Why I Am Not Renewing My Amazon Prime Account
It started in 2010. I was headed to Brussels to present a paper and participate in a conference of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies, in Belgium. I stopped at a branch of JP Morgan Chase where I had an account to wire funds for the conference registration to the organizers overseas. I filled out all the paperwork and asked what the fee would be. “Forty dollars,” I was told. I said, “No, what is the fee for account holders.” The customer service representative said again, “Forty dollars, it’s the same for everybody.” I replied, “You mean I have had an account for over twenty years, and you charge me the same fee to transfer funds I hold in your bank as anyone who walks in the door!?!” “Yes,” he said, as if I asked why the sky is blue.
I decided then and there to divorce my bank. Loyalty used to be rewarded in meaningful and deliberate ways before so-called loyalty programs became marketing ploys. I had joined a credit union and decided to move my checking account there. With a certain number of qualifying services, I pay no fees or minimums to have an account, and since I have been a member for more than ten years, that itself makes a difference in the services I can enjoy. It was with the help of their free financial counseling and other services, that I was able to improve my credit score significantly, and get a low interest rate on a car loan. Reciprocity counts in healthy relationships.
It is easy to feel ineffective and anonymous next to the power yielded by the one percent and multinational corporations, deemed people almost a decade ago by Mitt Romney, but there are two mechanisms that collectively give everyday citizens powerful leverage: the power of the voting booth and the power of the purse. Aware of this in recent elections, Republicans in states like Georgia, Florida and Texas, are trying to bypass our democratic system and make it difficult for many American citizens to exercise their right to vote. Democrats with all their talk about supporting the middle class, have largely left the poor and working class out to dry, which could be why many poor and working class people have abandoned Democrats and gone to the other side, thinking they have a better shot there or have stopped voting at all.
My adult son, who lives in a different part of the country, asked me some time ago to choose a social media platform he can connect with me on, so that he could keep up with me at a distance. I have never been on Facebook and since I am an image and object maker, I initially choose Instagram because it asked so little of me, didn’t seem as exploitative, and posting an image every once in a while was not all that demanding. No personal info was required, no relationship status to reveal. How disappointed I was when Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and later added advertising. I feel like somewhat of a traitor to still be posting on it, but one has to accept certain mechanisms of twenty-first century connectivity. No woman (or mother) is an island.
I do not own a television, so I do not have cable, thus I am minimally subject to the brainwashing influence of American televised advertising. Several years ago, a fairly new iPhone fell out of my jean pocket into the toilet by accident. Ruined, I decided not to get another one. After being given an iWatch as a gift and then realizing I could not use it unless I bought back into the Apple monopoly, I graciously gave it back. I have a modern, and smartly designed Light phone that only accepts phone calls and texts. I can play music and podcasts, and it has an alarm and a calculator. I am quite happy that it has no capacity for apps, and I only pay about $30 a month for mobile service, up from the $20 I paid a month when I had the flip phone folx made fun of me for using.
I think you can see where this is going. Call me uncapitalist, but please do not think of me as paranoid. I just want to exercise control over the little power I sometimes feel I have through what media gets close to my person and who I give my money to. As much as possible, (though it is hard), I do not want apps following where I am going, knowing what I am buying, thinking or doing, many without me knowing that they are doing so. If companies want to know and use my personal information they should ask, and pay for it.
During the pandemic, getting deliveries of groceries, art supplies, books and other things that helped us to avoid opportunities to be in contact with the deadly pandemic, were essential. Amazon stepped right in and filled that void for many of us, bringing the world right to our doorsteps. As Jeff Bezos billions kept going cha-ching by the millisecond with 8.1 billion dollars in profit reported by the New York Times in the first quarter of the year for Amazon, we learned of the inhumanity of the company’s labor practices like employee firings over speaking up about unsafe conditions during the pandemic, or having to urinate in bottles so as not to take away from the time it takes to pack, ship and deliver our stuff to us.
There is an opportunity to bring both our voting power together with the power of the purse. We can vote for better labor practices by boycotting Amazon and purchasing things elsewhere. We all love the convenience of two-day delivery for something we think we need, but is it worth contributing to one man’s singular wealth, supporting a company that pays less taxes than many of us individually, while his company contributes to a debilitating work life for thousands of our fellow citizens–low wage workers that are surveilled and cannot even take a proper bathroom break?
During the pandemic it was important for those of us with means to keep artists, designers, small and other businesses alive. I was delighted to become more aware of so many businesses owned by Indigenous, Black and other folx of color that I could patronize, and I don’t want to abandon these businesses now that the pandemic is easing. I found bookshop.org–an independent online bookstore that financially supports independent bookshops, where I now regularly purchase books from Rose Café, started in 2020 by a young Black female educator in my Southside Chicago neighborhood. When my Prime account expires I am not going to renew it. I can certainly buy from many of the businesses I found through Amazon directly, so they can realize greater margins.
If enough folx vote to wean themselves from the company, that might influence them to change their labor tactics to something more humane and generous. I have my own personal loyalty program and am happy to reward companies that share my values by patronizing them. I would consider going back to using Amazon if they would treat their employees better.
People can be people too!
#beabetteramazon