It’s not just about the monopoly though. Their site is rife with counterfeits and is basically Wish now. Want a GE lightbulb? There’s a 50/50 chance you’re getting a counterfeit that isn’t UL tested so you don’t know it’s safe, and that’s if you can even find the product at all hidden between the random name generator company listings for random garbage that’s slightly similar to the search term you entered.
It shouldn’t be on the individual consumers to avoid monopolies; we need antitrust enforcement; we need to break up Amazon.
lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Misconduct@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Don’t even get me started on phone chargers. Good fucking luck. The cheap knockoffs are such a fire hazard too I stg
ruckblack@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Anker…?
Misconduct@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s actually my go to a lot of the time now lol
dan@upvote.au 1 year ago
As with all electronics, just look for products with UL or ETL certification and you should be OK.
Misconduct@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thanks I’ll keep that in mind for the future
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
And if there was a competitor that sold only legit products without having to compete with AmazonBasics (who just steals designs and sells them for a cheaper price) or from JSOIY (who also steals designs), people would use them instead of Amazon.
A monopoly enables this behavior, since there are no other options.
lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Ok fair point.
zloubida@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It shouldn’t be indeed, but unfortunately it is. We can’t just hide our personal responsibility behind the State when the State is deficient.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Unfortunately, organizing on the scale necessary to defeat Amazon is damn near impossible. I think doing so politically is our best bet.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Our personal responsibility is to make the State not deficient though, not a boycott of amazon.com or whatever you’re suggesting. A boycott of even their digital and physical storefronts probably wouldn’t even change much, since Amazon makes most of their profit via AWS. Something like 33% of all internet traffic goes through AWS in some fashion, so boycotting that is even harder. The only real option I can see is to make the State regulate them in some manner because all the people in the world can’t fight a trillion dollar company themselves.
GreaterDane@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Why not both? I’m happy to avoid buying Amazon (do I really need to avoid walking to the store?) while advocating for crackdowns on Amazon.
Tavarin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There are certain things I can’t get anywhere near me from anyone other than Amazon, and I live in a city of 6 million people. Sadly I need to use Amazon about once a month. Getting groceries from them is ridiculous though.
yata@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Aren’t there any online shopping alternatives to amazon? Are they really the only online vendor who is allowed to mail stuff to your 6 million people city?
Tavarin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not ones that can get me the things I need within the month.
hup@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nah you’re just bad at online shopping.
Tavarin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nah, some shit would take weeks to get to me from the few other alternate vendors, and I;m not waiting that long.