Dumping Amazon and living a more deliberate life

I wish I’d quit buying from Amazon for ethical reasons, but really it was because the service turned to crap—yet one more victim of platform decay. However, it did become a whole lot easier to keep my promise over the past year when Amazon and its founder did one crappy thing after another. (Censorship! Excess! Digital repossession! ) I know it’s a bit ridiculous to celebrate NOT shopping somewhere—particularly since I was just consuming the same products elsewhere and I’m old enough to have survived an era where online shopping didn’t even exist—but it was painful at first, so I’m proud I followed through even though no one was watching me (except for my Amazon Echo, which I still use to play music and run kitchen timers and get the weather, but never to buy things!)

Not everything gets better with age

I used to adore Amazon. I had a rewards card that let me use points directly in the checkout cart and I only did surveys for my health insurance company because they paid me in Amazon gift cards that let me buy pretty much anything. I’d made my first purchase on May 14, 1999 (a VHS copy of Clerks) and as Amazon stocked more and more things over the years, I simply thought of it as the store. If I needed to get something from the store, I got it on Amazon. In my cart you might find shampoo, print cartridges, batteries, a kitchen rack, hand sanitizer, an iPad case, another iPad case I returned because the back cover felt weird, blu-rays, books, bookbinding materials, and more.

But in the mid-2020’s I noticed that more and more products were coming from mysterious third-party sellers who didn’t reveal much on their account pages as opposed to the usual small businesses looking for online customers who had their own web sites and social media. Dropshippers had become a growing presence on the platform, as had popup sellers who tried selling me sketchy goods before vanishing in the middle of the night. If you looked at those sellers’ pages, they’d be selling a weird variety of items: everything from hot sauce to training bras. Amazon was feeling less like a store and more like a parking lot where you could sell stuff off the back of your pickup truck. So, when I had three bad purchases in the course of three months, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

In June 2024, I ordered a ream of paper and received a counterfeit product whose serial numbers and name didn’t produce a single Google result. (If something doesn’t return a Google result, it doesn’t actually exist!) After I got my refund, I noticed the third-party seller had a dozen bad reviews that were crossed out with a note that Amazon had shipped the order and took responsibility for the poor experience. None of these orders had affected their overall rating, which gave them a deceptively high score. Shady! Then in August 2024, I ordered a brand new blood pressure monitor and received this:

The UPS sticker was particularly perplexing because the package had been delivered by an Amazon truck instead of a man in brown shorts. I’m fairly certain that Kevin C. from the lower east side of New York couldn’t be bothered to repackage his return, so he just slapped the UPS shipping labels directly on the product and sent it off into the world. (I have the man’s full name and address, so I suppose I could ask him myself.) I can’t say why it was resold like this—maybe the returns processor had a quota to meet? I know that returned merchandise is a serious problem for online businesses, but you shouldn’t be charging your customers full price for an item that was so obviously pre-owned, and I can’t trust an opened medical device to be accurate, so I exchanged it for a new version.

A few days later, I ordered a larger cuff to make it easier to get a reading and when it arrived—can you guess?—it had also been opened! Not only that, it was missing the adaptors, so you couldn’t plug the rubber hose into the machine.

That was my breaking point: August 24, 2024. Thank you, Kevin C., you lazy son of a bitch. You helped me end my toxic retail habits. I was done with Amazon.

Is abandoning deals such a big deal?

Okay, big whoop. A lot of people have never shopped at Amazon, and I obviously didn’t abandon capitalism or start an upcycling movement or vow not to buy anything from anyone for a year. So what’s the big deal?

Well, it meant admitting that I should have stopped shopping at Amazon years ago—because I definitely knew better. I’d heard that their workers got injured a lot, and that Amazon was accused of copying their sellers’ most popular items and undercutting them at a lower price, and that the company made a thirty-minute, animated, union busting video (probably so no one would have to show their face). But I’d looked the other way because that made my life easier.

I like to believe I’m a good person, but if you don’t act on your beliefs, they’re not really your beliefs, they’re your aspirations. I believe in unions and support worker’s rights, but I kept shopping at Amazon despite their awful business practices, so my actions didn’t really align with my self-image. When companies become more and more evil over time, it can be difficult to identify the tipping point at which you should abandon them, but mine should have come sooner. I’m sorry that I only quit because of crappy service and not because of the ways Amazon makes the world crappier, and I’m embarrassed that I sold out for something as cheap as free two-day shipping.

