I let Prime expire a few months ago and, wow, was it shocking just how bad non-Prime customers are treated. Like you said, random items unavailable, constant nags to buy Prime and dark patterns during checkout trying to trick me into opting back in.
My reason for leaving Prime was that I was buying more stuff from 3rd parties who had free shipping for all than from Amazon or Prime 3rd-party sellers.
Also it started costing me a lot to just click the default buy option and I was having to do CSI-level due diligence on every order if I didn't want to end up with a counterfeit and/or pure scam. Several items I ordered were just straight up fraud that required annoying customer service interactions.
Losing the 5% credit card discount seemed painful until I realized that I buy 30-50% less stuff I don't really need now. Or that buying elsewhere I save much more than 5%. I'm surprised to be saying it, but I've returned to eBay for a lot of purchases and been pleasantly surprised.
Yeah, I will say my spending without Prime is drastically lower than my spending with. I use super saver shipping, so what not having Prime does is force me to wait until I have a few items to place an order, and often, that leads me to decide I really didn't need that item anyways. I used to pick up Prime around Black Friday for deals/Christmas shopping, but they made no minimum shipping free for everyone this past year during the season anyways, meaning there was no point in even doing that.
I did accept the 30 days they just gave me, so I have Prime again for the moment, but will not let it renew/charge. I'm doing some household crud so having one day shipping on cheap crud for a month is probably going to be somewhat helpful as long as I didn't pay for it to begin with.
My reason for leaving Prime was that I was buying more stuff from 3rd parties who had free shipping for all than from Amazon or Prime 3rd-party sellers.
Also it started costing me a lot to just click the default buy option and I was having to do CSI-level due diligence on every order if I didn't want to end up with a counterfeit and/or pure scam. Several items I ordered were just straight up fraud that required annoying customer service interactions.
Losing the 5% credit card discount seemed painful until I realized that I buy 30-50% less stuff I don't really need now. Or that buying elsewhere I save much more than 5%. I'm surprised to be saying it, but I've returned to eBay for a lot of purchases and been pleasantly surprised.