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Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

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Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#331

Post by giantg2 »

satellites wrote: post #302
vineyardmike wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price and convenience are probably better than average.

But that price and convenience is at the cost of quality and employee safety. And honestly not even worth it as a consumer even if you don’t care about the ethical issues. I’ve been severely disappointed with the quality of the average item on Amazon over the last few years, to the point that I have stopped using them completely. Even Walmart is better, which is saying a lot.

I don't think I've had too many quality issues. The vast majority of the brands you buy at Amazon are also at Walmart or Walmart.com. If you're having issues, then you probably need to start evaluating brand vs seller. For your current discussion, you need to compare buying the same exact item from each. The big win in my eyes is being able to buy from Amazon Warehouse for a big discount.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#332

Post by pasquinelli »

tpmoney wrote: post #314
dbg31415 wrote: post #275

It's weird that corporations have philanthropic arms, isn't it?

Why? Corporations are made up of people, and people have causes they want to be charitable towards. If you’re going to be bringing in millions of dollars anyway, why not pay some of that out to causes you believe in. It’s only weird if you assume all corporations should be amoral money exchange systems where by money is exchanged for labor and capital which in turn is exchanged for more money

> Corporations are made up of people, and people have causes they want to be charitable towards.

almost none of the people that make up a corporation are free to decide where money goes. the few people that do take the money out, the board of directors or whatever, could just donate their own money to whatever charity.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#333

Post by giantg2 »

Retric wrote: post #323
tootie wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have metrics for the average retailer, that's probably not true. Local corner shops vary widely, but are not the least bit shy about hiring undocumented workers, stealing wages, skimping on safety and avoiding taxes. They just do it at such a small scale, it doesn't make the news.

The statistics I gave where in comparison to the average. They also have higher rates of injury and pay less in taxes. Amazon has had wage theft issues, but I don’t know how they stack up on undocumented workers or the average retailer which includes Costco etc not just tiny corner stores. Wage theft: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22262294/amazon-flex-wage-... more wage theft: https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/11/1…

Where were those stats? I didn't see them in your comment history.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#334

Post by giantg2 »

skinnymuch wrote: post #288
throwayyy479087 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're absolutely not - but the people that attack Amazon don't care about that. Amazon to many represents Capitalism, and so acts as a catchall for criticisms of Capitalism. Ironically, small family shops use WAY more child labor, unpaid labor etc as a percentage than Amazon. They also produce more plastic per item, take only cash to evade taxes, etc.

Oh no small family shops are evading taxes…good thing corporations don’t that…

Tax evasion has a different meaning than how you are using it.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#335

Post by Retric »

giantg2 wrote: post #333
Retric wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics I gave where in comparison to the average. They also have higher rates of injury and pay less in taxes. Amazon has had wage theft issues, but I don’t know how they stack up on undocumented workers or the average retailer which includes Costco etc not just tiny corner stores. Wage theft: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22262294/amazon-flex-wage-... more wage theft: https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/11/1…

Where were those stats? I didn't see them in your comment history.

So wait you searched by comment history rather than say Google: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/12/tech/amazon-injury-data-study...

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#337

Post by criddell »

pasquinelli wrote: post #332
tpmoney wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Corporations are made up of people, and people have causes they want to be charitable towards. If you’re going to be bringing in millions of dollars anyway, why not pay some of that out to causes you believe in. It’s only weird if you assume all corporations should be amoral money exchange systems where by money is exchanged for labor and capital which in turn is exchanged for more money

> Corporations are made up of people, and people have causes they want to be charitable towards. almost none of the people that make up a corporation are free to decide where money goes. the few people that do take the money out, the board of directors or whatever, could just donate their own money to whatever charity.

Most of the corporations in the US are pretty small. When a local plumbing company in your community sponsors a neighborhood little league team, there probably isn't much discussion on that company's board of directors about the donation.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/487741/number-of-firms-i...

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#338

Post by Spivak »

giantg2 wrote: post #326
Symmetry wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay a lot more than the average retailer, which is why they feel they can work their employees so hard. I think they also tend to see less employee on employee violence.

"I think they also tend to see less employee on employee violence." Increased shared hatred of the employer leads to increased employee cohesion?

Shared hatred of leads to increased cohesion among . Tale as old as human civilization. Maybe one day we'll be able to hack this quirk of humanity on a large scale without needing to be the artificial outgroup.

One I've seen that I think might have promise is "white people" being the outgroup for "white people." Any collection of white people forms an ad hoc in group where some nondescript "everyone else" is the outgroup. Now everyone has a shared thing to hate but everyone you interact with becomes temporally part of your ingroup so you're never hating an specific person or group of people. And even though it's impossible to actually become part of the outgroup you still have some of the fear that if you embody the negative traits that are ascribed to the outgroup you might join them so it also gradually norms.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#339

Post by hamburglar »

delecti wrote: post #317
yunwal wrote: post #306

They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for no good reason, so it was always pretty clear to me that it was nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off.

> nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off It was neither. It was a way to get people to go directly to Amazon in their browser rather than search items through Google. Clicking through Amazon from Google results gives Google an affiliate commission on those sales.

Oh, that’s interesting. I always wondered why they didn’t allow me to just have all my amazon traffic get redirected to smile, and that would totally explain it. I probably only remembered to type smile in the browser one out of every 10 times I bought something, so my purchases could have been much more helpful to my chosen charity if it weren’t for this.

Is this observation based on knowledge of their motivations or just a deduction?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#340

Post by Rebelgecko »

rpmisms wrote: post #322

Damn. I used AmazonSmile to support my favorite extremist group. (Firearms Policy Coalition) I wonder if that had anything to do with it...

I wouldn't be totally surprised, given the effort to get the FPC 501c3 delisted from smile last month.

I thought part of what made Smile cool is that Amazon would forward my donations to such a wide range of organizations (eg my local church OR my local satanic temple). Talk about consumer choice.

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