r/technology • u/Sorin61 • Jan 27 '23
Amazon Will Start Charging Prime Members for US Grocery Orders of Less Than $150 Business
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-start-charging-prime-members-191411928.html7.2k
u/Greenfire32 Jan 27 '23
isn't the whole point of Prime that you pay a membership fee so that you don't have to pay other bullshit fees?
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u/FightingInternet Jan 28 '23
Next you're going to claim that the point of paying for a streaming service is so you don't have to watch ads.
PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN!
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u/stormdelta Jan 28 '23
If I see ads on a streaming service, I will go back to torrenting and pay for a blu-ray or digital purchase somewhere when/if available to support it.
Charge me whatever it takes to keep the service up without ads, but the moment you show me ads I'm done. Fuck that.
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u/MosesZD Jan 28 '23
We used Hulu. We were okay with the ads. But they added more and more and more... So then we subscribed to get rid of the ads as it was getting really obnoxious. Then, despite being subscribed, they gave ads again.
We left.
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u/NightlyNate Jan 28 '23
back to piracy!
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u/breakone9r Jan 28 '23
Yep. Streaming has become the new cable. Gotta subscribe to half a dozen different services just to watch the 5 or 6 shows you like, because every single one is on a different service.
If I have to sub to every damn service out there, I'd rather sub to just one: A good VPN.
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u/Wyldling_42 Jan 28 '23
Yeah, but remember when it was only cable and people would complain about not being able to buy services a la carte? So you didn’t have to pay for channels and services you didn’t want? Streaming seemed to solve that for like 5 minutes. And now they’ve monetized it to the point where we can’t enjoy anything.
I DVR everything and never watch it live, so I can fast forward through all the ads. I also pay for the levels of service without ads wherever I can. I despise ads and commercials with the fire of one thousand suns.
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u/almisami Jan 28 '23
I'm old enough to remember that cable used to be superior to OtA Television PRECISELY BECAUSE IT HAD NO ADS.
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u/VonGryzz Jan 28 '23
Really? I've had ads free Hulu for like 5 years now and still no ads. Is there a middle tier?
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u/appleshit8 Jan 28 '23
I think there are specific shows that get released like 24/48 hours after they 1st air that still "have" to have commercials
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u/267aa37673a9fa659490 Jan 28 '23
I'd say just torrent it now.
It doesn't matter how much you pay, they will never be grateful or content and always think about how to extract even more from you.
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u/ghostcaurd Jan 28 '23
Well they took away 2 day shipping, their tv app has started to suck, their products suck and now this
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Jan 28 '23 edited Feb 11 '23
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u/grantrules Jan 28 '23
So Prime membership basically grants you the privilege to buy other Prime services.
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Jan 28 '23 edited Feb 11 '23
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u/Only-Inspector-3782 Jan 28 '23
Shareholders expect infinite growth. Once you've saturated the market, the only way to grow is to charge more money to existing customers.
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u/Ricky_Rollin Jan 28 '23
I already paid for the year, but come this August my membership runs out and I am not looking back.
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u/tyranicalteabagger Jan 28 '23
Currently, anything Over $25 list price ships free, but slower. If you're not using the hell out of prime, it's not worth it.
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u/doktorhladnjak Jan 28 '23
It’s not even that much slower. Most of the difference is in Amazon’s marketing. I get most free shipping items within 3 days, often getting shortened after I check out to 1 or 2 days. Prime is a huge scam.
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u/Banshee_howl Jan 28 '23
Half the time I click the Prime only box, find a Prime product, and then in the cart find out it won’t ship for 3 weeks. The Prime is meaningless for shipping anymore.
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u/lionheart4life Jan 28 '23
I hate that you have to have Prime TV with it. I never use it, I just want the shipping. Probably not renewing this year either.
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u/techieman33 Jan 28 '23
Same here, I'm done in March. I don't really use any of their other services. I would only watch The Grand Tour and I watched a couple of football games this year. That's not nearly enough to justify the huge price increases that seem to be mostly to pay for all the extra services. Add in the shipping times that have gone from 1-2 days to 2-5 days and I'm done with prime.
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u/DustBunnicula Jan 28 '23
Don’t forget ending AmazonSmile and hurting hundreds of thousands of nonprofits. Fuck this company.
