Removing "Delivery" from the shopping vocabulary

[SnackDog]

By delivery I mean Amazon, mostly.  I think most of us are frugal enough to not be shopping online anyhow.  Given the major labor issues with Amazon on top of that, I hope must of us are not using Amazon for online shopping.  It keeps workers in substandard conditions (thousands on foods stamps) while Bezos earns so much money he has resorted to space travel to spend it fast enough ($190k/hour).  It puts your local shops out of business and reduces previously vibrant commercial areas to blight.

Gauntlet thrown - no Amazon Prime and no Amazon shopping in 2019.

[nereo]

Alright, I'll counter this by saying the view appears very different when you live in a rural community.

We simply can't get many items locally without driving an hour each direction, and the selection of things which can be bough in-town is extremely limited. 'Worker conditions' seems as much a state and federal minimum wage issue as anything - the people working at local shops around here aren't earning a better wage than what Amazon's been paying (read: minimum wage).  As for commercial areas being decimated - economists have been saying for over a decade that we've overbuilt commercial space.  I don't really *want* more shopping malls & strip malls that dot so much of the landscape. In my view retail stores are basically an additional holding place for trinkets after the warehouse before we individually go and pick them up. Instead of shipping companies delivering it to you, you are delivering yourself to the store.

I try not to buy very much and when I do I shop locally when I can (starting with CL) - but the loss of delivery would be bad for us and our community.
YMMV

[Rural]

+1
I have two choices: Amazon or Wal-mart. Well, or drive 35-90 miles each way, depending on the item (including some food items).

[soccerluvof4]

Yea i cant get on the bandwagon of being an Amazon hater. The things your complaining about so many companies have done or been accused of the same things. Look how many times Walmart has been to court for labor, discrimination etc.. I also know alot of people that work at Amazon PT and enjoy it. Not making excuses for them but thats where the Goverment needs to intervene and make them hold to a higher standard. But a whole lot less people burning fuel and pissing money away running to malls and etc.. Walmart was the one that killed small town America to the biggest degree. But i am all about competition and saving money so until someone else figures out a better way I will still buy occasionally from them. Usually during the holiday season. But i dont by groceries and hardware stuff from them, at least yet.

[maizefolk]

Good for you if that's the goal you want to set for yourself, but compared to a lot of other companies out there amazon just doesn't strike me personally as particularly evil. Their recent internally imposed minimum wage is $15/hour, including for temporary employees hired to deal with the Christmas rush (~100k temporary workers).*

Working in an amazon warehouse sounds like hard and physically demanding work, but there are significant numbers of worse jobs in our that pay people substantially less. For example, I have bigger ethical qualms about the working conditions I support by buying a lot of the fresh produce in the USA** than the working conditions I support by ordering something from amazon.

*Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/business/amazon-minimum-wage.html

**Background: https://modernfarmer.com/2017/02/migrant-farm-workers-the-high-cost-of-cheap-labor/

[I'm a red panda]

I have 2 cousins who work amazon warehouse jobs, for a number of years. They LOVE them. It's a good paying job with benefits to them.  They will never be supervisors and will always be low level line workers, but they are paid a living wage and can live away from their parents now (they do still live together though).  I can't get on the Amazon hate bandwagon at all. I don't have a prime membership though.

I do try to limit any sort of single item order or rush order; but I actually think a delivery model is more efficient overall. I can get many things at one place, rather than have to drive to so many different stores to try to find what I'm looking for.  Delivery services optimize their routes for $$, so they are using the least amount of gas possible.

I'm also not sure I understand "rugal enough to not be shopping online anyway".  Can you explain that more? I can often get something online for 1/2 the price I could find it locally, because I have options online.  How does frugality fit into that?

[eav]

I don't typically shop at Amazon, so I could never justify having a Prime membership. I buy consumables at the grocery store with a coupon or at the dollar store. Any gifts or occasional shopping for myself is done at various online stores, but only if I have a discount code and free shipping. I hate the act of in store shopping, malls, all of it.

While I try to limit it myself, I can't imagine a world without online shopping. The stores and roads would be chaos I imagine. Or the general public would buy less if it meant they had to go buy it in person. That would be nice...

