Breaking my addiction to Amazon

I like to think of myself as a supporter of local, independent businesses. I refuse to shop at Walmart, and I was furious when one showed up across the street from my favorite, independent grocery store and put them out of business in less than a year. I rant incessantly about the “Big Three” beer brands (Budweiser, Miller, and Coors) and how buying their products helps fuel their efforts to wipe independent breweries out of existence. And I go out of my way to support independent bookstores: one of my “bucket list” items is to read every book on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list, and I’ve vowed to only buy them directly from used bookstores (I only have 2 left to buy).

Yet after my rent, the next largest percentage of my income goes to Amazon, one of the largest companies on the planet.

For years, I was able to ignore my hypocrisy. That all began to unravel when I visited a local, anarchists’ bookstore with lots of books on topics like fighting “the system” and giving a voice to underrepresented groups. There was one book, prominently displayed in the center of the “staff picks” table, that I snatched up the moment I saw it: How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine, owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas.

I read a few pages and curiosity, combined with my desire to help local businesses, propelled me to make a purchase. I strode up to the cashier, a weathered, slouching man wearing the sort of punk rock attire you might expect of a volunteer at an anarchists’ bookstore. I proudly set the book in front of him: I’m on your side, I thought.

Then I opened my wallet, saw my Amazon Prime credit card, and joked, “Can I pay with this?” His scowl told me my attempt at humor was in poor taste.

As I walked out of the store with my new book, I finally began to question whether owning an Amazon Prime credit card, and using it to rack up hundreds of dollars per month in support of Amazon-owned services, might possibly be harmful to the same businesses I was trying to support.

With my small piece of anarchy tucked into my man purse, I headed home and mulled over the topic for my next blog post: spending a month without spending a penny on Amazon services.

Here’s how it went.

Books

I love used bookstores; the knowledgeable and quirky people who tend to work at them, and the mystery surrounding each book’s journey to its present home. When a new book is more practical, I buy them from the nearest independent bookstore.

There are, however, a few cases where I often turn to Amazon for books: gifts, ebooks, and audiobooks.

When someone’s birthday is looming, I often buy them a book as a gift, but the idea for the right book rarely comes to me until the last minute. By that time, Amazon is the only service I know of that I can trust to deliver in time.

This is a lame excuse to rely on Amazon. If all it takes is a sense of urgency for me to come up with gift ideas, that sense just needs to come a bit sooner to accommodate potential delays in shipping. I haven’t bought any gifts this month, but at least I have a plan: when I want to send someone a book, I’ll look up their local bookstore and have the store order (if necessary) and ship the book. I feel like the gift will be that much more meaningful to the recipient if they know the purchase supported a local business rather that resulting from a few clicks on Amazon’s website.

As for audiobooks and ebooks, although I love physical books, I’m not a purist. I have an eight-year-old Kindle Paperwhite that’s been very reliable, and particularly when I’m traveling, having access to so many books in a compact format is a luxury I don’t care to give up. I also enjoy audiobooks; I listen to them when I go for walks, and sometimes when I read something challenging, it helps me to hear it read aloud while I follow along in the text.

That still doesn’t mean I need to rely on Amazon. This month I’ve only downloaded ebooks from my local library. Even if they don’t carry something, there are other ebook formats that can work with Kindle with a little technical knowledge.

Audiobooks have been a bit more of a challenge. Amazon’s Audible service have a clever model where for $15/month, you get 1 credit per month, good for an audiobook of any price. I was fooled into believing I was saving money by spending a $15 credit on a $25 audiobook, but as with most “deals,” there’s a catch. If I canceled my membership, I’d lose all of my accumulated credits. Audible thus became yet another out-of-sight, out-of-mind subscription (like those neglected gym memberships you don’t want to cancel because you’ll never get that monthly rate again) where I just keep paying for it based on an irrational fear of sunken cost.

This month, I used up my Audible credits on books I couldn’t find through my library but knew I’d like to listen to someday. In the future, I plan to get my audiobooks from two sources: my library system and a service called Libro.fm. The latter offers a similar pricing model to Amazon’s but instead of the money going to Amazon, Libro shares their profits with the bookstore of my choosing. That’s likely why I learned about them when I spotted a stack of Libro flyers next to the cash register at my local bookstore.

