How many Amazon ratings is enough?

@TrophyHusband It’s Amazon’s stupidity. They email people asking for answers, and folks have no idea their responses are being publicly reposted by Amazon.

@blaineg @TrophyHusband They removed the Report button instead of changing the verbiage in the email. Incredible move.

@Limewater

While your comment is very insightful and well reasoned it’s also true that charities do receive some money and customers do get to make a small contribution to the charity of their choice. This has a non-zero value in addition to whatever (many) benefits Amazon created for itself, as part of the charity contributions.

It’s a mirage, you say? What isn’t?

@806D2701 I appreciate the response.

Amazon Smile is not a net positive for anyone except Amazon.

“Something is more than nothing, right” Not really. Organizations spend non-trivial resources promoting Amazon through their Amazon Smile affiliation. These are resources that are then not applied to other support activities which are generally more effective and promote a deeper connection between individuals and the organization.

Amazon just says, “Hey, advertise for us and, if you get people to spend $100 with us, and they remember to jump through all of the right hoops, we’ll buy you a coke!”

This turns organizations and individuals into advertisers without them even realizing they’re doing it! Amazon has found a way to invade our schools and churches and turn us all into unwitting tools.

@Limewater I’m just an Amazon customer - no affiliation. I certainly don’t care to fight for their profitability, but you raised an interesting point deserving of a reply.

As a reference, here are the stats I see when I visit my “smile” page on Amazon:

You have generated
$14.07
as of March 06, 2021

Your current charity
The Nature Conservancy
has received
$5,110,130.27
as of February 2021

All US charities have received
$241,928,506.19
as of February 2021

All worldwide charities have received
$266,896,659.48
as of February 2021

…That’s more Coke than I can easily drink.

It’s simple for me to add tiny contributions to my purchases - the cost for me personally was truly negligible.

I don’t know how much money a charity needs to spend to maximize what they receive from this program, but it seems logical that there would be a net gain to the charity, else why would they be interested in jumping through the hoops? Also, such expenses would probably be front-loaded, and after registering as a charity on Amazon, I expect that contributions for subsequent years accumulate and would quickly outweigh the expense to participate.

I have heard 0 horror stories from charities about how Amazon Smile did them wrong, it’s too expensive, and they hate the program. In fact, your comment was the first thoughtful complaint I’ve ever seen on this subject.

The Smile program reminds customers with every purchase that they can choose to put some spare change in-the-hat when buying luxury goods for themselves. That reminder is a net-positive for society, and I wish every online store had this option.

How many times has consideration of the Amazon Smile page inspired a person to give additional support to charity, simply because it planted charitable thoughts in the mind of the customer while they’re actively spending money? Such a contribution wouldn’t be credited to Amazon, they just triggered an independent action which resulted in a gift to charity off-site.

Flexibility in choosing a charity is a good thing as well. I want everyone to be able to contribute to a charity they believe in, even if it’s not the one I’d personally choose. It’s downright Democratic

So, I guess I disagree with a claim that Amazon Smile is “total bullshit”. To your point, sure - it’s got problems and financially benefits Amazon far more than they’ll admit.

I still believe it’s a well-meaning program which is effective and could be improved instead of jettisoned, and I haven’t yet been convinced to stop using “Amazon Smile”.

@Limewater I said I’d heard 0 horror stories - that’s far too few! Here’s a link supporting Limewater 's argument: https://medium.com/@digitalculturenyc/why-nonprofits-need-to-stop-falling-for-the-amazon-smile-scam-f68d389c801c

@806D2701 @Limewater

I’m no expert on this topic and don’t follow it. I do use Amazon smile, $ directed to a no-kill shelter.

However, someone I know who works as a professional fundraiser for nonprofits (museums) told me that the Amazon donation % is near infinitesimal

IE they give almost nothing, compared to sales, and get all the reputational benefit, according to her.

I suspect the main profiteer off this program is amazon.

I would prefer that they publish their donation %, either compared to item price, or to gross (not net!!!) profit from sales.

For instance, you mention the Nature Conservancy. They have received a non-trivial sum from the program.

How would you feel about the smile program if you knew that amount had been donated on some millions (not tens of millions) in Amazon sales from the smile program, pointed at the Conservancy? Pretty good? Sounds pretty generous?

How would you feel about the smile program if you knew that the donation sum had been xferred to the Conservancy, calculated on trillions of dollars in sales in the smile program sales pointed by customers to the Conservancy?

I haven’t researched this program. But I’m currently pretty cynical about Amazon’s motivations for “good actions” gain vs cost. Their gain in PR is enormous, and in addition the “smile program” helps customers to justify unneeded purchases to themselves.

Some other companies donate based on % of sales. I think Target does, locally.

I’d love to see the formula for donation calculations made public as a matter of course. I love to see the comparison between Amazon and Target and other retailers (and other corps).

