The $3/month for no ads felt like they were nickel-and-diming the customers.

I was paying something like $129/year for Prime. The idea of paying $3/month on top of the $129/year I was paying for Prime felt so petty.

Had they just raised the price of Prime, I probably would have shrugged and carried on. But adding a monthly charge on top of a yearly charge, nope. I was done.

This of course was on top of allowing the store to be flooded with low quality junk being resold from Alibaba, counterfeit products all over the place, pushing to send shipments in their retail boxes, review gaming, them ripping off popular products to sell through their own private labels, and other such practices that have eroded my view and trust of Amazon over the years.

I ordered some headphones from Amazon a month ago, because the company that makes them was sold out in the color I wanted. I felt the need to lookup how to tell authentic from counterfeit headphones while I was waiting for the shipment, so I could validate what I received was real. I’ve received counterfeit goods before from Amazon. I heard they keep everything in the same bin, so it’s luck of the draw when picked (I have no way to validate that). No other store makes me worry about things like this, just Amazon. If brick-and-mortar stores were like this they’d be out of business in a week.