Amazon Closing AmazonSmile • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#311

Post by JaggedJax » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

56friends wrote: post #305

JaggedJax wrote: post #301

With the caveat being I know nothing about them, is a service like Cultivate ( https://www.wecultivate.us ) a good alternative? Are there any others? I went searching around for options after this change and the things I like seeing about Cultivate is that it both tells me about options to purchase an item on a site that is NOT Amazon, as well as keeping the donation feature.

I would rather donate $10 to my local charity monthly than have one more company track my entire browsing history.

Good point. The main thing I was looking for was something to recommend me alternatives to Amazon when looking at a product.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#312

Post by adamt » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

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.

I believe they did - I've used this - full instructions here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=17337655031

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#313

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #146

> However, after almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible organizations—more than 1 million globally—our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin. What BS is this? Can we have the real reason?

While I'm sure this isn't the real reason, I could see that the accounting and check-cutting for 1 million organizations will have an noticeable impact on the amounts they're giving to each organization, especially the ones that get almost nothing.

Others have already suggested cutting the list of charities down to a manageable number, perhaps from the list of charities that got the most interest already. I suspect this would end up producing bad PR from their curated list, so they've decided to just pick a handful and be done.

But again, I suspect there was more to this and we'll never know the real reason.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#314

Post by tpmoney » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

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

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#315

Post by staringback » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

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.

> They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for no good reason

They 100% did

> nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off

Do you even know what a tax write off is? PR stunt of course, but that is every single company who also donates to charity. Should we instead shame companies for blatant PR stunts so that they donate $0 instead?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#316

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #86

dylan604 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By starting a program and saying "for the next x amount of time, this is what we're doing".

That's not a bad idea. I wonder if companies do this today. I expect cynical HN commenters would make the similarly snarky comments about how X company is only committing to Y time period.

Yeah, they would.

But if Amazon committed to Smile for 2 years, then they could say "We're re-upping our commitment for 2 more years" every 2 years, bringing even more PR for it. And when it ended, there would still be some outrage, but probably not as much.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#317

Post by delecti » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

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.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#318

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #287

rcme wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the sins of Amazon are any worse than most other major U.S. retailers.

There warehouses are significantly worse than average in terms of injuries per hour. They also frequently sell fraudulent items directly harming consumers. I can’t think of a metric where they aren’t worse than the average retailer.

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.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#319

Post by tech234a » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

wardedVibe wrote: post #295

ryandvm wrote: post #272

Again?

This happened before?

Previously posted 18 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34435338

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#320

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

dbg31415 wrote: post #275

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

If they can get people buying stuff on Amazon to type the URL into their browser instead of searching for "Amazon" in google and clicking the add that pops up they probably save more money than it costs them.