I think I might cancel. I’m not watching ads and I’m not going to pay the extra $3/mo to opt out. I don’t know if I’d end up paying more than the subscription cost in shipping though…
Are other online retailers so hopelessly sucky that you can’t live without Amazon over in the states? It just blows my mind because Amazon honestly sucks compared to the more local stores where I’m at in the Nordics.
I hate Amazon but there are several reasons I use them. Wide selection, free shipping, easy returns, and typically low prices. Every time I have tried avoiding Amazon for everything, I’ve run into annoying issues before long.
Also, sadly there are a lot of less common products that aren’t super available elsewhere. And even when they are, I feel like it’s a risk buying from some random website I’ve not dealt with before.
I wish others could/would compete with these advantages but most don’t. And no I don’t buy everything from Amazon but it is a safe fallback for the items I can’t get at better retailers.
I’ve found Walmart+ and Sam’s+ to be better for my needs lately. I only have prime when I can get it for free for a month. I only care about free shipping. I can give a crap about anything else that comes with prime
Ebay for stuff, because you are usually dealing with a person that has some care for your order. Ebay doesnt wait 2 weeks to ship my stuff. Amazon now waits to ship so they can combine my orders. So in the past few months my ebay use is way up and my amazon use is way down. As far as content goes, piracy is still an awesome thing. I pay for physical books and music from bandcamp, the rest is acquired. I think people get lazier and dumber the closer you get to the equator. Thanks for your comment. a guy at 59.9n.
Announced just after Christmas, a time when I assume a lot of people sign up for Prime so they can save shipping on presents.
Seems like that would backfire as people recently remember signing up.
This and the rising costs plus adding ads to ‘basic’ tiers and attempting to create limitations (resolutions, “screens”, offline downloads) is what might push me to build a nice, large NAS. We don’t want Cable again.
Jellyfin + Synology NAS was a great investment for me! ;)
Wouldn’t go back.
I appreciate the advice! I am thinking of Synology or perhaps DIY with either TrueNAS (Scale likely) or Unraid. Synology would be cheap, small, easy on power and thermals too though and I’ve been looking at the latest and previous gen DS2XX lines.
Also I appreciate the Jellyfin mention. I’ve been using Plex so long and was thinking about something else like Jellyfin especially but I’ve never worked with it before.
The nice thing about Jellyfin is that you can point Jellyfin and Plex to the same media folders and both will work, to try it out.
I would get a Synology with intel Quicksync if you go the Synology route for hardware transcoding. Unfortunately, a lot of the new models don’t have it.
I just have a 220+ but would maybe get a 4 bay model if I did it again.
i do this with jellyfin and kodi. the media library is standalone. they both get read-only access to all the metadata which i manage with a different tool (mediaelch)
Scamazon
Everything worth seeing can be torrented anyway. I canceled a year ago and haven’t noticed a loss of anything as long as any orders are over $35 for free shipping.
Tbh i just have prime and pirat the stuff i want anyway, even if i technically have access to ot the “legal” way, because its just way easier to find what i want on the piracy site of my choice than on prime…
(i need the one day shipping pretty regularly so the money isn’t wasted)
Same, I have a handful of streaming services (mostly split with other households) because it’s easier to watch something right now than in 10 mins at the absolute minimum, or tomorrow, depending on the current status of high seas shipping lanes. But I’m not fucking watching ads. I’m paying for the service, fuck your ads.
I just wish they’d split off streaming from shipping.
20 Europbux or 17 Freedollars gets you a Read Debrid subscription for a year.
Tie it into Stremio and you’ve got everything right now.
Tie that into rclone and you’ve got yourself a fancy ‘backup’ for all those things you’ve streamed.No VPN required.
deleted by creator
Looks like Amazon wants to close off this year with yet another rent-seeking episode. Thankfully I don’t use Amazon, but my parents still pay for Prime specifically for their streaming service, so this is going to be very annoying for them :/
I have it for the shipping otherwise I’d cancel. I’m certainly not watching the stuff on there with ads.
$5 to my local pbs station a month and get passport = the only streaming service i need
I wish I could just get Prime shipping and drop the video service. I may still drop the whole thing.
Nothing quite like paying an annual fee to ensure that stuff you can’t be bothered to go to the store for are handled by a multitude of people who are systematically abused by their employer.
I don’t know where you live, but around here stores only carry what most people buy. If you want something other than plain vanilla, you have to find it online.
Then take a look at the manufacturers website and see what retailers they use.
Many stores will also let you order items for pickup that they don’t normally stock at your local location. Ask a clerk or again, check their site.
You got hit with a bunch of down votes but it’s not incredibly hard to avoid Amazon, it’s just a little less convenient. Of course, it’s going to depend and vary based on where you are located.
Odd… This reply didn’t show up (in the thread or in my notifications) until just now.
Regarding the shipping cost:
Just collect things to buy until you are over the treshold. Helped me with overbuying stuff I don’t even really need.
If you are moatly in it for the shipping: Just stop. You give them more money through that than paying for shipping.I’d already decided to cancel Prime when they cancelled The Peripheral after renewing it. Had I not, this decision would have made the choice for me.
This year, I bought a Costco membership and ditched Prime. Fuck Amazon.
If they need more money, they can just take about $2,000 USD per second from Bezos’ money. He makes over $3,000 USD per second.
I forgot to mention. over 99% of all online sales go through amazon. They don’t need to raise their prices.
Hearing about this got me to reevaluate whether I needed Prime and I ended up cancelling altogether. Just a heads up, if you cancel mid-subscription (I was on the yearly plan) you get the option to cancel service immediately and refund what you didn’t use. I was supposed to re-up in May and ended up getting $63 refunded.
