On not buying from Amazon

A year ago, Ton launched a project to stop buying ebooks from Amazon; a few weeks ago he provided an update. 

I thought of Ton’s efforts when, in How to fix a Kit Kat clock from Mike Monteiro, I read this:

A few days ago I was sitting in the local dogpark when the ever-popular topic of San Francisco’s downtown came up. Apparently another big store had shuttered. And the Old Men of the Dogpark™ had much to say about “the state of things” including crime sprees and other make-believe bullshit that was keeping people from doing their shopping downtown. As they’re saying this I’m watching various Amazon trucks circle the park. Finally I asked one of them when he’d last bought something at Amazon.

“Last night.”

“Where would you have bought that before Amazon?”

“Downtown.”

My parallel efforts to Ton’s breaking up with Amazon for ebooks was attempting to break up with Amazon completely, for both digital and analog goods.

On the digital side, I’m most of the way there, having reduced my dependence on Amazon Web Services to a small trickle of files on S3.

On the analog side (he logs into Amazon.ca and checks his recent orders), my last order was on June 23, 2025, for a package of “stainless steel #10 button head screw caps” that I was unable to find a local source for. Before that, in 2025, my orders were for:

• “Adjustable Steel Pilaster Shelf Clip Support” (to mount shelves in the print shop; no local source).
• “Furniture Sliders Chair Leg Floor Protectors” (to protect the floors in our dining from from getting scratched; also no local source).
• “Self Seal Rigid Mailer Stay Flat Cardboard Mailers” (to mail out orders from the web store; we’re down to two stationery stores in Charlottetown, and neither had anything similar).

That was it: four orders, about $110 in total. I’ve gone cold turkey since.

I’ve avoided Amazon a number of ways: buying online products directly from manufacturers, buying locally as much as I can, reducing discretionary consumption. Maybe the biggest help to this: I deleted the Amazon mobile app from my phone.

“I’ll just order it from Amazon” has now largely disappeared as a reflex action. It feels good.

See also, Daily Drawings, from Kate Bingaman-Burt.