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Deleting social media accounts to save your attention from being grabbed or your personal details being sold to anyone that wants them is sooooo late 2010's.
These days, we're thinking wider when it comes to boycotting the silicon valley tech giants. Who's next on the sanctions list? Amazon.
Forget "flygskam". For maximum virtue-signalling in this new decade, there's a brand new dinner-party-conversation-starter: Amazon-skam.
Primed For Profit
We've all been there - the sheer, impulsive thrill of owning something shiny and brand new only a few clicks and under 24 hours' delivery time away - but that somehow feels kinda wrong?
That feeling is likely due to Amazon's tax dodging, union smashing demeanour, treating workers like robots (or just hiring robots instead because it's cheaper), truck-loads of cardboard waste, spewing out around 50 million metric tons of CO2 a year, supporting the fossil fuel industry, monopolising the retail market, and concentrating all this profit, wealth and power in the hands of an unaccountable space cadet.
In 2020 workers in the UK were told to work overtime to tackle demands during the peak of the pandemic.
Workers in the US were fired for criticising worker conditions. Amazon's very own VP dropped the suit and tie, calling it quits after learning of the Orwellian disposition Amazon demonstrated when dealing with worried employees, who went as far as setting up anti-union campaigns that would have served to protect their workers.
This is one of the world's most valuable companies, owned by one of the richest men in the world.
Primed For Domination
Amazon's taken the online shopping marketplace by storm, monopolising every facet of the industry. They've got 86% of UK adults with an Amazon account, and 71% of Americans as Prime members.
They've got taxpayer subsidies reducing their tax burden, and make about $233 billion in yearly revenue.
Are they pouring their hard-earned munnies into a sustainable model for their employees, or a sustainable packaging model for their parcels? Nah.
So, for now, the carbon footprints are real, and the overtime hours are plentiful.
Here's the solution - DELETE IT
Bidding our farewells and parting ways with this dear, virtual companion of ours will not be easy.
A world of accessibility, affordability, and practicality, in the palm of our hands, disposed of? It will surely be a challenge.
But deletion is like that cathartic experience of pouring that bottle of gin down the sink: it's best to go cold turkey and remove the means, and thus the temptation.
Abstinence-based recovery for yourself, your community, society, and the planet.
What's on the line?
Deleting your account is not as easy as you might think.
Remember we don’t just want to deactivate so that it can be easily reactivated later, or ‘archived’.
The aim here is for total shutdown and blanket erasure of every piece of data relating to your past activities.
This will include deletion, cancellation, and loss of access to all of this:
Your ‘main’ Amazon account
Your Amazon Prime subscription
Your entire purchase history
Cancellation of all open orders
Ability to return purchased items for a refund or replacement
Any unspent balance on Amazon Gift Cards
All music, videos, games, apps, software, and any other digital content purchased via Amazon
Kindle eBooks will stick around, but can’t be re-downloaded
All your personal customer data
Your review scores, review text, discussion posts, and photos
Access to Amazon sites in other countries - amazon.com, amazon.de, etc.
Amazon-owned sites like Audible
Your account on Wholefoodsmarket.com
Amazon Payments
De-registration of all your Amazon devices (Kindle, Echo, etc)
Sign-ins to any other sites you use your Amazon account to log into
Awesome.
Ready to kick-off your Amazon abstinence?
Here's how...
Head to Amazon’s website and sign into your soon-to-be defunct account
Go to the Close your Amazon account page, scroll down to the bottom, past all the warnings and double-warnings...
Select the main reason for closing your account. We recommend the "I have open issues with Amazon" option
Tick the box to confirm you've not landed here by accident and know exactly what you're about to do
Click "Close my account"
Wait for the confirmation email to arrive, and when it does, click the big yellow "Confirm Account Closure" button
That's it, you should be taken to a page confirming your request.
You didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you?
Expect a follow-up email from Amazon’s support team trying to work out what the problem is, see if you can be swayed to stay, and make sure you do indeed intend to shut down your account and delete everything.
Be strong, and stick to your guns.
Our pre-canned ready-to-go messages below may help...
How to deliver the news of the break-up
Here's some ideas you might want to copy and paste...
Your company has failed to meet my minimum required ethical standards. Goodbye.
Your company is enabling wonton consumerism on a scale far beyond what this one planet can sustain, and I want no part in it thank you very much.
I want your grubby hands off my data, and I want my life back.
It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just… not into this any more.
How to get by in a post-Amazon world
Here are some tips, in descending order of the smugness-level you'll achieve:
Want less stuff - don’t let advertising hijack your brain into thinking you want or need more stuff
Buy less stuff - consumerism and the want of material goods will be the death of us. Reuse, up-cycle, recycle, hand down, stop creating demand
Buy local, buy independent, and pay a fair price
Buy online from one of Amazon’s competitors - help put a tiny dent in Amazon’s market share, fight the monopoly
Ready to take it to the next level?
Deletion is an important first step, but it's not the end of the road.
In future blogs we cover rehoming your Amazon devices - Echo, Echo Dot, Kindle, Firestick - or putting them up for adoption.
We also explore whether it's possible to issue a blanket opt-out of any internet services which run on AWS server architecture (spoiler alert: is it bollcks)
Happy GREY THURSDAY
Welcome to our first ever mass-deletion event.
We’ve chosen Grey Thursday - the day before Black Friday - as the ideal time to withdraw from Amazon’s platform.
Black Friday is the day with the highest level of online spending each year, and this year is predicted to break through all the existing records (which were all set last year).
Join us from 9am GMT and feel free social the fuck out of it if that’s your bag.
Nice one.