Subprime Day ⇥ bnet.substack.com

Brian Feldman:

Many would, understandably, see Prime Day as some sort of Black Friday-esque sales bonanza. A chance to get steals and deals on top-quality products. This is wrong. Or at least, it has not held true for the last three or four Prime Days. The vast majority of Prime Day inventory is absolute shit. Granted, I haven’t scanned all of the deals, but I did check some of the categories I’m interested in, such as “Electronics” and “Video Games” and it’s all chintzy third-party accessories. How many different types of light-up keyboard do you think exist in the world? Amazon has at least twice as many as the number you came up with. Which of the 800 different $19 dish racks should I settle on? Need a pair of terrible earbuds that will crap out in two or three months? Amazon has you covered.

Amazon’s ethical failures, especially this year, are worrying enough that I imagine many people will have thought twice about buying anything from the company yesterday or today. But, should you need another reason, consider the bargain bin trash that Amazon is desperate to unload. One wonders about the environmental cost of producing, shipping, and warehousing these kinds of products.