Boycotting Amazon for the Holidays?

[Preety_India]

7 minutes ago, Ananta said:

True and they make it so economical with the yearly one time fee for shipping also. 

Occasionally, I'll go to order something from another on-line store and am shocked when they add on $12.99 for shipping. Ack.

I usually cancel it and find something comparable on Amazon.?

OH yeah you're so  right. Same with me. I have a annual Amazon Prime Membership and it's a small fee. Whereas the local retail and department stores charge so much. And not to mention the shipping is late. 

With Amazon the shipping is lightning speed for me. It feels amazing. I save so much. 

 

 

[aurum]

@zenjen

I think this thread highlights a lot of important points.

We can criticize and boycott Amazon, and I'd support that. But at the same time, we've become dependent on it.

This is why I believe the incentives in our systems are backwards. You are incentivized to buy from Amazon, even if what you really want is to support your local community. And that's a problem.

Really it should be the opposite. You desire to support your local community and you are incentivized to do so via systems, such as local currency.

But because we are in such a scarcity mentality around time and resources, we don't value community. We value maximum efficiency (or what appears to be efficient on the surface) and consumption. And then we create systems that reinforce and reflect that.

[Average Investor]

I buy a good bit of stuff on eBay too. You can shop smaller sellers. I sometimes pick the little guy, but if it is anything I don't want messed up or I can get a lot better deal I won't. You can shop 3rd party sellers too and you probably do without noticing it. I price shop for a lot of things and usually get better deals on eBay, especially with things like eBay bucks. I shop on Amazon quite a bit too and I will probably sell there more in the future. 

Also, those companies take a lot from the 3rd party sellers anyway and really don't treat them that well. If you slip up at all on a site like Amazon you could potentially lose your entire business/income. For me I am not really wanting to go to the store much at all. I do grocery pick up most of the time unless it is something like Costco. Online just makes more sense for me with pretty much anything aside from food.