Prior to 2021, I spent years shopping on Amazon. I wasn’t a daily user but was making monthly purchases buying books, toiletries, pet paraphernalia, photo frames and tech accessories like portable chargers. Adding up all my bills, I’ve spent almost £2,800 over the years (although never committed to Amazon Prime). But I began to feel uneasy about its monopolisation of the market, ethical complaints from employees working in warehouses, and the insane wealth creation for its founder, Jeff Bezos, currently worth $240bn according to Forbes (£177bn).
On a more personal level – and in my work as a journalist who worked on product reviews – I also became increasingly aware of how Amazon appeared to artificially inflate prices ahead of sale periods, only to reduce it back to the RRP, appearing to create a saving but not really. (Price tracking sites like Camel Camel Camel helped me spot this).
So five years ago I decided to cut ties altogether. No more Amazon shopping. It took some time to go from it feeling like the default one-stop-shop but I was determined to make myself think of alternative retailers. Instead, I now go to Waterstones or Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookshops, or buy second hand from charity shops or World of Books.
For my cat, I have a Pets at Home subscription, and I use Etsy for gifts and homewares and Argos or Currys, like most people would have done in a pre-Amazon world – who also, believe it or not, deliver, plus Argos offers pick ups from Sainsbury’s Local shops. One bonus of not shopping on Amazon has been avoiding those ‘just in case’ purchases like fancy dress for festivals or hen dos, or an extra camera memory card in case I lost one, drawn in by the low prices, (which often means a high cost to someone else in the production chain).
For the last two decades, Amazon has boomed and seemed untouchable: synonymous with speed, scale, and frictionless shopping, capitalising on our modern need for convenience. But a growing online pushback suggests some consumers are reassessing that relationship as they observe increasing issues with the brand, or the billionaire figures involved in it.
Luke Wilson, a teacher from Cornwall, has not used Amazon for the last decadeIn January, Amazon announced it was cutting 16,000 jobs globally (telling staff in an email error nonetheless). Then came The Washington Post‘s mass redundancies in early February, the paper Bezos bought in 2013. Elsewhere, protests against ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) have also highlighted ties between the agency and Amazon. Amazon runs web services which allow the department to track and apprehend migrants. Others are angry that Amazon reportedly paid $40m (£30m) for the rights of the Melania documentary, a film critics said it served as a vanity project to sway political power for the Trumps.
The anti-Amazon online movement has a simple message: cancel Prime, shop elsewhere, and treat your spending as a political act with hashtags such as #CancelAmazonPrime and #BoycottAmazon. Marketing NYU professor Scott Galloway uses #ResistandUnsubscribe, arguing that subscription businesses are uniquely vulnerable to coordinated cancellations.
Luke Wilson, a teacher from Cornwall, has not used Amazon in the last decade. “I haven’t used Amazon to buy anything since 2016,” he says. As a keen reader, the shift began with books. “I started consciously buying local, or using ABE Books until I discovered it was bought by Amazon,” he says.
He had heard independent bookshop owners complain about the impact of Amazon’s discount model on them and their customer base. “I learned more about supply chains, and it dawned on me that any service that is that fast and that broad must have pretty serious implications. [I think] Jeff Bezos does a fairly good job of distracting from this”.
Wilson now only buys from bricks-and-mortar bookshops or independent publishers such as Verso Books. The appeal of Amazon, he says, is obvious: “They cornered convenience very effectively.” But it wasn’t a trade-off he was willing to make anymore.
Social media users are posting screenshots of their cancellation page, such as Rachel Grass Hees, who wrote: “Just cancelled Prime… literally the least I can do to soothe the nausea induced by blatant violations of human rights in my home.” And John Downs posted: “When I think of CEOs like Bezos who spent more money on his wedding than he saved from firing a bunch of Washington Post employees…that’s when I can take action, however small.”
Jen*, who lives in London, stopped using Amazon more than five years ago following reports about warehouse working conditions, the impact on independent businesses, and the environment. “I just reached a point where the immediacy and convenience wasn’t worth it,” she says. “Everything is a choice, and the way we spend our money is an investment in the kind of world we want to live in”.
Looking back at old orders, she wished she’d stopped sooner. “The things I was buying weren’t even necessary.” Now, she buys from local shops and independent online retailers but found untangling herself entirely has proved difficult as some businesses (unknowingly to consumers) fulfill orders through Amazon’s logistics network. “It just shows how all-pervasive it is,” she says. “They’re everywhere, doing everything.”
Though it’s hard to quantify at what level this is happening as Amazon doesn’t release figures on its Prime subscription cancellations, only its quarterly sales and profits numbers, data suggests growth may be softening at the margins. Amazon recorded 5.4 million US Prime sign-ups during the 21 days leading up to its July Prime Day event, around 116,000 fewer than the same period the previous year and below its own internal targets, according to Reuters.
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Hardly a collapse, but it hints at a plateau after years of relentless expansion, which over the past decade has seen Prime subscribers grow globally from 46m to more than 200m. Though it’s 16-24 year olds who are reportedly increasingly turning to Google as their first port of call for shopping, taking a share away from Amazon, according to data from Morgan Stanley.
No huge retail company is perfect, but Amazon’s vast size combined with how deeply embedded it is in modern life has become a serious cause of concern for some. While a few cancelled Prime memberships won’t bring it to its knees, people collectively voting with their money counts for an awful lot when your business model relies on having someone to sell to. Consumers are starting to realise that the convenience just isn’t worth it.
*Name has been changed
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