Did you know that you can look up your entire purchase history with Amazon, from the moment you opened your Amazon account?
My first Amazon purchase, on December 10, 1996, back when Amazon was merely an up-and-coming, scrappy online bookstore, was “Client/Server Computing for Dummies.” I was interviewing for a public relations job in the client server computing group at IBM’s PR agency and I thought it might be good to sort of, kind of have a modicum of an iota of an inkling of an idea as to what client/server computers actually did. (SPOILER ALERT: I didn’t get that job, but managed to get a second interview for a different position, which I landed. What I lacked in knowledge, I more than made up for in pluck. And sheer bullshit.)
Anyway, me and Amazon are approaching our 30th anniversary. That’s longer than I have been married. And in spite of that fact that my wife NEVER delivers ANY cool gadgets to me in two days or produces ANY video content that I might want to binge, I am sticking with her and giving up Amazon.
Well, not ALL of Amazon. Just Amazon Prime. After being a charter member, I am letting my Prime membership go. And this just might be the first step to letting go of Amazon entirely.
For those of you just emerging from your Y2K bunker (we survived, Donald Trump is trying to win the presidency a second time. Honest.), Amazon now sells everything from apple sauce to zebra-print underpants (yes, I checked.) Amazon Prime was launched in 2005 as a $79.00/year membership that got you “free” 2-day shipping on your Amazon orders. You were ACTUALLY just pre-paying for $79.00 worth of shipping. If you only bought a few items in a year, it wasn’t worth it.
But, if you were an Amazon addict like me, it was well worth it. But the really diabolically brilliant (and I do mean brilliant) thing about a Prime membership was that it encouraged people (and by people, I mean ME) to buy MORE stuff from Amazon. Afterall, you had already pre-paid for shipping, so might as well get your money’s worth.
This was marketing genius of the first order. And it worked. Spectacularly. Need proof? Just check Amazon’s stock price. Amazon went public in 1997 at a split-adjusted price of about 8 cents per share. That’s $0.08/share. Today, it is selling at $160.00/share, after a runup to $186 during the heart of the pandemic.
Not all of this can be attributed to Amazon Prime. Amazon is now in some massive businesses (cloud computing, advertising, logistics, warehousing) that are peripheral to selling laptops and smoked salmon. But Amazon Prime was a major driver of increased sales for the core retail part of the company.
Since its launch, Prime membership has risen from $79.00/year to $139.00/year. It has also added services like video and music streaming and gaming. But I think it’s still that catnip-like lure of “free” fast shipping that most people sign up for.
So, with all this bundled goodness, why am I ditching my Prime membership?
1.) It’s $140/year and will no doubt be going up again in the next 1-2 years. That’s $11.50/month, which I would much rather spend on three or four cups of coffee at Dunkin. Really.
2.) Like most of us, I have this creeping, creepy feeling that Amazon is eating the world. I used to think WalMart was the evil empire. But WalMart is now sort of part of the local retail ecosystem, employing local checkout clerks and stockpersons, and paying local property taxes, while Amazon works its warehouse workers to the bone and outsources all its delivery trucks to sketchy, fly-by-night third-party operators who would run over their own grandmothers just to make their day’s delivery quota, all the while insulating Amazon itself from any liability associated with granny getting plastered to an Amazon truck grill.
So, my thinking is if I quit Prime, it will likely induce me to use Amazon less and, eventually, stop using it at all.
3.) One word: Commercials. As of today (January 29, 2024), if you want to continue watching your Amazon Prime videos with no ads, you have to pay an extra $3.00 per month. So, in essence, the Amazon Prime benefits that were costing you $139.00/year are now $175.00/year.
So, three words: F*ck off, Amazon!
[BRB]
[OK. I’m back.]
[Writer had to answer the door for his Amazon delivery]
Where was I?
Right.
F*ck off, Amazon!
Now, if I want to watch Prime video without ads, I have to pay an extra $36.00/year. If the content was good, or even mediocre, I would MAYBE consider it. But Amazon Prime Video content is really pretty bad. “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was decent, though it ran out of gas by season 4. Season 1 of “Reacher” was OK, but you have to be really into “Reacher” books to want more. The acting is meh and the writing is ham-fisted. Season 2 was pretty formulaic, which is true to form because once you’ve read two or three “Reacher” books, you’ve read them all. “Good Omens” season 1 was one of the best things I have ever seen on TV. Season 2 was borderline terrible. And all the other stuff (movies, old TV shows) are probably available on one of the 29 other streaming services I have somehow managed to get sucked into. And if they are not available on other services, so what. I’ll turn off the TV and take the dog for a walk.
Amazon pushed its price for Prime membership past some personal psychological limit. On one side of that boundary, I felt like I was getting a pretty good deal. But on this other side, I feel like I, along with my community and most of humanity, are being exploited, manipulated and otherwise used and abused by our overlords at Amazon.
It’s enough.
And though one cannot help but respect the business empire that Jeff Bezos built, do we really want to further finance his dick-shaped rockets that fly fellow billionaires into the thermosphere for 10 minutes for $300,000/ticket, and do we want to contribute one more dime to his girlfriend’s next round of silicone self-mutilation?
So, this is the beginning of a long goodbye to Amazon. You pushed me juussst past my own personal Kármán line of fees and we’re through.
If I need new jumper cables or rat poison, I’ll jump in the car and head to WalMart, even if I get stuck behind an Amazon delivery truck on the way.