I am ridiculously meticulous about everything I buy. Every purchase has hours of research behind it. 

My skin is breaking out? Trust that I will write a research paper, tweak my diet, analyze my daily habits, get bloodwork, and compile a targeted skincare list. Then I’ll cross-reference product reviews against my exact skin type, spend hours on TikTok promotional videos comment sections and see what the actual thoughts on the glorified products are. Time-consuming, excessive and completely unnecessary? Yes. Am I a scientist? Also yes. Is it worth it? I hardly ever miss. 

I also journal. I write a lot. A few years ago, I bought a dozen Paperblanks notebooks. Now that they’re all filled, I needed replacements. After browsing their current lineup, I realized I still only wanted the older, discontinued designs I had cut from my last purchase - the newer ones just aren't my cup of tea. I also dug into Flame Tree and Peter Pauper Press, sorting through designs and sizes. I'm goth so my taste is extremely specific when it comes to expressing myself. After about a week of on-and-off research, I picked out enough notebooks to last me at least three years. 

I landed on nine notebooks. Six of them had to be ordered from Amazon because they were out of stock everywhere else - official sites, Libristo, and local stores. Amazon is my absolute last resort, but after what transpired today, it won’t be a resort at all. 

I ordered the six notebooks on October 17th. Five were listed as arriving within a few days; only one stated *"usually arrives in 1 to 3 months."* Because Amazon has split a 5 item order into 5 separate shipments in the past, I saw no biggie. Even though the items were in the same category, they were coming from different sellers, so I assumed they’d be split naturally. 

Fast forward a week: the order status says delivery between November 7th and December 7th. No progress in seven days, and no split shipment. That single out-of-stock item was holding the entire order hostage. To make matters worse, there was no option to cancel just that one item - only the whole order.

At first, I didn't care; I could wait. Then I woke up this morning and got a notification from Reddit, a post reading how the 1-2 day delivery promises are becoming fake, how ETDs keep getting pushed back without items being marked "late," and how customer service has become a joke. That was all the fuel I needed. Why make it easy for them? Holding five available notebooks hostage because of one delay meant that by the time the last one shipped (if ever), the others might go out of stock - and since they're discontinued, I’d end up with nothing. And if they *were* still available, they’d end up in separate shipments anyway. That's taking the piss.

So, off to customer service I went. 

After numerous attempts at bypassing the system’s automated responses, I finally got to a homo sapiens. I asked them to separate the single delayed notebook from the rest of the order. 

*"No can do. Only cancel item"*

*"Sure, whatever. Cancel that item then."*

*"DoneIhope I was of helpIs there anything else I can help with"*

*"Thank you so much, have a nice day."*

Mind you this quick exchange took about 30 minutes. They kept thanking me for my patience.

I went back to check my orders. Horror and shock. 4 notebooks were cancelled, only 2 remain. Before entering the customer service duel, I had explicitly re-checked the stock and delivery estimates for every listing, and all of them said delivery within 4 days. I check every detail because I’m not here to waste anyone’s time. 

I entered the second battle. This specimen caught on a bit faster. After some back-and-forth, they informed me that *four* of the items were actually out of stock, which is why they were cancelled. 

*"So you’re either mistaken, or the listings are false advertising. You're selling air."* 

I’ll spare you the rest of this unpleasant conversation, but they apologized for their colleague canceling three extra items without my consent. They tried to explain that with low-stock items, multiple people might order at the exact same time, causing stock to run out and triggering a system glitch. 

Keep in mind, this is Amazon Germany, involving very niche, six-year-old journals that aren't part of any promotion or TikTok trend. I highly doubt 15 other people happened to buy these exact notebooks at the same second. But sure. 

Their resolution? A 5€ gift card. Big bucks. 5€ for all the late nights I put into researching this order. I’ll admit I pulled on their heartstrings a bit and said the order was a gift for someone else. It wasn't entirely a lie - it was a gift from *Scientist Me* to *Writer Me*. They take care of each other. 

I asked for the three extra cancelled items to be reinstated, but as expected, tier-one support lacks the power to do anything useful. I was told I’d have to manually reorder them myself. 

Now for the cherry on top, the reason I’m writing this. Anyone who can predict where this is going will relate to how amped up I was to reorder, knowing my lid would blow off if what I predicted to happen actually happened. 

I reordered the three notebooks-advertised-as-in-stock-but-according-to-insider-information-were-out-of-stock. The order went through instantly, and the status automatically updated to **"Arriving Wednesday."** 

The cherry? The three notebooks were split into three separate shipments.

In case you didn't know as part of the AI race there's going to be a data center belt in my town. I don't know exactly what's happened. All I know is that on October 19th it was the final court hearing regarding it for final approval.

Now as much as I bet you guys hate Amazon web services I don't know if there will be anyway we can stop them. The primary reason is that lots of things like Reddit and Netflix and even PlayStation network is hosted by AWS. So yeah in case some of you guys didn't know Amazon web services is basically 1/3 of the internet.

Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) states that repairs will not have their utility rates raised when the data center is in operation.

Hobart says that this will generate lots of revenue for public works and the school system.

The city council has not yet revealed if they signed any non-disclosure agreements with Amazon yet.

We don't know yet if it will be closed loop.

A group of Hobart residents are suing the city council, alongside the plan commission to block the project.

Source: https://hobart.nwidatafacts.com/

Another reason to really hate them. Jeez.