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Jan 28 '23
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u/earldbjr Jan 28 '23
Yeah I bet every time Amazon cut them a check they were like "<sigh> this shit again...", right?
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u/CG221b Jan 28 '23
Classic monopoly tactics, undercut competition to drive them out of business that when you are the only shop in town fuck over the consumers to maximize profit. It’s so ridiculously transparent that it would be funny if it wasn’t so terrible for everyone
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u/couple4hire Jan 28 '23
thats the point, of taking losses early on only to make profit later on
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u/Miv333 Jan 28 '23
I still have 2 day shipping and even 1 day shipping on some items. Certain orders over $25 can even be same day.
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u/EdmundCastle Jan 28 '23
It’s because you live near a hub. People in more rural areas are getting slower Prime delivery.
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u/Guitarist53188 Jan 28 '23
I can confirm. I live in the greater Seattle area and get same day. But had to live in a rural area about 1hr 1/2 away it'd take a week sometimes.
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u/PandFThrowaway Jan 28 '23
I think I have 3 FCs within a 15 mile radius and the amount of stuff I get same day/overnight is crazy. Sucks to hear it’s getting worse for others.
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u/DogofManyColors Jan 28 '23
I live in a decent sized city and my shipping has gone from 2 day to 1 week. Sometimes longer. I cancelled my membership.
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u/notquitepro15 Jan 28 '23
My experience is still 2-day shipping… but they don’t ship for 3 days to a week from when I order it. So I’ll order Monday and maybe have an estimated delivery date of Friday/Saturday… if I’m lucky. And this is a city only an hour away from one of their hub cities
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u/Knute5
Jan 27 '23
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Every day you pay a little more ... get a little less. One more degree higher in the frog boiler.
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u/thebug50 Jan 27 '23
I think about this a lot.
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u/duaneap Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
I do too specifically with regard to streaming services.
Edit: typo
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u/The_Condominator Jan 28 '23
I was a pirate before, during, and now after, streaming. It's the only way you "own" media.
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u/whiskey_pancakes Jan 28 '23
Same here. Companies learned a lot from the pandemic and it’s only going to get worse. As long as everyone can keep getting away with it why would they all stop. We’re ducked man
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u/MediaMoguls Jan 28 '23
The truth is that it’s a mix of this and companies realizing that they’ve been doing things the last decade that are truly not viable anymore.
Uber is expensive af now, not (only) because they are greedy dickwads, but because they can’t afford to lose money on every ride anymore. They always were, but now daddy is no longer giving them infinite money to incinerate. Ads help, but it’s gotta come from somewhere.
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u/AutoModreetor Jan 28 '23
Customers becoming accustomed to getting shit they don't really value as much as they thought. Saving the $20 or walking 15 minutes? Maybe that exercise is worth it. Wait an extra day for shipping by not paying for Prime? Fine, I don't really need it that quickly. Do I want to order from Amazon at all when Target and Walmart have the same thing cheaper? Maybe I will compare prices instead of clicking "fast checkout."
The consumer has been getting fleeced because they get stuck in stupid habits that cost them money. Just quit consuming, fuck their record profits.
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u/MediaMoguls Jan 28 '23
Yah, the utopia we had for a while there (woah, cabs are now $3 instead of $20!) turns out to have been more of a function of economic policy than a permanent upgrade unlocked purely by technology.
A lot of stuff that seemed too good to be true actually was. Returning an item to Amazon and having them refund you and say “eh just keep it” felt like a peak imo. Those days are numbered.
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u/yesgirlsusereddit Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
Getting rid of Amazon smile was the thing that flat out made me angry
Edit: I just went and signed up for a monthly contribution to my charity of choice. Charities are scrambling because the donation stream supplied by Amazon Smile was really important for them and it's going away. It's just $5/month that I signed up for, but I hope it helps counteract some of the harm Amazon's abrupt cancellation of the program is doing.
(Btw if you're interested, my charity of choice is Earthjustice - their tagline is "Because the Earth needs a good lawyer" and I so agree, they've made a big difference in fighting legislation that would have had broad reaching effects and they're a highly rated charity
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u/nag204 Jan 28 '23
Someone posted that they worked for the smile program and the point was to get people to bypass searching on Google and got straight to Amazon so they didn't have to pay Google. So you can go back to searching on Google and making them pay for the clicks if you want to stick it to them.
