Amazon and Visa

[Montero]

Try looking at Argos - they may surprise you. A lot of reasonably priced good quality stuff and they deliver - and the returns don't involve posting it to China.

I buy a lot of stuff mail order even though we do have a car we are rural and everything is a bit of a drive and I like to avoid Amazon as much as I can. Also avoid big supermarkets as much as possible these days after how blinking useless my favourite one I'm not naming was at deliveries at the start of lock down.
I get bread flour direct from a farm with a mill www.mungoswells.co.uk/
Wensleydale cheese from Wensleydale Creamery - Artisan Cheese, Gifts & Hampers
These folks do rather good chocolates https://onlinechocolate.co.uk/shop/ols/products - discovered them only a couple of months back and bought a test box before the Christmas order.
I'm just trying out an online grocery store for a few bits of fruit that aren't available locally - will wait to see what I think before naming.
As I said above, Argos - very useful collection of things that they have
About to mail order replacement bedding from Dunelm.
Sock shop is another good one.

And books from Bookshop.org.

You can do a lot of mail order without Amazon.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Its simple. We don't have a car, there's no decent shops in the town, Amazon has stuff we need that we can't get anywhere else. Its a no brainer.

And that’s exactly it. There is no need to make reasons for shopping there, except that it suits you best. they have nailed the business model of convenience.

 

[Ursa major]

but didn't get the email

You expected to get an email from a company that is endlessly emailing me with recommendations of books of types I would never buy...?

Personally, I'm assuming that Amazon has not gone further than it has in the expectation that their announcement will persuade Visa to cut its charges for UK-issued credit cards (and/or that it will lead to an increase in purchases by Visa credit card holders to beat the deadline).

 

[Foxbat]

Personally, I'm assuming that Amazon has not gone further than it has in the expectation that their announcement will persuade Visa to cut its charges for UK-issued credit cards (and/or that it will lead to an increase in purchases by Visa credit card holders to beat the deadline).

Never thought of it in this way. But now that you mention it, could this be Amazon’s version of reporting a shortage as we have seen numerous times recently (petrol, turkeys etc.) and deliberately creating a pre-Xmas surge?

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I'm also using Amazon as little as possible. For books, Waterstones, or eBay...

 

[Vertigo]

There is no denying Amazon is convenient; they have built their monopoly on being so and there's no better example than what they've done with ebooks. I am still constantly surprised that governments have not stepped in on this one.

I try my best not to use them and now pretty much only buy from them when I can't get anywhere else. And that, in fact, is becoming quite rare but occasionally some books are only on Amazon. I even find Amazon are no longer necessarily the cheapest, I can usually find the same product elsewhere at the same price or even cheaper, including ebooks.

What Amazon have done very cleverly is by being very cheap initially they have established themselves as the default in many peoples eyes so they no longer need to worry about being the cheapest. Many people go to Amazon and simply don't look elsewhere. And I suspect Prime has been a massive tactical tool in achieving that. Ebay is another significant example; I would say I almost always find ebay more expensive than elsewhere.

 

[mosaix]

I was forced into using Amazon this morning to buy a Christmas present. It was the first time I've used them for a long time and I'd forgotten just how insidious they are in trying to get you to sign up to Prime.

The buy-without-Prime button is practically invisible - despite what they told the Parliamentary committee. I get really irritated with politicians who just blithely accept what they are told. Anyone worth their salt would have had a laptop with them logged in to the Amazon checkout page and asked the Amazon representative to find the bl**dy button!

Anyone remember the Australian politician asked, on live TV, to open one of the new 'easy to open' milk cartons? Very funny but also serious - he'd just been espousing (lying about) how easy they were to open when the presenter brought one out from under the desk. Result? Milk all over the place.

 

[Foxbat]

It’s hard not to be cynical about this so (in my best French accent) - Sacre Bleu! Quelle surprise!

Amazon halts plan to block UK Visa credit cards amid talks

Plans to block the cards are halted as the two sides continue to try to resolve a dispute over payment fees.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Ursa major]

I'll have to log on again to change my payment method back (after changing it only yesterday). EDIT: Done.

Note that I've never bought anything from Amazon other than Kindle editions of books, so I've never bought anything expensive enough to trigger the protection offered by credit cards (but not debit cards).