While reviewing post retirement expenses, Amazon Prime is coming up for scrutiny. $139 a year and I expect its a waste of money at this point for my use. When I was working it was convenient to buy office supplies without worrying about a minimum and getting the supplies quickly, that reason is gone post retirement. I never really used the music or book downloads and being in a rural area, two day shipping is becoming rarer now that they use the post office for the "last mile" of many small deliveries, orders seemed to stall frequently by a day or so if the USPS is involved and with the shortage of carriers, its obvious that the carriers have figured out that they can blow off delivery by day or so by marking off a delivery attempt to something out of their control and it buys them a day. If it snowed overnight, even though I have my driveway cleared down to pavement before the carrier drives by, if its bigger than my rural mailbox at the end of the driveway its 50/50 that I will get a delivery failure notice.
If I wait until I have $25 worth of orders on Amazon, its free shipping anyhow and I still get cash back for using the Amazon branded credit card. I also have found that Walmart.com tends to have better pricing for a lot of odd items and free shipping plus if I need to do a return, I can do it at the store rather than hassling with rewrapping it and paying to have it picked up as UPS has no authorized shipping centers close by. I have to wonder how Walmart processes returns at stores like that, my guess is it probably goes in the dumpster for something not sold in the store. It is not like I am taking business away from local businesses for a thing like office supplies, its a 40 mile one way drive and sadly Walmart nuked most of the local options. long ago.
I did watch a few Amazon created TV shows, like the Expanse, but since then their offerings are more time wasters, than "must watches", their own content is highly variable, a lot of "sounds good in the ad"but when watched, nothing special. Commercial movies and TV series tend to be second tier, the ones that slosh around to or from free streaming services. Their Prime interface for streaming is more and more based on getting folks to pay for content on other sites or get people to sign up for other steaming services through Amazon. They used to have a "free to me" option on the interface to get rid of the paid offerings but that appears to have gone away or made more difficult to find.
When I look over my orders of late, they tend to be impulse purchases that probably are best if they sit a few days in a checkout cart so I can reconsider them in a few days. If I let them build up for a few days in the cart until the total is over $25 my guess is not all of them will get ordered.
In general, the big goal of business is to get that reoccurring automatic fee as for most folks those are easy to ignore until it is too late. I have a suspicion that my SXM radio for the car is on the chopping block next when it is up for renewal, it was great when I was traveling a lot of 300 to 400 mile days for work but my trips now are shorter.
Maybe it is different for someone closer to civilization with Whole Foods stores, Amazon drivers and one day food delivery, but my current plan is not to renew the membership out in the sticks. I have been warned and seen that they have set up the sales process to default to renewing or adding membership but I guess its shame on me if I am not paying enough attention, to avoid that trap. I think by adding a couple of day delay for small purchases, it more likely I will pay more attention to the cart.
So anyone else "cut the cord" or am I missing some great feature that would convince me to stay?
If I wait until I have $25 worth of orders on Amazon, its free shipping anyhow and I still get cash back for using the Amazon branded credit card. I also have found that Walmart.com tends to have better pricing for a lot of odd items and free shipping plus if I need to do a return, I can do it at the store rather than hassling with rewrapping it and paying to have it picked up as UPS has no authorized shipping centers close by. I have to wonder how Walmart processes returns at stores like that, my guess is it probably goes in the dumpster for something not sold in the store. It is not like I am taking business away from local businesses for a thing like office supplies, its a 40 mile one way drive and sadly Walmart nuked most of the local options. long ago.
I did watch a few Amazon created TV shows, like the Expanse, but since then their offerings are more time wasters, than "must watches", their own content is highly variable, a lot of "sounds good in the ad"but when watched, nothing special. Commercial movies and TV series tend to be second tier, the ones that slosh around to or from free streaming services. Their Prime interface for streaming is more and more based on getting folks to pay for content on other sites or get people to sign up for other steaming services through Amazon. They used to have a "free to me" option on the interface to get rid of the paid offerings but that appears to have gone away or made more difficult to find.
When I look over my orders of late, they tend to be impulse purchases that probably are best if they sit a few days in a checkout cart so I can reconsider them in a few days. If I let them build up for a few days in the cart until the total is over $25 my guess is not all of them will get ordered.
In general, the big goal of business is to get that reoccurring automatic fee as for most folks those are easy to ignore until it is too late. I have a suspicion that my SXM radio for the car is on the chopping block next when it is up for renewal, it was great when I was traveling a lot of 300 to 400 mile days for work but my trips now are shorter.
Maybe it is different for someone closer to civilization with Whole Foods stores, Amazon drivers and one day food delivery, but my current plan is not to renew the membership out in the sticks. I have been warned and seen that they have set up the sales process to default to renewing or adding membership but I guess its shame on me if I am not paying enough attention, to avoid that trap. I think by adding a couple of day delay for small purchases, it more likely I will pay more attention to the cart.
So anyone else "cut the cord" or am I missing some great feature that would convince me to stay?
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