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u/yesgirlsusereddit Jan 28 '23
If it came down to Amazon or Walmart, exact same price for item, I would go to Amazon because they had smile. Not gonna happen anymore. I'm no longer convinced Amazon is any better than Walmart
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u/poetker Jan 28 '23
I started avoiding Walmart cause it's 90% cheap Chinese crap.
Now I'm avoiding Amazon for the same reason.
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u/PhoenicianKiss Jan 28 '23
Good move. I’m now giving monthly/directly to my charity as well: Thorn
The problem of child sex trafficking and sexual abuse is vast. It’s not isolated to developing countries. It’s happening here. And now. Abusers are co-opting new and emerging technology to hurt children. Understanding how is key to stopping the abuse.
At Thorn, we form long-term partnerships to build tools to fight child sexual abuse. We want our partners at tech companies, in law enforcement, and at NGOs, to have what they need to help kids. So we identify the needs, gather resources, and create powerful solutions.
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u/NWCJ Jan 27 '23
If it makes you feel better they just delivered me 4 tires for my truck. To my remote Alaskan island. I'm pretty sure it cost them more to ship than I paid for the tires. They won't make anything on me this year.
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u/wewinwelose Jan 28 '23
Last I checked I don't think the delivery portion of Amazon even profits.
I am pretty sure Amazon makes most of its money from web hosting?
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u/xdisappointing Jan 28 '23
I could be wrong because it’s been awhile since I was on the logistics part of Amazon but I believe Amazon had a contract with UPS which helped them not totally bleeed money on shipping but they still did.
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u/Mothringer Jan 28 '23
The way they're structured you can't really do a real p/l calculation on their shipping system as though it was a separate business. But you are correct, AWS is their primary cash cow profit-wise.
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u/renlewin Jan 27 '23
The loss of ‘free’ and increase in delivery charge is for Prime grocery orders only. For now…
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u/Djinnwrath Jan 28 '23
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
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u/makesyoudownvote Jan 27 '23
Fun fact. This actually doesn't happen with frogs. The experiment has been shown to be almost entirely B.S.
That said the metaphor is still appropriate in situations like this because people absolutely will fall for this.
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u/AdHuman3150 Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
Nah, frogs have the sense to jump out of the water. A human will think they're in a luxurious hot tub until it boils them to death.
Edit: metaphorically speaking, not a literal hot tub. An example is consumerism. We think more stuff will bring us happiness but really just leaves us empty and wanting more. Or "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", people think it's a privilege to live in a country where millions don't make enough money to survive and struggle until they die $200,000 in medical debt.
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u/Dblstandard Jan 27 '23
Meanwhile Amazon made insane profits in the last 3 years.
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u/wildengineer2k Jan 27 '23
That’s probably mainly from AWS. Tech companies seem to have a habit of launching services that aren’t at all profitable with the hope that later they’ll somehow figure out a way to monetize it. Alexa is a clear example. It seems like a backwards way to do things to me.
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u/AT-ST Jan 27 '23
Small tech companies do it with the hopes of being able to sell it to larger tech companies for a ton of money. Big tech companies buy that tech because they see software/service that people seem to like and they want to monetize it. Often, the monetization process causes changes that drive away the previous users and fail to draw in new ones.
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u/recycled_ideas Jan 28 '23
That's not really what happened with Amazon.
Amazon was a retail space first, and in the context of a retail space Alexa (and prime) makes perfect sense. The point is to get people buying from you and you're removing all the barriers that stop them.
To support this retail space and making it competitive Amazon did a whole bunch of It infrastructure work and a whole bunch of logistics work. The first got spun off to create AWS and was wildly successful.
The second also got spun off, but only sort of and it's caused a lot of problems for Amazon.
Amazon logistics is sold to a lot of different companies and it's really the primary product of Amazon's retail branch, but it's not detached from Amazon's store front. Because Amazon wants to sell its logistic service it provides no curation on its store front, but because its logistics service is tied to its store front no one else does either.
Alexa no longer makes any sense because no one in their right mind would order anything off Amazon just by product name and Prime doesn't really make sense because the speedy delivery it offers for free is now the core product.
