than a month to finish watching The Expanse.

[PistolsAtDawn]

I was pretty riled up by this news admittedly, but I've been less and less endeared by them and their practices for a while.

I'm not sure when the last hike was, and the $150.xx that they're refunding probably includes tax. But in my opinion, yes they have raised the price of a Prime membership by devaluing it.

Free returns used to mean they gave you a USPS shipping label which you could use at home to send a return. Now it means I get to bring it to a UPS store and wait in line while their employees resent having to do the extra work for a different company while they're still crazy busy all day. There's almost never no line there, and some customers ship a lot of items to different people in one go. The last time I was in there, two different customers each took over 20 minutes, paralyzing the line behind me and another customer. The line was out of the door when I left. So free returns definitely aren't free. They cost me a fair amount of time.

The Prime membership itself has nearly doubled in price since I first signed up. Many of the features they added in the years after its inception have been slashed.

They treat their drivers and warehouse workers like slaves, and they illegally try to block unions from forming. It's not a surprise that a significant portion of my deliveries don't show up on time or are marked as delivered the day before they actually arrive. Their drivers don't even get bathroom breaks - or a non-public bathroom to use somewhere - and they're left no choice but to game the system to get by. It's still frustrating not being able to trust their shipping estimates, and this is because of Amazon's practices.

I could go on for quite a while about how much I dislike their business practices, but a small portion of my purchases was going to a charity that I chose. Now that Amazon has cancelled that program, I feel like I can't justify being a customer there nearly as often.

It took five confirmations before I could cancel my membership. They kept pathetically trying to persuade me to keep it. I guess at least I didn't have to call and wait on hold.

[e_poison]

I’ve heard some horror stories about the working conditions at Amazon. I was thinking to myself, why would anyone work for them?

I looked into a bit.

The entry level, unskilled labor jobs pay fairly well. Flip burgers or work retail for $10/hr… or work in an Amazon warehouse for $20/hr. All unskilled labor jobs suck at the end of the day but one option gets paid much more. If you gotta work and you’re going to hate it anyway, might as well do the highest paying option.

That’s how they attract workers.

[PistolsAtDawn]

I’ve heard some horror stories about the working conditions at Amazon. I was thinking to myself, why would anyone work for them?

I looked into a bit.

The entry level, unskilled labor jobs pay fairly well. Flip burgers or work retail for $10/hr… or work in an Amazon warehouse for $20/hr. All unskilled labor jobs suck at the end of the day but one option gets paid much more. If you gotta work and you’re going to hate it anyway, might as well do the highest paying option.

That’s how they attract workers.

Go deeper. You didn't examine accounts of what its like to work for them from the workers themselves. Amazon expects to burn through workers because they know they're treating them as disposable and after that, nobody is working for them again.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -warehouse

That's why there's now unionization efforts.

[HappyD]

Not a fan of Amazon at all. You have to be careful what you’re buying is even the real thing. Lots of fake stuff on there.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Not a fan of Amazon at all. You have to be careful what you’re buying is even the real thing. Lots of fake stuff on there.

That's definitely a problem. It happens because they don't separate identical items based on the seller, so while a micro SD card bought by Amazon is probably real, those are mixed in with all of the 3rd party sellers of that same item. Many of those are counterfeit, so you really don't know what you're going to get.

The only way around that specific issue that I know of is to buy an item that is only made for Amazon, such as the Samsung Evo Select micro SD card line. Obviously this isn't going to be a solution for every item.

[WhiteAngelica]

So I cancelled my Prime membership! I fucking hate Amazon so much these days. Greedy, soulless hacks.

They want $150 for a Prime membership now! However they still offer free shipping over $35, so I just don't see the benefit in having the membership. It's very easy to spend more than $35 with them if I just stop placing so many separate orders and group strategically. And from now on, I'm going to try to giving their competitors more business whenever possible.

They've also drastically scaled back the other benefits of the membership at the same time. They have 3 shows that I like, but I couldn't give a shit about the rest of their catalog.

I am so ready for a French Revolution style shakeup in this country.

Amazon is the absolute devil and I try to avoid them whenever necessary. There is a YouTube channel, A More Perfect Union and they have some great videos on what it means to work for Amazon. Mostly in the warehouses, but also delivery drivers...it is an inhumane place to work that is a giant union buster (but so are most of the companies featured on the channel. The videos about Amazon are enough to boil your blood and burn your account down--well, figuratively speaking.) Anyway, I recommend those stories from real workers about the dangerous working conditions amount other problematic things!

[WhiteAngelica]

I’ve heard some horror stories about the working conditions at Amazon. I was thinking to myself, why would anyone work for them?

I looked into a bit.

The entry level, unskilled labor jobs pay fairly well. Flip burgers or work retail for $10/hr… or work in an Amazon warehouse for $20/hr. All unskilled labor jobs suck at the end of the day but one option gets paid much more. If you gotta work and you’re going to hate it anyway, might as well do the highest paying option.

That’s how they attract workers.

I just suggested to the OP to go on YouTube and look up A More Perfect Union Amazon and you'll see some powerful videos about the working conditions from those trying to unionize...but it is far more ghastly than I ever guessed. When a Warehouse comes to town, be careful or run the other way, fast! Check it out though. The channel is amazing.

[WhiteAngelica]

My dislike of Jeff Bezos is pretty thick and does this surprise me? No way. He will lay off employees and his warehouses are the sites of some of the worst worker exploitation I've ever witnessed this side of sweatshop country, but he is on the news because he donated money to Dolly Parton because she is ethical and would know what to do with it.

He doesn't have any idea of any possible good he can do in the world? But the Dolly Parton donation was a drop in the bucket and I think a media thing to not make him look like Satan.

I have been watching stuff about the melting of the ice caps in Greenland. It is bad, and direct evidence of how screwed we really are as a planet. But apparently the 1% including Bezos is having a 'mineral war' over what they can take from the parts of Greenland that had been covered by an ice sheet since the ice age. Apparently the minerals are very useful for computer software but like a bunch of hungry jackals, Bezos leapt to be a front runner pillager of the new, melted Greenland. When someone wants to own everything and make concessions about nothing and they're a dirty billionaire, dirt spreads: into our air, drinking water, warehouses, and is smeared on to hopeful workers that dream of unions to normalize the brutality of Amazon. Bezos though really doesn't care. Sorry if it sounds so bleak, but some rich people care. He is not one of them at all. Dolly Parton cares and so he gave some money to someone who cares because he doesn't know how! Seriously, the Amazon Warehouse in Albany NY has sent more people to the hospital than any other comparable employer. On a More Perfect Union, an older man was pushing an oversized load and he stroked out on the job. He was back the next day, still pushing around his oversized load. I guess some of his coworkers tried to lighten that load but you can't miss work when you're at the Amazon warehouse. A guy's kid had heart surgery and they wouldn't give him the day off to go to the hospital, even though the request was advanced notice. I can't remember if he got fired for trying to start a union, or if he still works there.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Amazon is the absolute devil and I try to avoid them whenever necessary. There is a YouTube channel, A More Perfect Union and they have some great videos on what it means to work for Amazon. Mostly in the warehouses, but also delivery drivers...it is an inhumane place to work that is a giant union buster (but so are most of the companies featured on the channel. The videos about Amazon are enough to boil your blood and burn your account down--well, figuratively speaking.) Anyway, I recommend those stories from real workers about the dangerous working conditions amount other problematic things!

20 years ago I thought I could never hate a company more than I hate Walmart, but here we are.