My parents had their account with Deutsche Bank private bankers. They had moved overseas and sold their house in the 90s and were living off the proceeds. Everyone got lucky that they bought their house in a big city in the 1960s. Since they didn't spend too much money, the capital accumulated for a while. It could have gone the way of Detroit but went the other way. When they passed away, we inherited the money and bought a house in the suburbs. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but it changed our lives, no question.

So, when my mom passed, our family had to deal with DB. I have never, ever hand such a bad experience with a bank. The bank overseas was so courteous and efficient that I asked if I could open a bank account with them but I couldn't since I don't live in the country, just a frequent visitor. The IRS and government were easy. The will was as easy as it gets. Do things by the book, you'll be fine.

The NY DB office, to which I would have to go frequently and sit in some luxurious waiting room with nice art, was insane. My lawyer and accountant could not understand how they could repeatedly ask for the same information, deny they had received it, ask for information that literally the US government does not give out to anyone and on and on and on. And no there was nothing shady or shifty about my parents' lives. My lawyer started sending meaner and meaner letters to them, the kind that talk about making my client whole and litigation.

And yet, a few years later it turned out that same bank was often in the news for, among other things catering to Jeffrey Epstein. Who knows, maybe he spent his last hours complaining about them too. I could only hope he had that experience to add to his all-too-brief punishment. Actually, I have often wondered if we got raked over the coals because they had genuinely fishy clients and thus all the clients, especially the ones overseas, were on some kind of government watch list.

It's unlikely to be Bezos himself handling those mails but it's still going to be some secretary with much more options than the cheapest phone support worker money can buy.

It's not that Amazon is irreplaceable, but sometimes it's the best option by far depending on where you live and what you're looking for.

I'm in Austria (not Australia) and local retail prices are infamous for being 25% to 100% higher than in neighboring Germany for the same stuff because of cartel behavior of local retail industry.

Buying from amazon Germany means I can get the same prices as Germans (with +1% extra for higher Austrian VAT) for the same goods.

I'd love to give up Amazon in favor of local stores but local cartels are just as bad or even worse.

So to fix the Amazon problem you need to fix the competition problem first, which is caused by players other than Amazon too.

It's convenience. Two day shipping is irrelevant to me but there are no alternatives here even approaching the breadth of stock. So instead of dealing with one devil I know I would have to deal with several devils, some of which will be worse than Amazon.

People in my circles in the US (in an area with tons of alternative options) look at me like I have two heads when I say we don’t have Prime and never shop on Amazon. For many, I think, Amazon has simply been the default option to buy anything for long enough now that it’s ingrained muscle memory.

I live between central London and a smaller European city, the competition is generally much much worse.

Sure, for every individual item there might be a better better local option. I'd have to spend time finding that, then go through the terrible order process and hope their delivery service isn't utter shit. Oh, and yeah, half the time they'll probably block my order because I'm using a non-european card.

Just being able to use Amazon for almost everything starting from bottled water and toilet paper saves me immense amounts of time. I can generally trust that the stuff I order reliably arrives at the concierge, which isn't a given.

And FWIW, most of the time I've shopped around, Amazon has been cheaper or essentially the same price. Doesn't really matter to me, but it is a plus. I'd happily pay more for a more convenient service, but in this case it seems I'm usually paying less.

While you can…