TL:DR Amazon's retail/warehouse arm needs to decide whether it's a store or warehouse and either make the store not shit even if it cuts into warehouse profits or close the store and let other people use the warehouse service who will make their store not shit instead.
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u/MT5 Jan 28 '23
I'd argue that Alexa never made any sense for retail even from the beginning. Who's ordering anything without physically looking at it first and who on earth at Amazon thought it would be a thing people want?
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u/SteveWoods Jan 28 '23
It makes sense in the context of being an idea pitched by people who never go to the store themselves and just tell their spouse/butler to grab it, and filtered by people making enough money that they still don't really care how much they pay. Especially since it was born out of a bubble of like, Silicon Valley tech optimism/hype where everyone was getting into the new world of possibilities as smartphones revolutionized everything.
Like, all the Cryptobro/Metaverse garbage out there is obnoxious enough now, but there's infinitely more skepticism/cynicism towards all that shit right now than there was back then. A lot more people willing to get excited about some new technology because "omg I love Amazon/Google/Apple I can't wait to see how they make this improve my life!"
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u/usaaf Jan 27 '23
The frog is lucky. There's a place to jump out. We ain't got no interdimensional portals 'round here...
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u/Unt4medGumyBear Jan 27 '23
That is a $115 increase in the minimum order. What the fuck??
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u/kaptainkeel Jan 28 '23
"Fuck you, what are you going to do? Actually physically go to the store? LOL!" - Amazon, probably.
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u/EeveeBixy Jan 28 '23
In a year $150 will buy you milk, 1 carton of eggs and a bag of rice, Amazon is just planning ahead.
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u/burnttoast11 Jan 28 '23
Free delivery never made any sense financially for Amazon. It was a temporary service offered to gain more subscriptions. They were always loosing money with it with the hope that you kept your Amazon Prime subscription.
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u/Orange-Bang Jan 28 '23
They burned out the entire potential workforce by forcing them to pee in bottles because it's their fetish.
I'm not even really joking about any of that.
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u/TRIGMILLION Jan 27 '23
I just tried to buy something and all options said Eligible for Prime Shipping with a 5 day delivery time. Or next day for if you pay extra. When did that happen? I ended up going to Best Buy and it was cheaper and they gave me free next day shipping. I don't know why people still have Prime accounts. I just do because I'm on someone else's and they like the video stuff.
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u/rob_s_458 Jan 27 '23
It would be funny to see things go into reverse. Instead of seeing it at Best Buy and then ordering on Amazon, people will now read the reviews on Amazon, compare products, etc, and then go to Best Buy to pick it up
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u/nothingweasel Jan 28 '23
I have used Amazon to look at reviews for products on the shelf while standing in brick and mortar stores.
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u/hyper12 Jan 28 '23
Can't even trust the reviews. You'll be looking at a skillet with 4.5 stars and the written reviews are kinda negative, then halfway through you realize most of the reviews are for a damned paintbrush set or something that's not even listed.
Amazon gets a little worse every month, I've started really appreciating brick and mortar stores where I don't need to filter through 50 LOUDONG and YINGTSAO sponsored products to find what I'm looking for.
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u/harakiri-man Jan 28 '23
This is the way as it should be always. Having product in hand has different feeling.
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u/ItsCalledDayTwa Jan 27 '23 •
It's so infested with pure junk and fake reviews as well. Unless you absolutely know the exact brand and model or title you're looking for, you're gambling on what amounts to alibaba arbitrage.
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u/Agreeable-Dog-1131 Jan 27 '23
even if you know the exact brand and model, and even if you order it from the brand’s amazon page, you can still end up with a counterfeit item because amazon stores all stock of a particular item together regardless of who the seller is.
https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/
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u/blacksoxing Jan 28 '23
There's an irony that Amazon is now forcing people like me, who loved Amazon, back into Target, Best Buy, and Walmart's good graces with their pick up and delivery options.
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u/Sweaty-Emergency-493 Jan 27 '23
It’s true. A lot of it is drop shipped AliExpress or Alibaba, which is the same company essentially except it’s housed in Amazon FBA warehouses. So that’s how you don’t have to wait 4-6 weeks to receive it from China
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u/caverunner17 Jan 28 '23
Any time I need something knock off I check Aliexpress first and see if the Amazon premium is worth it. Sometimes, it's a significant markup, and I'm OK waiting a month to get it.
