Breaking my Amazon habit

West Kildonan

I recently allowed my Amazon Prime membership to lapse, after a decade or so of regular use. It has been a bit of a shock to the system, accustomed as I have been, especially since 2020, to just grabbing my phone and ordering whatever comes to mind, then expecting it to appear on my doorstep within a couple of days. It’s been a way of life.

So why did I decide to let it go? And how has it affected my life? It’s a big change.

First of all, the why. It is a complex web of reasons – not wanting to support Jeff Bezos, the American oligarch who sat behind Trump at his inauguration. Not wanting to support inhumane working conditions in Amazon warehouses – I hope and trust that Canada’s labour laws are more robust, but even so, whatever I’m buying usually has to come from outside Canada, and Amazon has been accused of union-busting. Wanting to cut back on the amount of money I’m spending in these fraught times.

But there is another reason, and it is a bit of a subtle one.

The Canadian author Cory Doctorow came up with the term “enshi**ification” (chosen word of the year in 2023 and 2024 by several organizations and dictionaries) to describe the gradual deterioration of platform-based services that used to be good. For example, Google search used to be so good, it changed all our lives. Lately, it’s been awful, requiring multiple searches, even if you turn off the stupid AI, as I do. Google executives have gone on the record admitting that this is deliberate – the more searches we have to do, the more ads we are forced to see before finding what we are looking for. Microsoft has become so bad that millions of users are refusing to upgrade their computers to Windows 11 (including me).

Amazon is by no means immune to this phenomenon – it is becoming harder and harder to find the best result, with sponsored links and “Amazon’s choice” often offering higher prices or lower quality. So, I decided to let it go and see how I could function without it.

It’s been eye-opening. It’s remarkable how many things I can find in local stores and, if I can’t, I can order them directly from a company’s website – often getting free shipping if I stock up. It forces me to stop and think about the things I want to buy, rather than mindlessly typing it into the search bar and expecting instant gratification. I’ve also found new things that I never saw on Amazon, now that I am no longer being held hostage by having prepaid for a year’s shipping.

So, am I no longer an avid consumer? I don’t know about that, as some habits are really hard to break. But I have no regrets about being no longer a Prime customer. Some days, it really feels like freedom.