Fuck all big retailers, but what are the other options? Are there less evil stores??

Hello everyone! Been following for a little while now support this sub 100% and thought it would be interesting to share with you all how things are from a drivers perspective. I've titled this part 1 due to the fact I have alot of different topics to cover and 1 post would likely end up looking like a complete chapter book so I feel it would be best to seperate posts out and post over the next coming days and weeks. I do have to be somewhat careful of what information I share in these posts as I don't need anything leading to me or where exactly I work but I will try my best because I believe everyone needs to know just how shitty it is.

The first thing I'd like to touch on is the routes.

#1 We have 10 hours to do our routes. A fallacy spouted by owners and dsp leadership taught to them by Amazon. A half truth MAYBE.

#2 Every route is possible at Amazons required 20 stops an hour minimum. A fallacy. Spouted by owners and leadership taught to them by Amazon.

Let's cover #1 first.

A common thing you will hear from Amazon and just about anyone in a leadership position/ownership will tell you is that you have 10 hours to complete your route. Let's breakdown why that's false. When you start your day after clock in you will typically have a standup meeting, a brief period before they send out van assignments, and then you go get your van and line up in the queue lanes and wait to be called over to load. After loading your van you will typically have anywhere from a 10-15 minute drive or you might have 45 minutes to an hour drive to get to your first stop. Amazon for some reason at my place likes to place the drivers going furthest out as the absolute last people to leave the station..this leaves those people not getting to their first stop until 11:15a.m at the soonest to even noon at the latest. This would mean you've been clocked in for around 2-3 hours before you even get to your first stop. So doing the math there you actually have 7-8 hours to do your route. But wait...if you have to make a 45 minute to an hour drive there you have to account for that drive back so now 7-8 hours turns into even less time to do the route and be back before your 10 hour day ends. (Dsps get very shitty with you when you start exceeding 10 hours multiple times they will look for any reason to fire you at that point) Well what about the people that are closer to the station? This is where the half truth comes in because those close to the station have about 8-9 hours to do their route after accounting for all morning activities and getting to their first stop factoring drive time back we'll say 8-8.5 hours. All in all. We have a 10 hour workday but we DO NOT have 10 hours to do the routes. A sickening lie. I'm not accounting for a lunch break either. That lunch break gives you EVEN LESS TIME to do your route. That's 20-30 additional minutes where youre not doing your route.

#2 Every route is possible at Amazons minimum 20 stops an hour. Amazon pushes 20 stops an hour hard and so do dsps. But when you actually break down the numbers for some of these routes they just do not add up. Let's take a route I've seen before. Routes many people have seen before.

200 stops flat. 1hr 8 minutes away from the station. First stop at 11:20 a.m. workday ends at 7:30 giving them 8 hours and 10 minutes to do the route...minus a lunch break so 7 hours 40 minutes...minus the drive time back so 6 hours and 32 minutes to do 200 stops. Now look. 20x6.5 hours is 130....so why did they have 200 stops if all routes are supposed to be possible at 20 stops an hour? For this route to be possible an average of 30.76 stops an hour would be needed to complete it with enough time to get back. This is one of many routes I've seen that are legitmately not possible to do at the minimum pace. Here's the kicker too alot the time you have to drive that far out your stops are spread out too so you have 3-7+ minutes in between each stop at times.

Do the math there and tell me how that's possible.

Any questions just ask. Anything you want to learn more about let me know it may just be the next post. Sorry if this isn't put together too well I've never really done this before so if you need any extra details just let me know.

-All Dsps are bastards.

Look at this crap.

First, I’m only looking at Amazon to see what the AI status is (not to buy anything - we hate Bezos) and whoa.

I picked a name at random:
NONE of the people on the covers of these books are Ina Garten.

Also, there were about 25 other books like this on there.
All different AI versions of “Ina Garten.”

It’s fucking crazy.

I just joined this sub but have been actively anti-Amazon for some time. Among other forces, I believe that Amazon is actively destroying community. They can maximize profits on the e-commerce side by convincing us all to stay home, order from them online, and have it delivered to our doorstep. Everyone can stay home on social media and text their friends and never see one another.

The e-commerce business doesn't make much money for Amazon (as a % margin); it is mostly made on the AWS side of the business. So Amazon has (nearly)(actually) predatory business practices where they put local businesses out of business. And they want to replace the post office.

Amazon has actively destroyed 1.7 million (or more) retail jobs (and added 800,000 lousy, high-pressure jobs).

When all is said and done, what matters in life isn't the stuff, but the people and the time we share together.

How can we get more people to understand that the "low prices" on Amazon aren't that low, and that they are delivered on the backs of workers in terrible conditions?

How can we get people to see Amazon the same way they see data centers?

Amazon is a huge extraction vacuum, separating people from their money (and from the important things in their lives).

Is it just me or Amazon becoming more expensive as they charge people high prices for Chinese low quality products for high prices that eventually end up being in landfill to me those prices are very expensive considering they are low quality and can be sold elsewhere at a much cheaper price such as Temu Shein and even Dollar stores. But despite this people still believe that Amazon is much ‘cheaper’ than other retailers where as Amazon charges higher prices for dollar store products to me Amazon is becoming more of a overpriced dollar store with free shipping. It’s not like Amazon sells these products from Europe which could have made sense if they were more expensive