Technology

Quickest solution? Stop buying from Amazon. I quit cold turkey and the sky does not fall. I still buy what I need. I am sometimes saved from buying stuff that I don't really need but was easily available. Just stop buying from them. They are the evil capitalism that everyone complains about.

This is OK because our Leaders are Looking out For the COMMON man! That's why I'm going to ENTHUSIASTICALLY Vote for the Billionaire AGAIN!

But but but capitalism, free market, competition, etc. etc. etc ...

I'm just gonna leave this here

I'm always a little shocked when people ask me if my product is on Amazon. I never even considered it because I've known what they are for so long; it's been a bit of a wakeup call that most people still have no idea how fucking awful Amazon is. It sucks struggling with market visibility, selling just from my own website, but it beats the hell out of being bullied like this until I'm big enough to have my product stolen and copied by Amazon Basics.

And nothing will be done about it probably

well they also see what products are doing well on their site, then making exact copies to sell at a loss to kill the original maker, then once the captured competition is killed take their place and inflate the price

Kinda suspected they were doing that. Looked at some drywall panel lifts this morning and saw one for $75. Shipping however was $247. Dropped that like a hot rivet

I’ve pointed out Valve doing basically the same thing; games can’t be priced lower than Steam on competing game storefronts (not Steam key resellers), or Valve will threaten to delist your game. Which would be essentially kill it. And they obviously do this to protect their chunky store fee.

But personal loyalty goes a long way.

I’m trying to reframe the perspective here, not drag into an argument about Valve. A whole lot of people feel good about finding “deals” on Amazon, about Amazon services that have helped them, and especially about the value and convenience the whole platform provides. It’s easy for Lemmy to hate on Amazon, but for the average person, I think this is a harder sell than most of us realize. They’ll dismiss it as the “market working” or California sensationalism or, more likely, just filter it out as noise in their feed, just like most PC gamers would when they read something bad about Valve.

You can stop buying from Amazon whenever you choose to. There are online alternatives to every product they sell. You don't need to be part of it. Whatever excuse you give is wrong.

Bought something from AliExpress last week. Showed up in an Amazon box 😐 Aggravating that the only way to avoid them is apparently to never shop online. I already mostly don't, but sheesh.