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u/Fantastic-Evidence75 Jan 28 '23
I noticed this. And on AliExpress it’ll be like 70% less $$$
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u/Sweaty-Emergency-493 Jan 28 '23
Dude for every shit they sell for $10 on Amazon, it’s like $0.75 on AliExpress
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u/LowRezDragon Jan 27 '23
How I shop for stuff nowadays
"Best beard trimmer reviews reddit"
Cycle through posts until I find a few that recommend the same brand that seem genuine and get that product→ More replies (4)80
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u/Awesomest_Possumest Jan 28 '23
And God forbid you put a negative review. I've been getting harassing emails daily for a month since I gave a one star review about something. To my personal email, which sellers aren't supposed to have. Chatting with Amazon they say there's no way the seller got my personal email. Ok, then explain to me why the link included in the first email (I know, I'm dumb for opening a link but it really did just say that it was apologizing for their product based on my review) goes directly to my review. there's no way to report the seller, just send the emaols to their stop spoofing email account, despite the fact that it isnt spoofing. They're offering me Amazon credit to remove a review, but in principle I just don't want to. But I may eventually if they get up to offering me $50....
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u/NotoriousBee Jan 28 '23
This happened to me. I bought a laptop, the GPU was dead on arrival. 1 star.
I was blown. The. Fuck. Up.
Emails. Phone calls. Nonstop. Asking me to change the review and that they'll make it right.
I put the review because I was getting nowhere with replacing my laptop.
Fuckin ridiculous
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u/icefire555 Jan 27 '23
Yeah, I pretty much started ordering everything not on Amazon. I'm 75/25 if I'm going to cancel the subscription because most things ship faster from other places. I have a handful of items I still buy from Amazon but it's lost a lot of value in my eyes.
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u/sharts_are_shitty Jan 28 '23
Also even without Prime you may get what you ordered with free shipping (over $25) like maybe a day later than Prime shipping. Oh the horror.
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u/Parasitisch Jan 28 '23
I canceled mine years ago. Amazon stirred up a lot of competition so a lot of places do 2 day shipping now and prices are at least very similar. Most recognizable products are usually the same.
Every once in a while, they offer me free prime, so I take it and then set a reminder to cancel it. I’d say 3-4 months of last year had free prime.
I also found that I felt as if I was buying with prime because I was paying for prime, and just stuck in that loop.38
u/darkeststar Jan 27 '23
Covid was the original denouncement of Prime 2-Day shipping. Since lockdown ended it pretty much has just gone the way of every other policy, which is just "This is the way we do things now, take it or leave it."
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u/Orange-Bang Jan 28 '23
They just require me to spend over $25 and I can often get it same day.
What is new for me is packages getting stuck in limbo for weeks, entirely within Amazon's system. I thought their system was better than that. I contacted support and they guy legitimately said it might get delivered yesterday.
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u/M_R_Big Jan 27 '23
Amazon has the logistics for these things whereas other retailers rely on third parties. If Amazon is starting to charge for next day I expect retailers to follow within the next year.
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u/Dubzophrenia Jan 27 '23
So, a lot of the time if your prime orders are more than 2 day shipping, it's because Amazon has the product, but it's not located in a fulfillment center within a reasonable distance from your delivery address. It's especially prevalent if you live in a more rural area, or are far from any metropolitan areas.
Essentially, if you live in Maine and the product you want to order is only located in a fulfillment center in California, you will still have the prime shipping but it'll be an extended time because they need to get it across the country first.
Prime is especially useful to someone like me in Los Angeles, because depending on the product and the time I order it, I get a lot of items delivered same day.
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u/BellaFace Jan 27 '23
As someone who lives in Maine, we’d get 2 day shipping prior to Covid with no problem. Since the holidays it’s been 5-7 days. $139/year for jack shit, basically. Corporate greed at its finest.
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u/LadySigyn Jan 27 '23
Salem, MA: we've noticed the same thing. So we're right next to a MAJOR metro and they're pulling this shit too.
