Amazon Prime is a remarkable success but also dystopian. It has made convenience and speed the norm, habituating consumers to buy more products. Prime’s flywheel effect - where more customers lead to more data and scale which attracts more customers - has fueled Amazon’s dominance. Prime subscribers spend twice as much and Amazon’s value has multiplied 97 times since 2005. While canceling Prime may not hurt Amazon, it can benefit local businesses by gaining a new customer. However, Prime has rewired how people think about what is possible to obtain and how fast, making a Prime-free life unimaginable for many.
I usually try and at least look on other sites first, Amazon’s prices aren’t necessarily the best (in fact it’s usually guaranteed that they aren’t) and it’s hard to know what you’re getting. For somethings though it’s fine like phone cases etc; stuff you would kind of expect to be garbage anyways and it’s often hard to find the exact things in a local store.
There’s just enough ok shows on Prime to watch as well, it’s like they know exactly what they can get away with.
(Now their stack tv in Canada is basically useless garbage, page after page of episodes that “aren’t available right now”…so why show them then)
There is an add-on you can add to your browser if you use Chrome, Edge, or Firefox that replaces the cart button with a button showing you the cost for the item on other sites.