"We pay this fee because they've got lots of free Kindle books or shipping is free"-- Uhh, guys... it's not free if you have to pay over $100/mo for the privilege. If you're buying enough shit that the free shipping justifies the price of Prime then you're buying too much crap that's very likely to end up in a landfill in pretty short order. You can get truly free books, ebooks, movies, etc from your local library.
We've truly lost the plot haven't we?
It's not $100/mo. It's $11.58. You are entitled to yoru opinion but with what I buy and need for this household on Amazon, it would cost me that much just in auto fuel. not considering the wear and tear on vehicle.. not including the 5% I get back with Amazin Prime Credit card. Also saves a lot of time as it is delivered to yoru door.. Wow you really like shopping at department stores for random items you can't even read a review on? At leat everythign I buy online I am making an informed decision instead of whatever is in stock on the shelves. The amazon prime videos, free audible books, kindle books, photo storage are just added freebies which many make use of. You risk your life driving around town several times per month instead of just payign $11.58 per month (whcih would barely cover yoru gas).
e.g. I bought a $6 audio cable from Amazon yesterday, which I'd have to drive 20 miles roudn trip for here locally. at 50 cents per mile that's $10 for gas and wear and tear on vehicle. You do the math :) That one trip for an audio cable pays for the prime subscription. Not to mention saving an hour of your time or more in traffic.. and lowering the risk you'd get in an auto accident. Auto accidents suck I've been in a couple.
Also returns are a breeze if I nee dto do one.. No driving to store and waiting in line. I jsut print out the label and sit on my porch for the UPS driver to come pick up.
I cant stand driving to stores only to find the item I want is out of stock after spendign 15 minutes looking for it with assistance of clueless helpers. Waiting in long lines suck too. So does parking sometimes.
I don't go to department stores. I buy groceries once per week. I buy things from the hardware store and the auto parts store for projects/maintenance that comes up around the house. I'll occasionally visit a thrift shop. That's pretty much it for a normal week or month.
I live in a rural setting, but nearly all of the places that I shop are within 5 miles of my home. I drive a PHEV, so it costs tons less than your $0.50/mile estimate. Hopefully if you live someplace that's 20 miles from a charging cord, then you've got a vehicle that doesn't actually cost $0.50/mile to operate too. I'm skilled enough, experienced enough and aware enough behind the wheel that I trust myself to be able to safely handle most things that come up on the road. For the situations that I cannot control, I trust the safety and crash test ratings of my vehicle. Road safety is not something that deters me from making trips out. Time/money/environmental concerns are.
For those reasons, trips are combined as much as possible. I'm not buying things every day of the week. I'm not making random trips into town for trinkets unless I need a part to fix something.
Large purchases are planned well in advance, researched as much as possible online, and if it's something that I plan to take with me, I'll usually call ahead or verify online that the product is on hand before leaving.
I'm the type of person that wants to pick out their own produce, try on the clothes to make sure they're of decent quality and fitment before buying, handle the item that I'm about to exchange my hard earned money for, etc.
I understand that buying things online from time to time is necessary and can even be preferred. What I'm against, is paying extra for a service like Prime that makes consumption so easy. It sets the expectation that you can have whatever at your door in just a day or two. Then all of a sudden, you're having things delivered to your door several times per week instead of combining all of that into one trip for yourself. There's a huge environmental impact there. It comes from inefficient trucks making all of those trips. It comes from some $6 widget being packed into a massive cardboard box filled with plastic bubble wrap that's likely just thrown away.
There's also likely to be more financial waste. Besides paying an unnecessary $11.66/mo for Prime (when you can likely get free shipping on most orders in similar time anyway as you admit), paying for a service like that means it's more likely to be used. Then you start to justify why it's ok to have a $6 charging cord shipped 20 miles or whatever on Monday, and then some other cheap item show up on Tuesday, etc. The convenience of it all tends to lead to overspending (which impacts you as an individual)
and overconsumption (which impacts us all).
Buying things
should hurt a little bit. You're exchanging your hard earned money for something, and I think we all benefit if we are forced to stop and think about whether it's actually worth it or not. Is it a need or a want? Can it wait a few days until I run into town anyway, or is it an emergency? Services like Prime are there to make things so easy and convenient that you stop asking those types of questions and just mindlessly hit the checkout button. That mindless spending and consumption seems wildly un-Mustachian to me, even if you can seemingly justify it with gas prices, or safety, or convenience, or how easy it is to return something you shouldn't have bought.
