To ask how you can live with yourself if you use Amazon

[paperbeatsrock]

Just kidding! All those political threads asking how people can possibly vote for X or Y must be getting to me.

I use Amazon. (While I’m frequently ordering from a vendor rather than Amazon themselves, Bezos still gets his cut.) Yet, the more I read about them, the more I realise I’m part of the problem. So I guess my question is, do you have stern words with yourself for using them, but keep doing it anyway?

I probably use it a bit less than I have done in the past. I buy more second hand clothes from eBay than going to primark.
I do also order from AliExpress which is miles cheaper, but you have to be organised as goods take a month to arrive.
I live in France where things are overpriced and minimal choice.

ApexPrey bet it’s not free next day delivery though

DH takes the piss about my Amazon habit.

I needed something at the weekend that I could have probably ordered for the same cost on Amazon, but we went to The Range instead. It took half an hour to find a parking space, the store was absolutely crackers.
I commented to him when I got back in the car "THATS why I use Amazon". I think he's come around to my line of thought.

I do my bit where I can. Not using Amazon isn't one of them.

I am a single, full time working parent. I do not have a single afternoon to go Xmas shopping alone. I will get a couple of hours mid Dec when DS is at a party so I can pop to small town.

Also, my son is working for them at the moment so it's keeping him employed.

Morals dont pay the bills, amazon is often the cheapest place for most items. If I wasn't on a tight budget I probably couldn't be arsed shoppin around and searching Amazon so I wouldn't use them.

I've definitely minimised my amazon ordering, mainly because of the outrageous amount of packaging, probably not that simple but for one of the largest companies in the world they really should be at the forefront of sustainable packaging...

ApexPrey bet it’s not free next day delivery though

Amazon isn't either without Prime, is it? I usually have to pay a few pounds and wait 2-3 days for delivery when I use it.

Either way it's not an issue for me, can't think of the last time I NEEDED something the next day, and a few pounds extra for not using Amazon is just the choice you make.

I am a single, full time working parent. I do not have a single afternoon to go Xmas shopping alone

You do know there are other online shops, right? (for now!)

It's not just Amazon or an afternoon in town.

Not my fault he doesn't pay his taxes, it's the lawmakers allowing him to dodge paying by not tightening the loopholes. It's convenient for me, saves me time and money and saves the planet a little by the delivery being done by one vehicles rather that me driving around to different shops with just little old me in my big old car.

It's a dilemma, isn't it....

@havingtochangeusernameagain To be fair, Waterstones also has a pretty good website and their stores are usually excellent at ordering in titles (we don't have any independents where I live any more)....Blackwells' website is also good, with some nice features that are a bit tricky to find on Amazon. I hate shopping with a passion (my older sister got the shopping genes for the entire family) and sometimes health makes it a bit tricky to sustain the assault course that is the shopping centre, so online shopping is a blessing.

We do use Amazon, but we also use lots of independent stores and a couple of local box schemes as well, and as previous posters have said, not all of the companies selling on there are huge evil corporations. Some are small businesses who use it as a shop window/marketplace as it is currenlty the largest single online marketplace in the world. I've also bought very good used/new to me kit for the work I do from home via the Amazon Warehouse.

Some are people selling on textbooks at the end of various courses or DVDs when family members have grown out of them (raises hand). Amazon isn't always the cheapest option for tech, though, just as an example, although they really do know what they're doing with their own kit. We've bought a Smartplug from them and a new Firestick in the last couple of weeks and both were super simple to set up and operate.

Oh, and anyone interested in where books are [probably] heading in the next 3-5 years might be interested to know that audio books have become much more popular in the last 18 months or so, beating pretty much all other formats. Who's the current major supplier? Yep, Audible....

I stopped using Amazon a few years ago. Their employment practices, tax avoidance and "killing" of bricks and mortar shops did it for me.

I'm also still using on them but am actively cutting down and cutting down consumption in general. Thinking of cancelling my prime account when it runs out. Like others I think this will stop me using them out of habit!

