Cancelling Amazon Prime

Summer tends to be the season of transition. It’s funny what, after years of putting up with all sorts of issues, may the the final straw to move on from something.

After Airbnb’ing a spare room for two years, putting up with some real characters, a guest who continually shut our bathroom door made me not want to have to put up with another stranger in our house. We removed the listing after that booking.

For six 6 years I operated St Louis’ only local restaurant delivery service, delivering food on bikes since 2013. I’ve been through some hell —there is a lot of chaos between so many riders, customers, and restaurants. Delivering hot food on bikes, from dozens of unique establishments, with independent bike couriers, this is a real feat. But it wasn’t any courier craziness that told me it was time to move on. I simply had two restaurants, whose owners I’m friends with, ready to come on. Any other time, I would have then launched right away, but I just didn’t have the motivation. After some time, I was disappointed with myself and realized someone with fire to grow the business needs to take over.

Today, when the Kindle I ordered on Prime Day said “delivered” but never showed up, I called Amazon service to get it redelivered. They would only give the discounted amount back (which wasn’t enough to get a Kindle now) or I would have to call back after another day (I was not going to waste another 20 minutes). For some time I’ve been very concerned about half of every online dollar going to Amazon. Their habit of breaking in and taking over any industry is very troubling. I’m not looking forward to what autonomous delivery looks like at all. But it was just shitty call center attendant reading a script that made me decide to let go of the prime member…