Article and rant detailing my extremely negative experience with business account opening and network gear order on Amazon, covering difficulty in getting customer support, difficulty setting up business account, difficulty reporting potential security issue, shipment of second-hand open-box devices instead of new items, Amazon's refusal to send replacements, problems with the process of used items collection and associated refund, barrage of auto-generated emails, zero customer care, my subsequent decision to shop local, other details, and more
Easy solution; don’t use Amazon.
I’ve been boycotting amazon for the past 6 or so years, and it’s gone well. But I moved to a remote place a while ago and they’re close to the only shop shipping there. I chose them over other shops for my recent hardware upgrades because the cost of shipping plus the customs’ 20% (applied on the cost of the item plus shipping, of course) make it unbearable unless I go for the lowest bidder. That doesn’t make me happy though
I think there’s a lot to be said for “soft boycotting.” If we could get more people to just check a few other retailers before they go to Amazon, that would actually hit their bottom line a lot harder than a small number of people cutting them out entirely.
The problem with boycotts is that people get told to treat it as an all or nothing thing. It’s a lot better, to my mind, to just reduce our reliance on large monopolies where possible, and accept them as an unfortunate necessity when not.
Spot-on, yea, completely agree. It shouldn’t have to be all or nothing because with this state of mind you feel guilty if you ever break your streak
Which in turn leads to people giving up or never trying.
Even a 20% reduction in sales from a million people does a lot more than a 100% reduction in sales from 100,000.
Just don’t used the world’s largest retailer and hope the next largest retailer isn’t mirroring their business practices.
Not that easy seriously. I boycott them most of the time, but there has been a product that I didn’t have a choice to order through them in the last year. I don’t mind paying a bit more elsewhere if it means they don’t get any of my money, but they’ve literally destroyed some of their competition to the point where no alternative exists for certain products.