An unfair defeat against Amazon

5 min readNov 14, 2019

I started 2019 with a simple new year’s resolution: to not buy from the Amazon Marketplace. This decision was made because of some unethical procedures used at Amazon: human exploitation. Below, in the Further reading section I will attach some news articles, in case you are interested in deepening your knowledge about this matter — although it doesn’t hurt.

However, in this Amazon-free journey, I recently went through an unfair defeat, and I wanted to share this not-really-long story with you.

In the past, I used Amazon mostly to buy books (lots of them), stationery, cables, light bulbs, and other things. With this next-day delivery that Amazon Prime offers, it is easy to become hooked by such commodity. You are always one click away from the desired item and the day after it gets delivered right at your doorstep. Somehow, we forget there are other markets out there. However, when we push Buy Now, we unconsciously trigger a process in which different people move your item from the shelves towards you. This includes a worker standing by a conveyor belt full of items, and in no-time he or she has to identify which box fits the item, assemble it, put the item in it, fill the void with paper, close the box and stick the label. Then move to the next item. Alienating! What would Frederik Taylor think?

Then, your parcel gets dispatched and loaded in a truck to be delivered to you. All these people always run against time because ultimately we are the ones who need to be satisfied by their job. We are basically benefiting at the expenses of someone else’s health. In these “fulfillment centers” demands are very high, workers are forced to stand up for prolonged times, they are afraid of going to the toilet, as they fear of being reported for idling. They are pressured and stressed. Worst of all, if they don’t perform at high standards they risk to get fired.

After all these scandals, I decided to cut my purchases from Amazon and find deals elsewhere. My last purchase was made on 22 Nov 18. I started buying books from Waterstones (a bookshop in the UK), and if I am really lazy that I want stuff delivered to my door I use Ebay. On Ebay you can find sellers who pack and dispatch items by themselves. You will need to wait a couple of days more for deliveries, but I can be patient.

Although, I must say that you can’t completely avoid Amazon, as nowadays they run almost the whole Internet. I am pretty sure that also my website hosting provider uses AWSs. The data I use in my research comes from an Amazon S3. Time to time I read from my Kindle too, and I am forced to buy ebooks from Amazon. I therefore decided to not use just the Amazon Marketplace — which involves human labour for packaging, dispatching, and delivery.

So far, my journey has been easy until today.

Last weekend, I saw in my friends car a magnetic phone holder, that I wanted too. I opened the Ebay app and I found it (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/332293175007). £10. Not cheap not expensive either. My friend told me to get it from Amazon as it costs £7. I didn’t bother to check, and I explained him my ethical principles. And, I bought it from Ebay.

Yesterday, I received a parcel and with my utter surprise I see an Amazon box. The box contained the phone holder I bought few days ago.

This rung a bell in my mind. It is similar to the case of the “Ripple Rug” scam I listened in a podcast a while ago. Basically, the seller buys the item from Amazon on my behalf–so that it gets delivered directly at my address, increases its price and pockets the difference. A quite profitable business we would argue, as the seller plays as uninvited middleman and he doesn’t add any value. In retail business, this is called dropshipping.

The item I received is www.amazon.co.uk/ESR-Car-Mount-Magnetic-Vent/dp/B01N2UMYF5/ref=sr_1_23, which costs £7. My friend wasn’t wrong with its price, after all.

Anyway, as per my principles, I couldn’t keep the item. I returned it. I printed a return label (as shown below) and hand it off to the nearest postoffice.

Removed Amazon label, sticked a new one, and the parcel is good to go back to the sender.

The raison d’être of this article is not about the £3 difference earned by the seller. As long as he pays taxes, I am fine with it. Instead, the fact that with my purchase I moved the Amazon machine for my own pleasure once again, unsettles me.

I will try to be more careful with my next purchases. Although, how can we know if the item is not actually sold/delivered by Amazon a priori?

If you managed to reach this point my dear reader, hold on for few more sentences. I just want to conclude this article with the following.

Christmas is approaching! If you fancy giving presents to your friends/relatives and you are planning to use Amazon: think twice. Think about the workers in the warehouse who are scoring against their average performance, not to get fired. Think about the delivery guy which will run against time to deliver as many parcel as possible. Think about all the executives of this dehumanising multinational which bank accounts are fattening.

Buy consciously.