@806D2701 @f00l @Limewater There are lots of good points here, but I don’t think there are trillions of $$ in Amazon sales related to Nature Conservancy customers. To my best understanding, AMZN total cumulative revenue in the last 10 years is $1.3-1.5 trillion but what percentage of that is retail sales (Smile is only generated from this )? And what fraction of those sales have customers who actually have created a Smile account? And what fragment of Smile customers have selected Nature Conservancy as their charity of choice?
I wish AMZN did more, a LOT more, in terms of philanthropy. But charities don’t have to put up Amazon posters, purchase supplies thru Amazon in order to qualify or really promote Amazon in any significant way; they can accept funds from Amazon competitors (if there is such a thing), too. Almost all charities have to spend resources to raise funds; their ‘cost’ for Smile is low. For many buyers, Amazon is commodity seller similar to electricity or gasoline - a certain amount of their budget is always being spent there. If a tiny smidge of that amount goes to charity, how bad is it?

TLDR; Don’t think ending Amazon Smile would be a net benefit to charities.

@806D2701 @compunaut @Limewater

Yeah. I find Amazon smile to be a mixed deal: Amazon almost certainly gets far more from it than they outlay.

I wish there were serious transparency and accountability.

Amazon is almost certainly incredibly stingy. And they limit the product selection that qualities.

I don’t remember the exact figures now: but I think I remember seeing that Amazon had, after one end of quarter or one year (again I forget), sent out maybe $12 on my behalf. Or something like that.

And I had spent so much $ at Amazon that quarter and year! But most of the spending was on digital goods. A few streaming films maybe. Los of e-books. A WaPo subscription. Etc

I had likely spent a most a few hundred on tangible items that particular lately from Amazon. Maybe barely over $100. Never looked it up.

I have mostly tiny spending months at Amazon (excepting books);
and then once in a while I do serious shopping there.

It did seem a palfrey donation compared to my overall Amazon billing, tho.

OTOH

It’s prob not a net loss to charities:. $ almost certainly goes out to charities than they might not otherwise receive

Charities can send me all the emails they want. I’ll never read them. I kinda hate email anyway.
I suspect that’s not an unusual attitude.

@806D2701 @Limewater
Look for somewhere small and local, not a big charity. We have a vibrant and well loved public library, a miracle for a small city these days. While the city gives some of the cost, much of it is raised from things like used book sales and donations. For them, getting 500 dollars from smile donations is a serious win.

It’s where you will actually do the most good.

@806D2701 @f00l @Limewater Per their website, Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of Smile eligible purchases.

I personally direct my donation to the animal shelter I got my cats from. I have no idea if they spend any time or effort advertising that they are a member of the Smile program as I sought them out on my own.

I do find it to likely be a massive PR stunt, however, since I’m purchasing from Amazon anyways, it’s not like I’m NOT going to use it.

since I’m purchasing from Amazon anyways, it’s not like I’m NOT going to use it.

@smigit2002 This is my takeaway from all this too. This comes at Amazon’s margin anyway; let them share some of it.

(Besides, many my purchases are probably money losers to Amazon anyway. Because Warehouse.)

@narfcake @smigit2002

That’s my fav department

Excepting books

@Limewater

Amazon Smile is an ingenious, insidious, manipulative piece of marketing bullshit.

That might be, but smart .orgs with regular donors rarely promote these store sliver-donate programs like at Amazon & Kroger.

Those .orgs realize these programs give donors an excuse not to donate in their regular manner.

Yes, I detest that Amazon filters out legit charities and organizations to suit their personal viewpoints.

But the .org of my choice gets a sliver of $ they otherwise would not.

@806D2701 @f00l @Limewater 0.5%
AmazonSmile is a program that donates 0.5% of your eligible purchases on Amazon to a charity of your choice. All you need to do is start your shopping at smile.amazon.com. The donation will be made at no extra cost to you and you can choose from nearly one million public charitable organizations.Jul 27, 2018

@PocketBrain #tangent.

@compunaut @PocketBrain Please don’t show me your tan genitals. I don’t care how they got that way, I just don’t want to see them.

@PocketBrain isn’t that the Meh comments way?

BTW, I pondered whether or not to include the “smile” paragraph, but slipped it in at the very last minute. I was surprised the Meh comment edit countdown guillotine did not chop it off! Oh well…

@blaineg Yeah, Amazon’s move to ban “free in exchange for my honest opinion” has removed some the casual reviewers, but it’s reinforced those do it at a larger scale.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon-purchases-are-real-the-reviews-are-fake

Vine reviews are somewhat more legitimate in that they are not handed only out to those who hand out 5-star reviews automatically; the product sponsors have zero knowledge or choice in who gets to select the items for review. Also the items are not truly free, as they get 1099-ed for the value of the items as income, so there’s some skin the it too.

Some Viners are still rather apparent in their “I didn’t even test these out” review. Excessively reiterated specs, pictures of unused products even though they said it was put through the paces, etc.