They don't sell anything that you can't get anywhere else

Depends how crap your local shopping is really doesn't it?

We've no big shopping centres or retail parks close by, so it's a one hour drive to one or a trip to the crap High Street or supermarkets with barely any decent shops other than the chains which never seem to have a full range of stock anymore.

We buy a lot from Amazon, probably more as each year passes, simply because our High St is crap and we often come home empty handed.

Feel the same! Have been pulled back in for the ease of Christmas shopping but am trying to make much more of an effort to shop locally.

I use Amazon as little as possible, but sometimes my SIL asks me to buy a specific thing for a niece or nephew's birthday and I can't find it anywhere else. I do try to buy from the independent sellers on there if I can.

I've minimised what I order because I can't be sure what I'm buying.

There's no way of easily checking where something is coming from and I've been caught out with cheap imitations from outside the EU, with no guarantee that they pass legal safety checks.
I can't trust the easily bought recommendations feedback and I don't trust Amazon to sort out the scammers.
Some orders smelled very strongly of petrol or fish.

I'm looking after young children; I won't take the risk.

It is for the Government to ensure people pay their taxes, not me.

I use Amazon a fair bit - his tax situation is for the government to sort out not me. I also believe that the high street and shopping services in general will evolve naturally over time. The high street is often not viable if yoh work full time anyway.

I like Amazon.
As a housebound person it has changed my life.

Even if I could afford the taxi fare into town most of our shops are not wheelchair accessible.
The Govt should find ways to get more ta.
Any delivery is equal. Amazon are no worse than anyone else.

i also order from other places but it still has to be delivered.

Some are small businesses who use it as a shop window/marketplace

Huge numbers of small businesses sell on Amazon - you wouldn't know you're buying from them as they use the "fulfilled by Amazon" system where they send their stock in bulk to Amazon warehouses and then Amazon deal with the order processing, packing, delivery etc - even the invoice is headed Amazon, but behind the scenes, it's small businesses who are selling the stuff. That's completely different from the Amazon seller marketplace where you get the stuff directly from the seller rather than an Amazon warehouse.

I've had clients selling hundreds of thousands of pounds of stock via "fulfilled by Amazon" where the customer doesn't know who the real supplier/retailer is because the reality is Amazon were just selling their stock in a fulfilment/dropshipping capacity.

I buy a handful of Kindle books a year (the Kindle itself was bought 2nd hand). About once a year I buy something else, as a pp said, usually the kind of random item that I don't know where else to buy. I've mostly found that by trying to reduce the amount I buy from Amazon, I think twice before I buy something (is it really worth going to the shops / searching the internet for alternative sellers?) which means I end up buying less stuff I don't actually need.

They don't sell anything that you can't get anywhere else

Depends how crap your local shopping is really doesn't it?

It really does - there's many things we've gone into small city center for and not found - nearby town with large shopping area is similar.

One example there are two shops that sell GCSE revision/course books - one of which has since stopped - neither seems aware that there's one board mainly sat by school students in area - wjec- and don't seem to carry the books for that board. Which means a trip to nearby cities or amazon - amazon is easier and I know I can get exactly what I need.

I check amazon and then eBay. If I can get similar from eBay, I do because that is usually a small business run by someone who is not a billionaire. If I can’t find similar, I use amazon.

I usually compare compare book prices with Waterstones - if there isn’t a huge difference, I use Waterstones. I think I’m lucky that I’m a 10 minute walk from an excellent shopping centre, so there is an option - and I do use it. But for example, my brother has asked for a book for Christmas which is 35 quid in Waterstones and 20 delivered on amazon - It is a no brainer.

Love Amazon, great business offering consumer choice and competitive pricing. I feel this backlash is a classic case of middle class virtue signalling. It's workers work their by choice, if it's the only job you can get them it's a problem with the market value of your skill set rather than the company.