Amazon To Stop Taking Visa Credit Cards For Payments From January 2022

[DAVIDH]

Just play them at their own game. There's a couple of Leeds Utd games being televised just on Amazon TV soon. They appear to offer you free Prime membership every six months, so I just wait until the appropriate time to subscribe, watch the matches, then cancel the subscriptions before the 30 day free trial is up. You can also get the 30 day free subscription by using a different email and credit card number.

[andyg]

1 minute ago, DAVIDH said:

Just play them at their own game. There's a couple of Leeds Utd games being televised just on Amazon TV soon. They appear to offer you free Prime membership every six months, so I just wait until the appropriate time to subscribe, watch the matches, then cancel the subscriptions before the 30 day free trial is up. 

I believe my team West ham are on over the Christmas period as well David. They've been dipping there feet into the premier league the last couple of years. If I was sky I'd be quite worried, amazon's pockets are a lot deeper then sky's. Personally sky's days are numbered as they have got greedy I've cancelled my sky's sports package. 

[andyg]

28 minutes ago, Smoggy said:

I'm sure they are fine if you are a prime member but if you don't wish to a prime member the whole setup is aimed at tricking you into becoming one, I had to cancel a couple of times when I'd tried to buy something without and I consider myself fairly yech savvy, hence I avoid if at all possible.

Of course once you are a member it's just too easy to go straight to them for everything.

My sister uses them and she's not a prime member, she has to pay some ridiculous delivery charges to be fair. I've set her up on my account as an alternative delivery address, it's worked fine so far.

[OldBerkshireBoy]

For the little I use Amazon I have placed the order using Prime then make a cuppa and then come back and cancel Prime, used to work everytime for me.

[floydraser]

I'm not a prime member but I use them occasionally. When I do, having avoided the prime sign up, the default postage is usually £4.95 for next day delivery. Cancel that and have the free delivery, it comes the day after! They even send you an email to let you know when it's coming! I just don't see the value in prime.

I've even bought stuff from elsewhere and they have been set up with Amazon, and the goods came next day, via Amazon.

I think Amazon logistics is now so geared up to quick delivery that if they are delivering to your area they may as well deliver your stuff at the same time. Likewise, collections from suppliers. To deliberately hold stuff back because someone isn't a prime member could actually cost them money under certain circumstances.

[Bikertov]

It's interesting to hear everyone's differing opinions of Amazon.

I share a Prime membership between 4 of us, so the cost is not particularly an issue. I order much less than others do, but still buy around 5 things a month for me and for work. For myself, I tend prefer in-person rather than online shopping for a lot of things, where I want to get a feel for the item, and for all my grocery shopping, so I am a bit of a luddite in that way.

Other household members, especially the younger generation, seem to get a delivery almost every day !

In my experience, Amazon is almost always the cheapest for any given item, especially when delivery is taken into account. And the delivery is usually quicker that most other places. Their Customer Service is also as good or better than everyone else, in particular for Amazon sold items rather than 3rd party / Marketplace sellers.

I don't use eBay much, as I have a general mistrust of eBay sellers, and buy a few little bits from Ali Express - cheap tools, hobby electronics stuff - but again have a mistrust / low expectation of what I might receive but don't pay much in return.

As for Amazon themselves and their business practices - I don't think they are any better or worse than any other business. They try to reduce cost to maximise profit. Is that any different to any business ? Don't supermarkets for instance squeeze every ounce out of their suppliers, and then fool us with misleading prices and fake offers and 'discounts' ?

At least Amazon have genuinely disrupted the market, and set new benchmarks that others now have to match. They have also been genuinely innovative in creating systems, processes and even businesses in the course of their growth - look at AWS (Amazon Web Services) as an example of that.

 

[andyg]

Weather you like it or not, high St shopping is dead in the water and I'd imagine there will be no high St within the next 10 years. The pandemic has only accelerated its demise. My company has grown its online shopping turnover from nothing at the start of covid to just over 70 million pounds this year. They now expect this to reach 130 million next year as they expand it. Tesco are and have been building what they call dark stores. Picking facilities for online shopping and the guys that have taken over at asda want to close all there stores in favour of an all online home delivery set up. The success of Amazon worldwide is no doubt the driving force. 

[Vaughan]

39 minutes ago, andyg said:

Weather you like it or not, high St shopping is dead in the water and I'd imagine there will be no high St within the next 10 years.

I have no doubt of that, but Amazon is not to blame! 

Amazon has simply profited from the fact that people can't shop in city or town centre high streets any more because they can't park their cars!

I am sorry, neither public transport (on 30 year-old double decker buses) nor bicycles, will ever take the place of shopping in your car. If you can't park in the town centre, you will shop in a retail park, where parking is convenient and free.

Meantime, all these "green" efforts to save the planet by cleaning the air on our streets, will be negated by all the white vans driving around delivering the  on-line shopping that has become our only practical alternative.

 

 

 

[grendel]

2 hours ago, floydraser said:

I'm not a prime member but I use them occasionally. When I do, having avoided the prime sign up, the default postage is usually £4.95 for next day delivery. Cancel that and have the free delivery, it comes the day after! They even send you an email to let you know when it's coming! I just don't see the value in prime.

I am in agreement with you here, the few things I purchase have either arrived next day (when the free 3 day delivery option has been ticked, or some from overseas have taken a few days (but these were not offered as next day even with prime. I dont spend enough to save by using prime, using prime would actually cost more than not, but they do make the buy without prime option difficult to find, its usually in a hidden link the same colour as the normal text, where the buy with prime is in a different colour in text 5 times the size. with a buy now button

[andyg]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

I am in agreement with you here, the few things I purchase have either arrived next day (when the free 3 day delivery option has been ticked, or some from overseas have taken a few days (but these were not offered as next day even with prime. I dont spend enough to save by using prime, using prime would actually cost more than not, but they do make the buy without prime option difficult to find, its usually in a hidden link the same colour as the normal text, where the buy with prime is in a different colour in text 5 times the size. with a buy now button

It can be the same with the same day delivery option for prime members.