Groceries

Groceries were a tough puzzle to solve. Since well before COVID-19 broke out, I’ve been getting my groceries delivered through Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon. I feel anxious at grocery stores, especially when they’re crowded, so I decided to avoid the unnecessary stress. I’ve tried other delivery services but due to issues with their inventory, timeliness, and/or packaging, I became loyal to Whole Foods.

For me to give up Whole Foods, I either needed to find another delivery service that met my needs to suck it up and go back to a brick-and-mortar grocery store. I was ambitious at first: I found out the hours of operation for my local, independent grocery store and showed up at 7 a.m. on a Sunday to avoid the crowds. The experience wasn’t too bad, but I’ve never quite managed to go back, as meetings got in the way during the week and I slept too late on the weekend.

Then I received a possibly life-changing flyer in the mail from a service called “Hello Fresh.” Their model is simple: I choose the meals I want, they send me portioned (i.e., nothing goes to waste) ingredients and recipes, and I prep the food. As far as I can tell, the cost is comparable to what I’d pay at a grocery store and certainly cheaper than eating out. In the past three weeks, I’ve prepared ten different, two-serving meals, all of them delicious. I’ve scanned every recipe into my digital recipe book with the expectation that I’ll someday try to reproduce it. I’ve also taken pictures of each recipe alongside the finished product and proudly shared them with family and friends. I even convinced a friend of mine to sign up for their service; we compare notes on how each recipe turns out. All in all, it’s made cooking fun and helped me develop the patience to set aside time to prepare a meal and savor the results.

This is not an ad for Hello Fresh: it’s not for everyone, and there are other services like this. My point is that by removing Amazon/Whole Foods as an option, my quality of life in the food department has actually improved.

Prime Video

This one won’t be hard to give up. I don’t stream movies and TV shows very often. I’ve tried many other streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube TV, and I quit them all fairly quickly because I spent as much time trying to find something I wanted to watch as actually streaming. The main reason I’ve stuck with Prime Video is because I get a lot of free content with my Prime membership.

Guess who else has a lot of free video content: the library. In addition to books, ebooks, and audiobooks; my local library gives me access to a vast inventory of digital movies and shows through services like Hoopla Digital and Kanopy. They may not have nearly as many blockbuster movies and popular television shows as Amazon Prime, but I can get my entertainment from their independent films (including many selections from the Criterion Collection), learn from documentaries and the “Great Courses” series, and work on my Spanish comprehension through their extensive Spanish-language content.

Miscellanous

With a little bit of homework and patience, I’ve been able to find viable alternatives to many of my most common uses of Amazon’s services. The most challenging category is everything else. For the same reason many people shop at Walmart and other “big box” stores, I continuously turn to Amazon: they have just about everything I need (or think I need). If they don’t keep it in their own warehouses, they can leverage their relationships with a huge network of third-party vendors. Not only does this allow me to find virtually any product in one place, but because so many other consumers buy from Amazon, I can often use dozens or even hundreds of customer reviews to steer me towards a reliable purchase.

Since I don’t want to simply replace Amazon with another one-stop shop, I’ve had to make some compromises.

When I decided to buy a second computer monitor, I tried researching ethical electronics manufacturers and burned about an hour before I accepted that “ethical electronics” is basically an oxymoron. I was, however, able to find a provider called “Back Market” that deals exclusively with quality-controlled, refurbished electronics; a practice that dramatically cuts down on e-waste. My monitor looks and performs like new.

In other instances, I simply haven’t been able to find what I need outside of Amazon. But do I really “need” ballpoint pens imported from Japan or 24-packs of a particular, premium brand of canned tuna? Surely Mr. “Trying New Things” can find another option.

Amazon Prime

I’ve been a card-carrying Amazon Prime member for at least five years. But when I look at the main benefits of this membership, there are really only two I take advantage of: faster shipping and “free” video content. I have other video streaming resources that cost me nothing, and with a little patience and planning, I’ll rarely need 2-day shipping. Worst case, even if I decide that Amazon is my best option for a certain item, I can pay the extra, one-off shipping fee.

On the afternoon of July 31, 2021, I canceled my Audible subscription. A few hours later, I canceled my Amazon Prime membership. While I haven’t yet officially boycotted Amazon, this is a huge milestone. It means I’m no longer paying a recurring fee to Amazon. It also means that every time I make a purchase from now on, I’ll remember that it almost always feels better to put in the little bit of extra effort it takes to buy from someone else.