[I'm a red panda]

While I try to limit it myself, I can't imagine a world without online shopping. The stores and roads would be chaos I imagine. Or the general public would buy less if it meant they had to go buy it in person. That would be nice...

Certainly, I've lived in a world without online shopping. But there was still a ton of mail order. I had the phone numbers of my favorite catalogs memorized as a child!  I can still tell you the phone number for Pleasant Company/American Girl, who I haven't called in 15 years!

[nereo]

I don't typically shop at Amazon, so I could never justify having a Prime membership. I buy consumables at the grocery store with a coupon or at the dollar store. Any gifts or occasional shopping for myself is done at various online stores, but only if I have a discount code and free shipping. I hate the act of in store shopping, malls, all of it.

While I try to limit it myself, I can't imagine a world without online shopping. The stores and roads would be chaos I imagine. Or the general public would buy less if it meant they had to go buy it in person. That would be nice...

Until very recently, brick-and-mortar stores held a strong advantage where people would spend more in store than they would while shopping online.  It's in part because people are suckers for promotions, and because there's the near-instantaneousness of buying something in person, and because shopping is such a tactile activity for many which has been difficult to reproduce online.  This gap has closed considerably in recent years with one-click buying, faster delivery and websites that target an individual's particular shopping habits.

[marion10]

When we were children (I'm in my late 50s) almost all of our clothes came from Sears- ordered from the catalog. My husband's hometown had a catalog showroom and you could order and pick up there- and look at a few things like a refrigerator and riding lawn mower and I would guess the owners got a commission.  Shopping was a very special occasion for us as it was an hours drive and we only had one car and my mom didn't like dragging three kids around. There was a small clothing store that had a few things- we usually bought our shoes there. Of course there was Penney's and Wards as well- but we were a Sears family. I don't see how Amazon is any different.

[ysette9]

I may very well feel differently at a different stage in my life, but right now with two full careers and two little kids at home we are trying to keep the focus on “good enough is good enough”. It is too easy to fall into the trap of wanting to find the best deal and optimize and then things just don’t get done.

I was looking on Amazon for cold sore cream and dithered and hemmed and hawed. Finally I bought it at Target the following weekend for 50% more and suffered an extra week with the cold sore than I really needed to.

The baby got her foot stuck in between the bars of her crib. The oldest did that a few times when she was a baby and I always intended to look into a bumper mesh thingie, but never quite got around to it. With the second baby I got right on Amazon and ordered a mesh that arrived two days later. I should have never dithered with the first baby as getting your limbs stuck in the bars of a cage doesn’t help anyone.

I haven’t researched the pay and working conditions at Amazon warehouses enough to have an opinion. I agree with another poster that conditions in farming or slaughter houses are likely much worse but don’t seem to induce ire. I’d like to help better society around me in little ways but st the moment my biggest priority is keeping my own life from falling apart, keeping my babies clothes and fed and cared for, and making sure I can stay happily married. I’ll have time to make better choices and be a better contributor to society once I don’t have to work for a living.

[Telecaster]

Good for you if that's the goal you want to set for yourself, but compared to a lot of other companies out there amazon just doesn't strike me personally as particularly evil. Their recent internally imposed minimum wage is $15/hour, including for temporary employees hired to deal with the Christmas rush (~100k temporary workers).*

Working in an amazon warehouse sounds like hard and physically demanding work, but there are significant numbers of worse jobs in our that pay people substantially less. For example, I have bigger ethical qualms about the working conditions I support by buying a lot of the fresh produce in the USA** than the working conditions I support by ordering something from amazon.

Also worth pointing out that Amazon FC workers get full benefits on day one, and get a pre-paid tuition benefit.  I can't imagine it is fun working in an FC, but if you have limited job skills it is probably the best you can do. 

[WhiteTrashCash]

Since this is a forum focusing on frugality, I don't understand this thread. Why would I purposefully make things more expensive for myself when I'm trying to save money? Amazon is one of the best things that exist. If they have labor issues or whatever, that's something that is solved with legislation.

I'm not a Luddite. Technology exists and I use it to save money and live as well as I can. Why should I limit myself to what I can find in a local physical store while waiting in long lines to deal with surly retail employees, when I can buy it instantly and less expensively online with better customer service? Seriously.