I fucking hate it, but there are items which I used to buy at the local grocery before the pandemic which are no longer available anywhere except.. Amazon Fresh. So, if I want to have the food that I want to eat, I have to buy it from Amazon and have it delivered (either to my house, or to a Whole Foods which then requires driving to pick it up and spending the extra fuel anyway, so might as well get it delivered all the way without the extra stop). I can't even find a way to buy and ship directly from the manufacturers, I've tried and they generally don't sell to individuals.
The grocery situation in the US was already depressing as fuck before Amazon monopolized a bunch of products; every grocery chain is owned by one of like 5 giant corporations, and they just rename the stores in different regions so people don't notice and think they are able to "shop around".
I fucking hate it, but there are items which I used to buy at the local grocery before the pandemic which are no longer available anywhere except.. Amazon Fresh. So, if I want to have the food that I want to eat, I have to buy it from Amazon and have it delivered (either to my house, or to a Whole Foods which then requires driving to pick it up and spending the extra fuel anyway, so might as well get it delivered all the way without the extra stop). I can't even find a way to buy and ship directly from the manufacturers, I've tried and they generally don't sell to individuals.
The grocery situation in the US was already depressing as fuck before Amazon monopolized a bunch of products; every grocery chain is owned by one of like 5 giant corporations, and they just rename the stores in different regions so people don't notice and think they are able to "shop around".
If you don't want things delivered, you could always try one of their dystopian hyper surveiled brick and mortar Amazon Fresh stores.