I know that one person’s shopping habits aren’t going to change the world, so I haven’t deluded myself into thinking I’ve altered the course of human history here. However, everything that’s happened in my country over the past ten years has made me reflect on who I want to be and what my actions say about me and how there’s sometimes a bigger gap between the two than I’d like. If quitting Amazon helps close that gap somewhat, the experience might give me the confidence to close it more in the future. Doing good things becomes a habit.

Harder, better, (not) faster, longer

In the past, I’d turn to Amazon if I couldn’t find an item locally (bookbinding supplies) or I didn’t know which local stores might stock it (my favorite shampoo). I’d also whip out that rewards card if Amazon had a better price or my local seller was more than fifteen minutes away.

It was kind of a pain to change my ways, but the inconveniences I encountered were annoying at best, particularly when compared to other dilemmas in my life. (Unrelenting chronic pain! Late stage capitalism! A world on fire!) So, I started buying more items locally even if it meant driving across town to pick something up, but when I had to buy online I faced some minor challenges.

1) Finding a reputable retailer required research and time

I wanted to avoid dropshippers and cheap Chinese crap, so Temu and Alibaba and Walmart.com were out. When I searched Google for stores, it would dangle recommended Amazon items at the top of my results like a tasty treat before I scrolled away to find an online retailer who wasn’t a scammer. I looked for small businesses or reputable chain stores, preferably in the US or Canada so shipping wouldn’t take ages. Ideally, I wanted one run by people who had at least a smidge of interest in their craft and weren’t solely in it to make money. (Private equity can piss off.)

A lot of these businesses had crappy web sites, so it was hard to tell if they were fly-by-night operations or places so old that they’d barely noticed the internet existed. Was it bad that they’d neglected their web presence or good that they’d been online since the late twentieth century? I would browse the “About” page for a founding story, peruse Google reviews from people who didn’t seem like shills, and use Google Maps to confirm that these places actually existed. I didn’t do a deep dive on anyone’s labor practices or investigate their supply chain, so hopefully I wasn’t supporting any inhumane treatment, but ultimately I had to accept that in a global world there are limits to what an average person can find out.

Once I’d compared prices and made a decision, I’d cross my fingers and hope my credit card company didn’t call me the next day about an identity thief who’d gone on a spending spree in Dubai.

Sometimes this process took ten minutes. Sometimes it took an hour. It depended on how psycho I got with my research and how hard an item was to find. Buying shampoo directly from the manufacturer was easy. Finding a good price on linen bookbinding tapes was hard.

2) Figuring out the checkout process was a game

The best thing about Amazon that I never appreciated was the predictable checkout experience. No matter what I was buying, no matter who the seller was, I clicked through the same screens to complete my purchase. All the listings had the same layout. My shipping and billing info was filled in. The receipt gave me an estimated delivery date. Buying from Amazon was easy and quick. Buying elsewhere required more attention.

Other sites usually required me to set up an account. Then I had to check my email to confirm that account. Then I had to poke around for the spot to enter my coupon code because most places give you a discount on your first order and I’m a Midwestern woman who never lets a deal slip by. The retailer would subscribe me to their email newsletter without permission, so I’d have to unsubscribe from that the next day. I learned to read the fine print on the checkout page after I realized I could have gotten free shipping if I’d spent four more dollars on ribbons. Every purchase was a game with new rules.

3) I paid equal or slightly higher prices

Overall, things usually cost the same or slightly higher than they did on Amazon. (I actually got print cartridges cheaper at Staples because they gave me 30% back in rewards, something I’d never paid attention to before because I’d defaulted to buying stuff on Amazon.) The shipping fees were the hardest thing to swallow, but I had to remind myself that a psychological trick was at play there because…

4) I had to pay shipping per purchase instead of annually

Amazon Prime is masterful at fooling you into thinking shipping is free because they charge a single annual purchase like a punch in the gut instead of jabbing you over and over again across multiple purchases. In reality, the shipping per purchase on Amazon costs $139 divided by how many purchases you make that year. In 2023, I made 19 purchases, which means I paid $7.72 per shipment. In 2022, I made 23 purchases, which averages to $6.04 per order. That wasn’t much different from what I paid for shipping on other sites. Whenever I got depressed about a $12 shipping fee, I reminded myself that between 2014 to 2024 I’d spent a total of $1307.48 on Prime. That’s a lot of bubble wrap!

