Comment on Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit
BigBenis@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Easy fix, don’t buy from Amazon.
What’s the alternative? The other places I can order a big box of cheap stuff from (Walmart, Target) are run by even worse people and have even worse service.
I once ordered porcelain plates from target and they arrived with no packaging. I don’t mean insufficient packaging, I mean four plates just thrown in a giant box with absolutely nothing else. Somehow 3 were not broken.
Generally, I believe the convenience of cheap shit delivered to your door comes at the invisible cost of exploitative labor practices and/or excessive consumerism by the means of low quality crap that will need to be replaced regularly or through “buy more and save” deals. If you want to avoid supporting that, you’re probably going to have to spend a few extra bucks buying from a smaller business or buying secondhand.
Convenience isn’t free and if we want to reduce our dependence on harmful institutions we’re going to have to make some sacrifices.
I do this. But, I’m also lucky to live in a city with second hand shit everywhere. Not everyone lives in a city.
But, google shopping will tell you an alternative store to buy most things online. And compare costs for you. This gets tricky if you’re also trying to cut google putbof your life though. There really is no ethical consumption under capitalism ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Well, in the case of the OP, the alternative is the manufacturer: www.ifixit.com/Tools
Walmart and Target aren’t run by worse people. I’ve never heard of Target or even Walmart employees being forced to piss in bottles or a robot will fire them.
They said, they are still bad people, as retail capitalists, but are you ready to have that conversation?
Retail capitalists are fine, but Amazon, Walmart, and Target all did the maga loyalty thing after Trump’s win. I don’t need to buy from someone who shares my politics or even doesn’t disagree with me, I just need them to not be outright oligarchs using my money to support dictators.
Good luck finding that unicorn.
I don’t want to simp for Target too much, but the union DCs I’ve been in seem to treat their employees pretty good. No idea about the stores though, I’ve only seen their distribution centers.
Target also have free 2 day shipping and 5% cash back if you use their “Red Card”, which is available as a debit or credit card. I’m using the debit card version. Some items do require a $25 minimum order, but not all of them.
Either buy more expensive shirts or stop buying creatine if you want to stop ripping them
This comment should be higher lol
Go into debt on those t-shirts if you have to
Shop for shit on amazon then buy it from the manufacturers website.
I recently discovered dupe.com , which works quite well by giving it an Amazon link and finding it on potentially cheaper, definitely non-Bezos websites.
Just a heads up on the Costco online thing, their selection isn’t that expansive, so it can’t replace Amazon for you. You’re at the whims of what item and brand they decide to carry and when.
Temu or aliexpress
Lmfao
What’s wrong with Target? Only thing I heard was backlash from putting out certain kinds of lgbtq+ designs and then reacting by pulling those back (and getting backlash again for that).
Support your local businesses. Unless its a super niche product, just buy it local
Normally cheaper on eBay in my experience. Pretty rare that I will use Amazon these days
So you literally never buy from Amazon?
You must live in a very major city.
Ebay, Etsy, and the manufacturer direct are great places to go too
Those have their own issues.
It’s literally not even hard, but yes you have to put some minor effort into it
“Not convenient”? Have you any idea what it’s like to live in the rural south? It’s Walmart, Amazon, or just fucking die out here.
Or any other online store? I have seen very few that won’t ship via USPS and USPS delivers everywhere.
there are a lot of companies that sell things direct to consumer, using the exact same shipping infrastructure that amazon would otherwise be using, if it doesnt already.
If you live rurally, go campaign for funding the USPS more, trump fucked that one, you can thank him for that.
“If you don’t have access to even remotely consistent alternatives than just go solve the USPS for us” fuck off
thats the thing though, at that point the USPS is already going to be a problem, in literally every form of online order you make.
Amazon even uses USPS in some places from what i can remember, they mostly use their in house shit when it’s financially competitive.
And yes, the USPS is fundamental infrastructure, it is critically important to the functionality of the US as a whole. It’s the sole reason mail based communication even works. Without the USPS the federal government and most state governments lose a lot of power.
I don’t. It’s called Wal-Mart, last hope of democracy
Wait
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I try to when I can, but I tend to have major difficulties doing so.
I tried Ebay, they restricted my account and said the only way for me to get it un-restricted was to buy a product from a limited set of brand-new partner suppliers (e.g. Logitech, HP, etc) that were all over $100, and nothing I actually needed.
I tried buying some chargers from Anker and they also restricted me and said they wouldn’t let me make a purchase because my email seemed suspicious (I don’t use Gmail), so I had to go back to Amazon and buy it there instead for practically the same price, even though it would have actually been cheaper on Anker’s own website since they had a discount code that would have worked for my order.
I bought something on Target because I’d been given a Target gift card, Target cancelled my order 3 times and made me contact customer service to remove an invisible hold on my account.
I frequently try checking third-party sites for the same products, and the prices are way higher (e.g. A product I plan on purchasing is $80 on the manufacturer’s site, and $58 on Amazon, with the price frequently dropping to $38) because Amazon literally mandates that the cheapest price must be on Amazon. Often times, these price differences are so drastic that I could end up paying double for the same product.
I also tend to get Amazon gift cards from relatives even though they already know I dislike using Amazon when I don’t have to, so it’s often somewhat unavoidable.
Don’t get me wrong, those are just the worst instances so far. I’ve bought quite a few items from elsewhere before without issues, it’s just that I tend to have the occasional issue that makes it practically impossible to buy elsewhere.
Believe me, I do my best to not have to spend money on Amazon, but it’s either so drastically more expensive that it’s simply not reasonable to buy elsewhere, or for various reasons I mentioned before, I’m not even capable of placing an order in the first place.
WhyFlip@lemmy.world 3 days ago
What in the world are you doing to get restricted and cancelled at different sites?
needanke@feddit.org 3 days ago
Yeah fr, I do lots of my online shoping with a vpn, an adblocker, blocking non-necessary java scripts and using my own e-Mail domain or a temporary adress from my provider and have never been blocked or got restricted.
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Don’t ask me, I’ve been asking the same question myself 😅
The only things that had originally come to mind were my accounts on those stores being new (but who makes an account there then just lets it sit for like a week), me using virtual cards to avoid using the same payment info across different sites (but many other people do that with no issues), using my non-gmail email (but other people also do that with no issues), ad & JS canvas blocking (but as needanke mentioned earlier, they don’t seem to have problems), or possibly just something with my address itself making its way onto some shared-around list of addresses not to ship to for some reason, but none of these explanations really seem to make sense.
I’m genuinely just as stumped as you are.
Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
It might be your physical address. I’m not sure how long youve lived there but maybe someone who lived there before you ran a bunch of charge back scams or something and got put on a list somewhere. If that is the case then your address plus prepaid card and privacy respecting email will throw up red flags for any retailer that uses that list.
trolololol@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’ll put my bet that your computer is throwing false flags with payment/fraud detection. It could be the VPN and JavaScript blocking things.
JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 3 days ago
The only things I can think of is credit card charge backs or harassing support services, but if they were doing that, it’s not like they would admit it on Lemmy 😂
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
Sounds like you need to make a boring Gmail account just for buying online.
thebigslime@lemmy.world 3 days ago
iFixit has their own store.
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I know, I only took this specific screenshot because it happened to show up as a recommendation within Amazon’s interface and I noticed the price and discount seemed odd. I intend to try buying it (or at least, a similar set made by iFixit) on their own site when I end up actually needing it.