Ran across this video randomly, and It got me so angry I was literally seeing red:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So9stcDzLHE
TL;DR, Amazon hired an ex Federal prosecutor, who got his friends in the US Attorney office to charge a real estate developer who specializes in data center real estate development with federal crimes. They did everything they usually do, including asset forfeiture. Fighting these charges cost this family their cars, their house, their retirement savings.
I cancelled my Prime membership years ago, but have still bought things on Amazon. That stops right fucking now.
Ebay is sadly the only alternative which is equal to walking into a market place blindfolded. Ebay is the digital Portabello Road where you get stolen goods and I've gotten ripped off on almost every thing I got and some cases never got my order so I stopped. Amazon I've gotten ripped off a few times but many times gotten my money back almost right away.
When Jeff was around you could actually contact them right off the bat though the right thing to do was go thru the seller first if 3rd party otherwise skip that rule and go directly to Amazon and they will deal with it. If you don't get anything resolved by the 3rd party seller then Amazon would often automatically step in and unless you asked them too or you pulled your credit card out by default the money would go towards the Amazon gift card balance.
Several times I thought I didn't get my money back only to find out it was in the gift card balance which is a bit tricky to find. If possible avoid third party it's slow. Ebay is even slower then Amazon's 3rd party slowest service.
HOWEVER more and more it's becoming clear that if you don't do Prime and just pay for faster shipping it's actually better unless you really need a certain medicine stores don't have because the stores are too Fu$$$$$ stupid to carry the stuff that works.