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u/ShinePale Jan 27 '23
I ditched Prime for Walmart Plus. I'm kind of scared to post this, because I'm worried that if it becomes too popular, they'll start acting shitty. But so far they've been 11/10 as a service.
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u/krum Jan 27 '23
I'm still seeing stuff next day free delivery and I live out in the boondocks.
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u/whatweshouldcallyou
Jan 27 '23
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In related news I will not be getting my groceries delivered from Amazon after Feb 28.
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u/Profitsofdooom Jan 27 '23
Mine ends the 26th.
In related news, their app has gotten so fucking convoluted and hard to navigate. It wasn't easy for me to find that date.
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u/dinner_is_not_ready Jan 27 '23
I have never understood that company that touts itself to have the best engineers have such a crap app
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u/Profitsofdooom Jan 27 '23
The one thing I've seen on it that boggles my mind is when they lose something or delay something, it says contact customer service, but doesn't fucking link you or have a button to start a chat. You have to go find the Customer Service section thru menus and then trick a bot to let you talk to a "person."
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u/Miv333 Jan 28 '23
If it's too much trouble to contact support, then they don't have to deal with you.
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u/c-winny Jan 28 '23
this is absolutely intentional. directing you to a bot that hopefully addresses your issue is more cost-effective for them than hiring more reps that can actually help you.
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u/c-winny Jan 28 '23
from the design side i can speak to this: building good user experience for complex sites is difficult and requires thoughtful research and design.
amazon prioritizes design changes solely on whether or not the design translates to “more clicks on X”, or “more traffic directed to Y”. you make enough incremental changes like these and you lose sight of the big picture.
amazon knows their user experience is terrible. they just don’t really care as long as you keep buying from them.
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u/FlaringAfro Jan 28 '23
A lot of it is on purpose. They don't want you to be able to easily compare two items side by side, they want you to buy the first result that's paid to be promoted to the top.
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u/renlewin Jan 27 '23
This grocery delivery increase especially affects the elderly and other homebound people. I rarely need more than $35 of stuff a week as a chair-bound senior. I don’t have a massive refrigerator or freezer, so don’t tell me to stock up. Also, I have been using Prime Fresh for — guess what? — Fresh items! A little old homebound person does not need $150 of fresh stuff in one order. Not sure what I’ll do now. Avoiding the nursing home is getting harder all the time.
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u/Posh420 Jan 27 '23
Idk your proximity to a Walmart supercenter or neighborhood market. But most offer same day grocery delivery for orders over 35 I believe.
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u/TheAb5traktion Jan 28 '23
This grocery delivery increase especially affects the elderly and other homebound people. I
I'm right there with you. I'm disabled. Going shopping in a store sucks because most of them are the size of warehouses. I've been using Amazon Fresh because it's included with the Prime subscription fee. Don't know what I'll do now.
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u/dayofbluesngreens Jan 27 '23
It is really awful. Other posts on here mention Walmart Plus. I haven’t looked into it, but maybe it can be an option?
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u/Chicken65 Jan 28 '23
Walmart Plus is awesome. No questions asked refunds on any mistakes or wrong/bad groceries. Things can be out of stock often that’s one downside but it means it was out of stock at the store so it saved you a trip trying to look. For non perishables if that happens they often next day ship the item for free from a warehouse or another store.
They clearly want to destroy Amazon with groceries. The fine print says you need to buy $35 minimum per order for free delivery but they have waived that every single time I’ve ordered, not sure why but as a result Walmart went from 50 percent of my grocery budget to 95%.
I got a deal on it for one year for $50 I think it’s normally $99. It comes with Paramount Plus.
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u/kingsleyafterdark Jan 28 '23
It’s not always that it’s out of stock at the store. I used to be a merchandiser for a very well known company and once when I was stocking our product at a Walmart a supervisor came up and asked me when I started, because he was going over items that were not picked in a bunch of orders. Then he asked if I could recall if XYZ etc were on the shelf before I started. They were all either partially or almost fully stocked, and I hadn’t even had any new product for those come in.
I’m guessing the workers didn’t give enough of a crap, and just didn’t bother. Considering how they’re paid and treated I’m not surprised in the slightest.
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u/LeapIntoInaction Jan 28 '23
I tried Walmart Plus briefly. The first order was fine. The second order was for an entirely different household but, at least they let me keep all the weird luxury vegetarian products. They do not seem reliable.
