(My experience over the past five years of treating the gargantuan retailer as a last resort option.)
In November 2019 I was inspired by a blog post Luke Leighfield wrote on ‘How (and why) to quit Amazon‘. I’m not going to tell you why you should, mostly because Luke has already put together a perfectly good argument for this in his original post. I’m just going to reflect on how the experience went for me in the past five years.
It took me a year to get started
In Luke’s post, he shared that he went from 42 orders in 2018 to 0 orders in 2019.
I thought it might be interesting to go back and take a look at mine.
- 2020: 34
- 2021: 0
- 2022: 1
- 2023: 0
- 2024 (so far): 0
Had the pandemic not hit when it did, I might have got started sooner on this. I didn’t use it all that much during that first lockdown to be fair, I just don’t think adding an additional obstacle to shopping was at the top of my agenda at the time.
Seeing how much business shifted Amazon’s way over the course of the pandemic made me even more determined to make a change when possible.
I’m not necessarily trying to take a moral stance here. My hard earned cash regularly ends up in the tills of plenty of other corporations, many with questionable business practices. I’m just attempting to treat all of our supreme overlords fairly.
I’ve cooked the books
The next thing I should come clean on is that those figures I’ve given you aren’t the complete truth. And therein lies the issue with trying to avoid Amazon, it finds ways to creep back in.
My true figure for 2021 is actually 9. When I renewed my phone contract I was offered a range of ‘perks’. I would’ve gone for Disney+, but that would’ve interfered with the discount I already had on that account (modern life huh?). The next best option was Audible (Amazon) credits. I knew what I was getting into, I justified it as me taking from Amazon, rather than giving them money, just as long as I remembered to cancel the subscription (..of course, I didn’t).
Ok, ok, I’m still lying. My God’s honest, truest true figure is actually 10. This one was against my will though. I bought something from eBay that a seller had listed as new. It was actually a little bit more expensive than it was on Amazon, I was happy to overlook that on this occassion. When it turned up a couple of days later in an Amazon box, with an Amazon printed label, I quickly learnt the meaning of the term ‘drop shipping’.
I still hadn’t technically given my own money to Amazon, though I’m not sure these scenarios are much better. An outright fail came in March 2022 when I just could not find the exact thing I needed anywhere else. In my defence, it was a work related purchase rather than a new addition to one of my collections.
The alternatives
Part of my decision to steer clear of Amazon is self serving. I can’t argue that the company doesn’t offer incredible convenience (for the buyer at least) if what you’re looking for is something like a plug adaptor and you can’t be arsed to travel into town, park up, wade through the masses, only to find it’s out of stock.
As a collector, there is a risk attached to buying from a company built on speed. I’ve had plenty of delicate items turn up in packing that is insufficient, or stock that clearly wasn’t stored securely.
I buy my graphic novels from Reed Comics, I buy toys from Star Action Figures. Instead of buying a Kindle I bought a Kobo.
I might miss out on certain rarities from Amazon Marketplace sellers, but I find the prices you pay for niche items on this platform are often listed far above reasonable value.
A better option for me as a collector has been to seek out and join relevant Facebook groups. The sales dynamic undeniably shifts in these spaces from pull (searching for a particular item) to push (browsing what’s being listed). I find this actually makes for a more fun collecting experience. You never know what might appear, even if this does present another FOMO tie to your phone.
For my partner Sam, Vinted has proven to be a great source of bargain buys for her fantastic robot collection.
The picture I painted above of high street stores being a constant source of let down isn’t always a given these days. The pandemic did force a lot of retailers to adapt and the ‘click and collect’ model for some stores can be even more effective than a resort to buying online.
Then there’s the true independents. I was aware of some second hand (or ‘vintage’) toy shops locally, it wasn’t until the series Toyshop on Tour from Joe Hand and the team at Leicester Vintage & Old Toy Shop) hit our YouTube screens in 2021 that the penny dropped how many others there are around the UK.
In the past few years, Sam and I have been making beelines to these locations while travelling, in some cases building our trips around specific visits. It’s rare we walk away from these empty handed, in most cases we find something new to add to our collections that we’d have never found on Amazon, or had the ‘luxury’ of inspecting before committing to a purchase (an important factor when buying second hand items as a collector).
Where next?
I’m going to continue with this in principle. Even with the occasional slip I still think it’s well worth us avoiding handing a monopoly to any one company through our laziness alone (I’m not convinced it’s based on price).
What’s tough as a collector opting out of Amazon are the occasions where the platform has an ‘exclusive’. These are few and far between though and I’ve not yet had to break my resolve for any must haves. It does help not being a completist for most of my collections. When you know it’s virtually impossible that you’ll ever collect all of something, you’re far more forgiving about letting certain items pass (or at least I am).
One of Sam’s collections is merchandise from the Fallout series of games. She has a fair amount from previous release cycles, but had noticed new products hadn’t hit shelves for a while, with the last instalment in the series having been released in 2018. Then, in April this year came the long awaited TV adaption. It’s streaming platform of choice.. Ugh, Amazon Prime of course.
While Sam has joined me on the steer clear of Amazon for shopping, how could our stance deprive her of watching this show? I don’t think we retain much morale high ground by borrowing someone else’s login and there is an argument that if we want to support the production, we should be paying.
Amazon appear to have missed a trick on a major merchandising campaign to support the show, but in doing so may have saved us the dilemma of how much to spend without totally undermining the point of this, somewhat fair-weather boycott.
This post was by no means intended to be preachy, or holier than thou. My parting recommendation for collectors and others alike is simply this, shop around.
Liam Toms 