this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Amazon’s now-legendary “Prime Day” is July 8-11. Much like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this means sales on lots of items on Amazon’s vast marketplace, and as such many people flock to the giant’s website to get sweet deals on everything from computers to small kitchen appliances and more. While many of us are feeling the financial crunch more than ever, I urge you, dear reader, to resist the allure. I don’t typically have strong opinions about where people chose to shop or how they decide to spend their heard-earned money, but in this post I hope to lay out a convincing case for why Amazon is full-stop evil, no caveats, and is undeserving of your money on a moral and ethical level no matter what your values are. Amazon needs to be stopped, and legislation will not do so. Only its loyal consumers – who keep the beast alive – can do that by taking their money elsewhere. No matter your political or personal beliefs, I'm certain Amazon violates them in one way or another, and you should vote with your dollar by buying from other places whenever possible. Here’s why.

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[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 35 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have yet to see a single item have a significant discount on prime day, it's not even a sale.

[–] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] witten@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (4 children)

~~Owned by Amazon, FYI.~~

Turns out I'm full of shit.

[–] okr765@lemmy.okr765.com 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

What's the source for this? Can't seem to find details about this online.

[–] witten@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Oops I was wrong.. My bad. Not sure where I got that from.

[–] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I can't seem to find evidence of that. All I see is they're Amazon affiliates, which pretty much anybody can be.

Do you have a source?

[–] witten@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Looks like I was wrong! Consider it a human hallucination.

[–] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Fair enough. Honestly it was probably a safe bet too considering how much they have their hands in.

[–] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Spaniard@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)
[–] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I didn't look into it yet but that would seem a bit... Against its own interests.

[–] witten@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Yeah turns out I was wrong about that.. Must've been thinking of some other company! My bad.

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 1 points 15 minutes ago

Not owned by Amazon, but there's a big but.

Their source of income is from Amazon affiliates link. Whenever you follow the price of a product, if you click on the links on their websites or in their emails, they will earn a commission from Amazon.

Amazon recently started vetting their affiliates more. I'm 100% sure that camelcamelcamel now shows data in a way that doesn't hurt Amazon (e.g. they won't show sudden drops in prices, i.e. pricing mistakes) or even themselves (commissions are a percentage of the price paid by the user).

[–] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Prices mysteriously go up about a week before prime day sales, then drop to a few dollars below normal, scream “39% off” and you feel like you beat the system.

[–] burrito@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or sometimes they remove a 25% off coupon that usually shows all the time and for the "sale" they just reduce the price of the item to that same amount without and then remove the coupon from the page. It will then look like it has gone on sale from camelcamelcamel because it wasn't accounting for the price after the coupon it was only showing the item price.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago

i use another tracker, KEEPA.

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I remember at my first job in high school in a store on Main Street. We had a sidewalk sale with other business owners.

My innocence was lost when my boss instructed me to place higher prices using our ordinary white stickers and then cover them with ‘discounted’ orange sales stickers at slightly higher prices than normal.

These dicks just do it at scale. Amazon is a tawdry crime organization. We all know it.

[–] FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi 3 points 15 hours ago

Prices mysteriously go up about a week before prime day sales, then drop to a few dollars below normal, scream “39% off” and you feel like you beat the system.

Gladly this practice is illegal in Finland at lest. Here companies having sales have to show the lowest price of that product within the last 30 days just for this very reason.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

i usually find the good deals randomly outside of any holidays, i mostly ignore prime deals.

[–] gian@lemmy.grys.it 1 points 31 minutes ago

Not the stores don't use this trick during sales... This is probably the only thing Amazon has in common with everyoen else...