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u/ApatheticWithoutTheA Jan 27 '23
Aight I’m out. Amazon’s plan of being cheaper than everywhere else and then jacking up the prices after killing competition is complete.
Nothing about Amazon is a good value anymore most of the time.
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u/HesSoZazzy Jan 28 '23
Ya, I just cancelled mine too. Had it since its inception. Too many takebacks.
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u/chingy1337 Jan 27 '23
Already stopped using Whole Foods delivery. Good job Amazon lol
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u/unclefipps Jan 27 '23
So basically, between Amazon's increasingly slow deliveries, rising Prime prices, and this, Amazon really doesn't want people to use Prime anymore.
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u/dudreddit Jan 28 '23
Prime is looking less attractive each day. Amazon is taking back many of the benefits it offered customers while raising the cost of Prime itself. The last takeback was related to Amazon Music. Instead of being able to listen to an entire album it "shuffles" now.
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u/grimace24 Jan 27 '23
I use Amazon Fresh all the time. This is a kick in the nuts. I stopped using Instacart and others due to fees like this. The fees Amazon is instituting actually make Instacart the more economical option for any orders less than $150.
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u/Jorycle Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
Yeah, all these services are going to shit.
I used Instacart, they started pumping up fees. I caved and paid for the instacart membership thing because it had no fees - a few months later, they quietly added fees to deliveries even with memberships, with your membership bonus being half off the fee. I'm probably not going to renew after my current subscription ends because I'm assuming they'll find 5 more ways to screw me out of more money by then.
Fresh is okay, but their selection is pretty mediocre (they don't even carry a lot of very basic drinks? What's that about?) and 9 times out of 10 delivery dates in the greater atlanta metro are next day instead of same day. And now additional fees? You can't tell me these companies need the extra revenue to pay for these services, I've read the financial reports. Just pure fucking greed to screw families that just don't have time to get out to the store because of the 37 other ways capitalism has fucked us.
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u/mashuto Jan 28 '23
Yeah, all these services are going to shit.
I think the whole business model of all of these types of services is basically a loss leader. They know people will want to use their services because of how convenient they are, so they price them low enough at first to make them really attractive, even though it loses them money. Then they all jack up the prices banking on people having gotten used to using them that they will continue to use them even though they are no longer a good deal.
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u/Cakeking7878 Jan 28 '23
That’s what Amazon has been doing for ever. They use AWS to subsidize everything else they do to keep prices low. Then they capitalize on the market then raise prices when competition is gone
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u/The_perfect_Melody Jan 28 '23
Instacart might be worth it if they didn’t fuck up as much as they did. This last year I’ve had 3 wrong deliveries. One lady gave me wrong groceries and delayed what I had planned for 3 hours I had to re order everything.
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u/az_shoe Jan 28 '23
Many grocery stores do FREE store pickup. Just show up, use the app to sya you arrived, and they dump everything in the trunk.
No fees, no markup.
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u/Dan_Flanery Jan 27 '23
Try Shipt. I compared prices between them, Instacart and Amazon Prime and Shipt generally came out cheaper and with broader selection, since like Instacart you can order from multiple retailers.
Instacart was hella expensive, although they do have the broadest range of stores and might be worth the membership cost due to the selection of things you can’t get elsewhere. But I’d only use them for items I can’t pick up myself nearby and can’t get yet from Shipt.
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u/balthisar Jan 27 '23
Try Kroger or whatever they're called in your area. Around here, home delivery is $7 and delivery prices are the same as in-store prices.
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u/dlang17 Jan 27 '23
Yeah prime has slowly just gotten not worth it. Finally but the bullet and cancelled it this year. Turns out you can get free shipping just about anywhere if you’re willing to wait. If I need it now, then I’ll drive to the store.
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u/Lensmaster75 Jan 27 '23
Most of my prime deliveries have been taking longer than two days. The price is usually not the cheapest and their selection is turning into Wish or Banggood. The search is terrible and I’ve had my wife looks something up and it was three dollars cheaper on Amazon if you were not signed in as a prime member.
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u/nateofallnates Jan 27 '23
Cancelled my prime membership 4 months ago. Honestly I'm not sure why I was paying for one to begin with as I live in a rural area and it takes weeks for items to be delivered despite claiming "2 day delivery".