5) I had to wait longer for an order to arrive

No one shipped my packages in two days like Amazon Prime did, but at least I didn’t have to feel guilty about sending a worker scurrying across a warehouse without a bathroom break because they were struggling to meet productivity goals. When I’d still been using Amazon, I’d often wished there was a shipping option that said, “It’s fine to take an extra day if you’ll just let Veronica pee.”

I never needed anything urgently, so I didn’t mind if it took a week or more for a package to arrive. One of the best parts about Christmas is enjoying the anticipation of opening your presents, so I tried to look at my shipments this way—wonderful gifts that I could look forward to receiving.

I also understood that part of the reason my packages were slow to arrive is because the new Indianapolis regional sorting facility is a black hole. Packages enter that building and go missing for weeks at a time—sometimes months. I ordered Christmas stamps directly from the post office last year and even those went missing for fifteen days. The postal service can’t deliver its own mail!

Other stores weren’t always perfect

Most of my purchases went fine, but there were a few bad encounters.

It’s brick and mortar to crush you better

I’d been trying to buy more everyday items at brick and mortar stores, figuring it would keep people employed and keep money in the community. I also thought it would be cheaper because I wasn’t paying for shipping. WRONG!

After buying a ream of paper at Staples—(It’s weird that I go there so often and buy so much paper, I know. One of the checkout ladies got worried when I didn’t come in for a few months.)—I started to wonder if the multi-purpose paper would have been a better choice than the copy paper, so I looked up the description online and practically gasped when the ream was listed fifteen dollars cheaper—almost 50% of the purchase price! Shame on you, Staples! The rewards I get on print cartridges do not excuse this bilking! I went back to the store and got refunded the difference, but only because I’d lucked into discovering their price gouging.

This was a reminder that companies that reward you are just as happy to rip you off. Amazon didn’t invent evil corporate tactics; they just perfected them. After that, I got more diligent about comparing in-store prices to online ones. That’s how I learned that Michael’s will give you better discounts if you buy online and pick up in store. It feels wrong to make the employees run around the building fetching me things—like Amazon factory workers—so I wasn’t sure if I should go for the thirty percent discount. But unlike Amazon factory workers, I assume Michael’s employees are allowed to take bathroom breaks and aren’t suffering from repetitive stress injuries because they handle a lot of different tasks, so I decided it was tolerable (though not ideal).

Delivery deception

When I was repairing some torn pages in my mom’s cookbook earlier this year, I bought some blotter paper on eBay even though it was more expensive than the rock-bottom Amazon price. Imagine my shock when this appeared on my doorstep:

An Amazon package! From eBay! And the creepiest part? It didn’t trigger my doorbell camera, so there was no video of its arrival.

THIS PACKAGE WAS DELIVERED BY A GHOST!!!

(Are they exploiting the undead workforce? Or did someone toss the envelope way too far from the sidewalk?)

My research revealed that the package arrived via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), so even though it was listed on eBay, the product itself was sitting in an Amazon warehouse and was delivered by an Amazon driver. The listing never suggested this. It simply said “Free 2-4 day delivery” and “Located in: Bronx, New York, United States” and “We use trusted carriers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS.”

This was total mindf*ckery. Amazon is so insidious that they’ve entered every retail corridor like spirits passing through the walls. You can never completely escape them. I was particularly riled that I’d paid extra solely to remove Amazon from the purchase, but they’d gotten a taste of the payment anyway. Worse, I don’t see how I can avoid this in the future if a seller doesn’t reveal they’re using FBA.

This only strengthened my resolve never to buy from Amazon again. I don’t like being fooled, and the lack of doorbell camera footage from the delivery really did creep me out. It also made me more hesitant to use eBay again. (Why have all my favorite online retailers from the 90’s gone downhill? Perhaps it was best that pets.com died a swift death instead of living to disappoint us.)

The sound of failure

There was only one item that’s available on Amazon that I haven’t been able to purchase elsewhere: replacement earpads for my noise-cancelling headphones. The current earpads are flaking and they’re an odd size, so I haven’t been able to find them at any US retailers. I eventually ordered a pair on eBay that would be shipped from China, which seemed a bit risky—and I was right!

Here’s the message the seller sent me right after I made the purchase:

Dear Buyer

We are glad to receive your order and payment. We will arrange shipment for you soon

If you need any help with your order, for example, you need to return the package, or you did not receive the package, or you are not satisfied with the received package, please send us a message through ebay first, we will solve the problem for you immediately after receiving the message, please don’t worry, we will certainly solve all the problems for you until you are satisfied

Thank you very much for your understanding

Wishing you a happy life

You’ll be shocked to learn that they never sent my item. They registered a shipping label on a Chinese mail site, but the status got stuck on pending and was cancelled twenty-something days later even though the seller never notified me of that. I cancelled the order through eBay and I got my money back, but the whole thing felt sketchy.

