On March 28th, Amazon started keeping everything you say to your Echo or other Alexa-enabled device with no way to opt-out. This also means your childrens’ Amazon Alexa requests will be automatically sent to Amazon. Keep in mind, they had to pay $25 million (not nearly enough!) in May 2023 for keeping childrens’ precise locations and voice recordings forever instead of deleting them as they were required to by law.
I am sick of Amazon and other large corporations (Target, Walmart, Home Depot, the list goes on…) assuming they can act badly and we consumers will still shop there. Enough is enough! Beyond protesting (which is great!), the only way to get the oligarchs out and politicians to listen is to cut off the spigot to our money. We can fight back with our wallets every day.
Trying to quit a company like Amazon is hard – because if you’ve been shopping there for a long time and are a Prime member, it’s an ingrained behavior to go there first. Need something for your apartment? Find it on Amazon. How many times have you said to yourself, “Oh, I’ll just order it on Amazon”? How many subscribe and save orders do you have set up? Even looking at product recommendations on sites like the Strategist and Wirecutter, they often have Amazon as the first or only link for where to purchase.
Amazon is also a massive corporation that has spent decades solidifying it’s position as the #1 eCommerce retailer in the US, accounting for nearly 40% of US eCommerce sales in 2023. They own Whole Foods, Audible, Zappos (did you forget that one? I did), Twitch, One Medical, and in total over 100 subsidiaries. Amazon very much wants you to shop at Amazon, and when they have failed on their own they buy a company that is already succeeding.
As an individual, it can be hard to find the time to look up new companies to shop at, especially for random things that you need in a pinch. I’m starting this Substack as a guide to how to make approachable changes each week for your shopping behavior, find new stores to shop at category by category or alternative options (like clothing swaps and community resources), and to share with each other how it’s going. The goal is not a one-day boycott, but lasting change that feels good.
I am NOT here to rip you to shreds for ordering 1 thing on Amazon because you absolutely need it and you can’t get it anywhere else. I hate CVS for a number of reasons, but I had to go there a couple of days ago to get a prescription filled that no local pharmacies supported. I get it. Perfection is not the idea here, we want consistent changes over time.
I’ll post weekly on Fridays focusing first on Amazon (and by extension Target and Walmart since there is a lot of overlap), and then move onto how to shift out of other large corporations like Google, big banks, and others. If you’d like to support me in a simple way, you can Buy Me a Coffee.
For paid subscribers, I’m not sure what that will look like yet in terms of additional content, I’d like to see what people find most useful from my regular free content first. But if you want to support what I do, you can add a paid subscription in the meantime as I figure things out. If things go well, I plan on rolling out additional paid content in 4-6 weeks.
If you haven’t already and you’re interested in my content, please subscribe! I’ll also be sharing video content on my TikTok and Instagram accounts, so follow there if you’d like.
