Ordered 20+ groceries from Amazon on Prime Day. Today my order arrived with each item packaged separately.

Sarsaparilla@kbin.social to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 987 points –
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It shouldn't be on the individual consumers to avoid monopolies; we need antitrust enforcement; we need to break up Amazon.

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.

Unfortunately, organizing on the scale necessary to defeat Amazon is damn near impossible. I think doing so politically is our best bet.

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.

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 them.

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.

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?

Not ones that can get me the things I need within the month.

Nah you're just bad at online shopping.

Nah, some shit would take weeks to get to me from the few other alternate vendors, and I;m not waiting that long.

I think you just proved their point lol.

Hey, if anyone else or any store can get me the things I need within the week I 100% go there. but no one else is stocking specific temperature controllers anywhere near me. I can't get 3D printer resin anywhere that isn't a 40 minute drive away. Specific wiring I need, AliExpress is the only other company with it. Amazon stocks a lot of niche things that no one else is carrying.

I wish RadioShack survived

Same. I also used to have a great store near me that carried random electronic parts, motors, hobby shit, bits of hardware. Any time I needed to fix something, or wanted to make a little device I could go there for supplies. RIP Active Surplus.

I really wish I had a store like that near me. I hate being in the middle of a project and having to wait 2+ days to finish it if I end up needing something. There's a microcenter location that's supposed to open near me within a few years, which will be nice

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.

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, and yes, I made up that name), people would use them instead of Amazon.

A monopoly enables this behavior, since there are no other options.

Don't even get me started on phone chargers. Good fucking luck. The cheap knockoffs are such a fire hazard too I stg

As with all electronics, just look for products with UL or ETL certification and you should be OK.