A major cloud hosting provider, Amazon is the biggest online retailer globally. Since its inception, the firm has included a broad range of consumer items, digital material, and digital equipment, including the Kindle e-reader and Fire tablet. However, we think it's high time you stop shopping and buying from Amazon. Why?
Horrible Employee Treatment
First and foremost is how Amazon treats its employees. We have unfortunate news for you; it's horrible! TUC published a study in October of 2020 on Amazon's exploitation of its workers.
It discovered that Amazon workers spent an average of 55 hours a week/10 hours per day, were required to pack about 300 products each hour, and were humiliated, punished, or terminated if they refused to or could not honor their objectives. A lack of toilet breaks and the need to urinate in a bottle left workers feeling humiliated.
Threat to Small Businesses
Various small businesses all over the world are drowning because of Amazon. It is currently the leader in the market for online sales. They have expanded to such a massive scale that the monopoly has gradually kicked various independent stores out of business.
The main target of these local small businesses has been bookstores. More than 1,000 small booksellers have shut down in the UK and Irish regions alone since Amazon began selling books in 1994. What's more, you're dead mistaken if your bookstores have been the only category of businesses that have been exploited and damaged. Various other independent retailers have also taken a deep fall.
Amazon has also started to collect data on what kind of products are popular among buyers and produce similar ones under the Amazon Basics brand. They continually promote their own products instead of ones by small businesses, forcing businesses to shut down.
Sabotaging the Ecology
If we are going to prevent severe climate change, we must leave most of the world's fossil fuels in the ground. Amazon is accused of actively pursuing the sector and selling algorithms and AI technology to allow fossil fuel removal.
A think tank infamous for disseminating climate denial rumors known as The Competitive Enterprise Institute has also received funding from Amazon for a 2020 Sabotaging times in the past; environmentalists have criticized Amazon for promoting fossil fuel extraction.
Not Customer-Friendly
It is Amazon's policy to cancel the accounts of consumers who return a large percentage of their purchases. In addition, it robs the user of any remaining credit account. Another horrible practice can be seen in their subscription renewal process. During the "30-day free trial" advertised by Amazon, subscriptions were automatically renewed at the conclusion of the trial period without any prior warning, which is definitely bad for the customers.
What's more, customers who have not paid a monthly subscription for "prime" delivery see a delay in their orders being processed by Amazon.
Excess of Packaging Waste
All we hear on the internet is how recycling and reusing are healthy for the planet, but big corporations like Amazon don't seem to be paying any heed to these practices. If you were surprised by what we stated earlier, we would like to tell you that you're in for another shock.
A new study by Oceana, a non-profit group dedicated to protecting the oceans, has put Amazon's plastic pollution in the spotlight. One year's worth of plastic packaging wastage at Amazon, according to that research, was 465 million pounds.
Let us put things in perspective for you here. The amount of packaging waste by Amazon can easily circle the earth by a hundred times in the form of air pillows. Are you scared? We are!
Rocky When it Comes to Taxes
One would hope that a huge organization such as Amazon would have no trouble paying their taxes, but we are yet again proved wrong. Amazon has been in the spotlight ever since 2018 for paying ZERO dollars' worth of taxes even when they received profits of around $11 billion! And that is just half of it! It is projected to become the first Trillion dollar business, and still pays no taxes at all!
To Sum it Up, It's Time to Let Amazon Go!
We agree that shopping online on Amazon by scrolling is more accessible, but it is better to let them go for the wisest of decisions, considering all they are doing wrong. Suppose you avoid the temptation to purchase on Amazon but rather shop directly with a local owner. In that case, you'll have the peace of mind that you are not contributing to any of the horrible practices of Amazon that we mentioned above and have understood why should you stop buying from Amazon.
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