After that, I tried buying the earpads through a third-party seller on NewEgg, a site I’ve bought electronics from before. I chose them because they have a refund policy, which is good because I had to take advantage of it when the seller messaged me that the item was out of stock and asked that I cancel the order on my end. This felt suspicious because shouldn’t they be cancelling it? I’m not sure what was up with that, but it’s all good because I never got charged.

So, I guess I have to buy new noise-cancelling headphones all together? Even if I ordered the earpads on Amazon, I’m not sure if they’d actually arrive. This is probably a doomed quest.

Living a more deliberate life

When August 24th rolled around several weeks ago, I felt a silly surge of pride that I’d sustained my Amazon retail boycott for a year. I realize that not everyone can afford to pay more money for less evil, so I’m not judging anyone who still buys from Amazon. And I can’t say for certain that the companies I bought from instead are pure of heart, but none of them were obviously nefarious. I’m glad I got my ribbon crimps at Fire Mountain Gems and Beads and my bookmark ribbon from The Ribbon Factory and my metal triangle from Blick Art Supplies and not from a bunch of shell companies with bad reviews.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve dropped some other bad online habits lately. I cancelled my Adobe subscription two years ago because I was sick of their business practices, and it was easy to ditch Disney Plus in the name of free speech recently. I’m disenchanted by streaming in general, and I wish I’d kept more of my old CD’s. I underappreciated how nice it was to own objects instead of leasing everything.

I’ve gotten pretty serious about social media sobriety too, though I still check on my brother’s cat on Instagram. I occasionally post bookbinding projects there too, but otherwise my Digital Wellness app is a strict mistress guarding my mental health. I miss knowing what my friends are up to, but I don’t miss encountering ragebait after midnight on Reddit. Besides, social media isn’t designed to catch you up on your friends anymore anyway.

Dumping Amazon went hand-in-hand with ditching social media, Adobe, and Disney Plus, and it’s all been a sign that I want to lead a more deliberate life. I’d like to choose how I spend my time instead of getting swept away in the digital currents of the day; I don’t want to be sucked into an eddy or a whirlpool of when I could be rowing a boat to somewhere I actually want to visit.

One of the best tricks Amazon pulled was training me to think I never had to shop anywhere else. It turned me into an Ama-zombie, always going there by default, but eventually I remembered there are other stores and other ways to live. I want to be more purposeful about how I spend the second half of my life, particularly as my body breaks down from middle age and any energy I have is precious. Some people dump their partners during their mid-life crisis, but I guess I’m dumping my digital dead ends instead. I’m glad I ditched Amazon, but I’m even happier that I’m living a more deliberate life, one where my actions are better aligned with my beliefs. If I make better choices about where I shop, hopefully I can make better choices about other things and just live a better life in general. That’s not something you can order on Amazon.

Photos by conceptphoto [dot] info / CC BY 2.0 and Aisaisaghost / BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Author’s Note/Disclosure: I may have escaped Amazon’s retail hold on me, but not their digital grasp. Even though I’ve stopped making retail purchases on Amazon, I still use Amazon Web Services to store backups of my clients’ web sites. I’ve thought about moving them elsewhere, but the other cloud storage companies are evil too (i.e. Google and Microsoft), so I don’t think there’s a safe harbor here and it’s better to just leave the ships docked where they are.

I also bought a Kindle Paperwhite the year before I stopped shopping at Amazon, but I would have purchased a Kobo eReader instead if I’d known Amazon would stop letting us sideload books. I kept my old Kindle in airplane mode for years so Amazon wouldn’t reach in and edit or delete anything, but now you’re forced to give them that kind of access if you want to download a book. I still read library books on the Kindle, but I don’t buy ebooks from Amazon anymore.

As for Amazon Affiliate links, I’ve removed them from this site’s book pages and from the bottom of my posts, but you still might find some in old entries. It’s been years since I’ve earned enough to receive a payment from Amazon through those, so I don’t think it’s worth the time to hunt them all down for removal. If you see one, just don’t click on it, please.

Amazon really is insidious and I hope to completely escape them one day. I promise to keep trying!

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