NICOLE KOBIE
Nicole has only two online orders this year: make quitting Amazon less painful and please could you collect that pillow?
Quitting Amazon is far more painful than it should be – the shopping behemoth needs some serious competition.
There’s been a tech backlash growing for years. We see the money and power US firms amass in the name of innovation by abusing our data and overworking staff, and some of us, the performatively woke like myself, decide to opt out. But that’s not easy.
I don’t use Uber because of the way it treats both its drivers and its customers. But it turns out that what I mean by that is I’ve deleted the app from my phone only to reinstall it when needed. Stranded by public transport because of a shooting and stabbing on our bus route, my husband and I tried one of the Uber alternatives, Kapten. However, the driver couldn’t figure out how to get to us and cancelled, leaving us to either walk the long way around the police barricade amid a manhunt for violent criminals, or call an Uber. We did the latter; I’m a hypocrite.
It ’s difficult to be ethical without alternatives. All of this is a roundabout apology to my family for the late arrival of half their Christmas presents this year, because I decided to do my holiday shopping without using Amazon. The tax issue has always irritated, but the final straw was an article in The Atlantic that described the injuries suffered by Amazon warehouse staff in their quest to hit targets ( pcpro.link/306atlantic). That just didn’t feel festive, you know?
But away from the efficient confines of Amazon’s platform, online shopping is like the Wild West. No one’s getting shot in saloons, but it’s lawless chaos all the same. Plenty of larger companies do have their ecommerce sorted – Argos, John Lewis and Ocado being three good examples – but others struggle. Website design, fulfilment and deliveries are clearly still works in progress. When you’re accustomed to one-day delivery from Amazon, the rest of the retail world looks awfully disorganised. A full half of my orders arrived later than they should have, some never arrived at all and a handful were the wrong item.
For example, I ordered a personalised tree decoration for a friend with a baby at the beginning of December, paying extra for speedy shipping to get it on time. The entire order arrived late and without the baby-bearing tree bling. The company offered a quick refund, which was nice but not as nice as getting the gift I expected. The day after, the item arrived. I admit I didn’t bother to refund the refund.
For my nephew in Canada, I ordered a blanket with cats on it (he really likes cats). The company sent the wrong one, and once alerted, shipped the correct item… which arrived a week after Christmas. I am still dealing with a similar mistaken shipment issue with a certain London-based transportthemed museum. We ordered for our Tube-themed front entrance a moquette door stop — yes, we’re nerds — but first it wasn’t available, then it shipped three weeks late, and when it arrived it was a pillow. The staff have been trying to arrange a collection, but their courier never shows up, so for a month the pillow has sat in a cardboard box acting as a rather pathetic doorstop.
There were some companies that showed a better way, and these were usually smaller ones. An embroidered thingamabob ordered via Etsy from an artist in New Zealand somehow arrived faster than anything I ordered from big companies in the UK.
The easiest shopping experience came via a shop on Instagram. The app showed me a gift my husband would love — a tiny, working model of a cable car — and within 90 seconds I’d bought it. The micro store used Shopify’s platform, which I’d come to love in weeks of non-Amazon consumerism, as its entire purchasing process is on a single page, meaning no clicking and waiting for pages to load to see that shipping will cost £30 and the item won’t arrive until 2021. The wee cable car was here in days, wrapped so prettily I shoved it under the tree like that. Now that’s time-saving.
With Amazon, you know what you’re going to get – a wide selection and fast delivery – but you’ll be propping up Jeff Bezos’ regime. Shopping on the rest of the web is inconsistent, but there’s customer service magic happening out there. Yet I don’t need magic: just an alternative to Amazon for buying basics. Please, Argos, Ocado, whoever, find a way to widen your platform to other products. Both have started the process — Ocado has a pet food shop — but if one or the other could buy or partner with B&Q, Wilko and Ikea, I’d never need to shop with Amazon again. Losing my custom may not force better behaviour from Bezos, but real competition might. work@nicolekobie.com
Away from Amazon, online shopping is like the Wild West. No one’s getting shot in saloons, but it’s lawless chaos all the same
With Amazon, you know what you’re going to get – a wide selection and fast delivery – but you’ll be propping up Jeff Bezos’ regime