Amazon's thrown in the towel on streaming and decided it'd rather be an ad-supported model with Freevee (which also eventually inherits Prime-exclusive shows).
For the rare instances I do want to order something physical from Amazon, waiting isn't a problem. For the rest of the time, I'd rather my dollars go anywhere else.
When someone like me looks at Walmart and says "There's a more ethical alternative", Amazon might have a problem.
But I assume Amazon retail leadership is self aware they're milking the long tail of historical brand cachet while under-investing in their future, at this point.
AWS and maybe some other businesses spin off, adios to the remainder as Sears 2.0.
The scope of humanity that use Amazon is gigantic, and the percentage of us pedantic, technically knowledgeable folks who'd give up some convenience, time, or even the purchase of an item, as part of a "righteous crusade" is vanishingly small.
Amazon may even increase their sales as consumer X purchases a replacement "thing 2" because "thing 1" was dead on arrival, and money these days ain't worth the hassle of returning or getting a refund on "thing 1".
Thanks for advertising it to me, but it might be futile. After having had my experience with the Amazon shopping giant, and how it fell from grace, I do not care to "invest" in another giant that will eventually end the same way.
Sure, not all of those downloads will have resulted in a purchase - but the same is true of Amazon.
The point is that Temu is takes the "masses of cheap crap" aspect of Amazon, and makes a virtue of it. It's effectively the Ryanair model - most people want cheap crap, so why bother with the last vestiges of Amazon-style customer service when you can ditch all that and be even cheaper and crappier?
They also all seem to have an orange colored website.
Specialty items are still hard, but I'm not buying a hammer from Amazon when my local supermarkets all carry it and I can physically inspect and heft the product.
It does seem ridiculous that chain stores still haven't figured out how to have a good online shopping experience.
> Specialty items are still hard
I stopped using Amazon years ago, and what I've done for specialized items is to find the actual manufacturer and order directly from them. This works 80-90% of the time. When it doesn't work, then I hit up the likes of craigslist, eBay, etc.
Amazon Music playing ads even during purchased songs.
Kindle tokens expiring as soon as you stop your monthly subscription.
Enough is enough.
A competing "direct from the manufacturer" sales site would be useful. Only the business that actually makes the thing could sell it. No intermediaries.
I've saved a good deal of money, and waiting a couple extra days for delivery has only been a minor inconvenience .
I had the same thought a couple weeks ago regarding direct-from-manufactuerer product search / purchase. I'd use it regularly.
I cancelled both Netflix and Amazon Prime last year and decided to do account hopping on a month by month basis. Their greed is what triggered this. Both have gone down a path of less and less interesting content, price increases, and now indeed this ad driven bullshit. I realized I'm paying 20 euros per month for both and struggling to find something worth watching for months.
So, I cancelled both and went over to Apple TV. They don't have a lot but what they have is quite nice. Once I'm done with that, I'll consider what to subscribe to next. Criteria here: whatever I pick has to have stuff I want to watch (ad free, obviously) and I'll unsubscribe the second I get bored. I'm done paying for multiple streaming services at the same time. I only want the good stuff. I'm not interested in the generic filler content, B movies, etc. that are cheap to license but horrible to watch.
I might come back to Netflix or Prime periodically to check certain shows. But not on a permanent basis. If more people do this, that gives them a nice price signal that they need to invest in quality.
It started from using Amazon to research and then looking for alternative larger online stores to buy from when product+shipping more or less matched Amazon.
A couple of times I have found good deals direct from the manufacture that were not available elsewhere, so I make a point of checking there as well now.
It feels like companies are able to setup a competent online store more easily now (billing and logistics).
Some of these tricks may be used for physical products as well, but at least they need to deliver a physical product. In the case of spam ebooks, this pipeline takes care of everything. You click around for a few hours, launch the software: bam, 20 junk books with just enough content to not warrant refunds and SEO'd titles to get at least a few dozen sales.
I looked into this well over a decade ago; back then, you could buy a set of DVDs that would teach (and, perhaps, assist) you in perpetrating this. I get the appeal: back then a popular category was tax tip books. Scrape some tips from here and there, slap on a dozen titles and author names, and sell for low enough that people don't mind taking a chance on your crap. Pity Amazon still hasn't made any successful steps against this.
Without enough demand no one would do it.
Even without kids, life is just so wonderful and intense to actually experience, stuff I pick up for just sitting and reading better have amazing reviews by many thousands. Yes, I won't support much some new starting author this way (but then if he wins say Hugo it gets on my list) but my time and well being is simply higher priority for me.
(Also: to me, blaming demand is a bit victim blaming - these scams are deliberately set up to entice as many readers as possible.)
How it's different than any other low-quality literature which was always in abundance on the market? Except before copywriting cost $500 and now generated one cost $20 to produce.
Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't?
PS: Same way some people love to buy cheap trash from AliExpress for $1.99 and at least generated books dont create actual e-waste, CO2 footprint and other pollution. And Amazon is now full with trash from AliExpress just 2x more expensive.
"They" use software to create many slightly tweaked copies under seemingly different author names. So the low effort of one cobbled together book takes the space of 20 or 30 books. I.e. anyone not playing this game is quickly drowned out by the ones who do.
> Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't?
The issue isn't censorship - or actually, it kind of is, but then by the fraudsters "censoring" non-fraudster books by swamping the market.
My latest attempt resulted in 1/3 of the goods being returned because they could be sourced cheaper elsewhere (eg AliExpress) after they were tested, or they were swapped by the buyer with defective goods purchase elsewhere returned (they had heavy wear). In the case where the goods were still functional, the packaging was damaged and I had to pay for the returns.
My conclusion is that amazons liberal return policies only allow something to be sold profitably at a 2-3x markup. Hence everything being garbage.
I won’t attempt it again.
As a vendor, I can’t imagine dealing with a high percentage of returns. I don’t know what the solution is.
Also, here in EU, amazon recently reduced their return window, from 30 days to 14 days after receiving, so some limits are being put in place, because some of my friends order a lot of things to make unboxing videos/tiktok and other crap and then return it, which is real waste.
Like stores that sold physical goods had to price in things like staff or shoplifting or business rates.
Yes, that was a typo but I'm leaving it.
But the problem is where else can you buy things online where this isn't a problem these days? Everywhere has become a marketplace akin to Alibaba (where people traditionally accepted the tradeoff of poor reliability in exchange for good prices when decent products were actually delivered).
Buying without meeting these conditions will only yield garbage and scams.
Full stop, no need to specify e-books.
I've moved my purchasing dollars elsewhere at this point with the exception of some very specific categories. Amazon is just too unreliable.