not Prime Time

“Prime Day” without the prime is a nice day

I cancelled Amazon Prime a little while back, so I am unable to partake in all the “Prime Day” deals that are on offer today and tomorrow. Which is fine, because Amazon is a horrible, abusive company, and I have been able to find alternatives without too much trouble. There are still a few things that can be tricky to source elsewhere, such is the power of Amazon’s crushing monopoly. This is bad for consumers and businesses alike.

Kudos to Ars Technica. As I write this at 8:24 a.m. Pacific time, they don’t have any stories about “Prime Day” deals on their main page. This may change over the course of the day, but it’s still nice to see. UPDATE, July 17, 2024: It did change. Day 2 has a featured story on the main page with links to deals provided by Wired magazine, another Conde Nast property. Still, it’s just one story and easy to ignore if desired.

The Verge has five stories, and Engadget has six before you even get below the “fold” (start scrolling). I stopped counting after that. There may be other tech sites that have even more, but I have some standards.

Also, Joe Rosensteel, a VFX artist, posting on Mastodon:

The Culling continues: Amazon edition

After years of having Amazon Prime, I finally cancelled it today. The process was not terribly difficult, but I did have to wade through several “Please don’t go, look at all the stuff you get!” pages to get to the point where I could actually cancel. I’m afraid their plaintive pitch persuaded me not! I did elect to let my current membership expire on renewal, rather than get prorated the few bucks back by cancelling right this moment in a fit of pique.

Here’s why I’m cancelling, in case other Canadians are considering (American Prime is a bit different, so I wouldn’t really compare the two):

  • Ordering far less often from Amazon
    • Harder to find what I want
    • To the point above, there is a vast sea of knock-offs and junk on amazon.ca now
    • Pricing is often just so-so
    • More stuff not covered by Prime shipping
    • That 2-day shipping? lol, nope! (Well, sometimes, but increasingly rare)
    • 11% off is not a deal, even if you say it is!
    • Everyone else is copying Prime Days now, often with better pricing
  • I can count the number of things I’ve watched on Prime Video on one hand. One was the execrable Moonfall, but that one’s more on me than Amazon, to be fair.
    • The upcoming move to charge more for “ad-free” Prime Video didn’t exactly make my socks roll up and down in delight, either
  • I never listen to Amazon Music, especially after the basic version was turned into a giant shuffle mode. If I want to listen to the radio, I can do that now, for free.
  • Never read anything through Prime Reading. My Kindle still doesn’t know that left-handed people exist, and Amazon is making token efforts at best to control the flood of AI-generated garbage sluicing into the Kindle store.
  • Took advantage of the Twitch freebies maybe twice? I don’t remember what I got.
  • The more information that comes out on how Amazon does business, the more comfortable I am in not sending money to an apparently Very Evil Empire

And that’s it! I look forward to buying local more often! Sort of.