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u/ghostella Jan 28 '23
Been a prime member for at least 10 years. Will be canceling my subscription before the next renewal. And it has nothing to do with this, as I’ve never ordered groceries from them. But it’s one thing after another.
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u/92037 Jan 28 '23
We are going through the whole ‘is it worth it’ mental gymnastics. I love the video part, she does not. The Wholefoods thing is dead so not benefit there. The free delivery so basically ‘Meh’ for both of us as nothing we buy is worth the instantiate gratification.
So it comes down to video. I do t ant to be that torrent guy. But maybe I need to be that random torrent guy? :-(
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u/MaliciousPorpoise Jan 28 '23
Cancelled both Netflix and Amazon recently.
Fuck 'em.
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u/dontbeslo Jan 27 '23
So the price of the Prime Membership itself has increased
Whole Foods delivery now incurs a fee Amazon Fresh delivery now incurs a fee Amazon Smile is retired
And they still claim to be “customer obsessed”
Time to start shopping elsewhere
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u/LonnieAvanti Jan 27 '23
Stop shopping at Amazon.
This isn’t the company is was 10 years ago. The service is TERRIBLE, they let rip off products run rampant on their website, and their customer service HATES YOU.
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u/sassyseconds Jan 28 '23
I said this somewhere else in this thread, but we've come full circle to where we're now looking up stuff on Amazon to see what we want before going to best buy to get it faster and cheaper...
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u/Cariboudjan Jan 27 '23
$150 in groceries. What’s that? 2 boxes of cereal and a sack of potatoes?
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u/DiomedesAuRa Jan 28 '23
Yesterday I terminated my Amazon prime. Delivery takes ages anyway and Amazon music is horrific now.
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u/rapscallionrodent Jan 28 '23
I don't know about everybody else, but in my area the Amazon Fresh prices aren't all that great, and the selection is limited compared to instacart. If I used it, it was for basics to hold me over until I could do a real shopping trip. The free delivery if I spent $35 was what kept me with them vs instacart. I guess it's back to instacart.
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u/movet22 Jan 27 '23
There is a breaking point that these big tech firms are going to see very soon (Netflix is shady seeing it):
People want convenience and fair pricing. Once you start taking those things away, people will go back to how they did it before, like pirating TV, in Netflix's case.
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u/boli99 Jan 28 '23
- Throw money at the service to make it excellent.
- Throw more money at the service to drive down prices and push competitors out of the market.
- Gain market share, make billions and 'win' the game.
- Decide that winning by billions isnt enough
- Make staff work harder
- Make staff work harder
- Cut staff
- Increase prices
- Increase prices
- Increase prices
- goto 5
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u/shlammysammy Jan 28 '23
Sadly it’s things like this that make me think the amazon dream will die just as quickly as the amazon business was born
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u/mlaffs63 Jan 27 '23
I just canceled my Amazon Prime membership because they lost two orders in a row and only got about 10% of my deliveries delivered on time. The rest were late or very late.
It looks like they made a conscious decision to make their customer service considerably worse. And to provide a worse service than they used to overall
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u/718Brooklyn Jan 27 '23
I was just thinking today that middle class people had way too much money. Thanks Jeff!
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u/the_pedigree Jan 27 '23
Getting closer and closer to cancelling prime. I already don’t watch their content
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u/Galvanized-Sorbet Jan 28 '23
Every year it becomes harder to justify the offering
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u/creepyswaps Jan 27 '23
Welp, I guess no more prime fresh orders for me. It was barely worth it, if I bought the right things that were the same price or slightly more expensive, and paying a $5-7 tip, but not having to use any gas or put wear and tear on my car, or spend my own time shopping.
But usually my orders are somewhere between $50-75. So now, with the tip, it will be $12-17 dollars to get an order delivered. Nope. I'll take 40 minutes (round trip), drive over to my local grocery store and shop for myself. It's also a much better selection.
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u/Supra_Genius Jan 27 '23
I guess that this means the end of Amazon grocery. Pity that they bought Whole Foods for nothing now...
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u/CandyFromABaby91 Jan 27 '23
On top of getting all that ad money. Seeing promoted products for every search is getting annoying.