Yes and no. Sometimes it's more grey than that in services like Uber or Doordash where it could be at the fault of one bad apple and not the company at a whole. Or as others said, sometimes you are at the mercy of losing a massive library of content if you get blacklisted like on Steam or Amazon, for example.

> it's more grey than that in services like Uber or Doordash

I understand this perspective, but my opinion is that the company running things is responsible for the people working under their banner. If the company doesn't make something right, that's on the company in the end regardless of who specifically did something wrong. So it doesn't look gray to me.

> sometimes you are at the mercy of losing a massive library of content

True, and that's a tough spot. Personally, that risk is why I never use a service that can put me in that sort of position. But I do understand that others may be willing to take this risk. It's still a risk, though, and I expect that the people who choose these sorts of services are aware of that and accept that they might lose.

> I understand this perspective, but my opinion is that the company running things is responsible for the people working under their banner.

Companies like Uber claim that the people are self employed when it suits them, and that they are not when it doesn't.

True, but I'm saying that the employment status of them isn't relevant. It's a "buck stops here" situation.

If people are working under their banner, regardless of whether those people are contractors, employees, volunteers, whatever, then in the end the company is responsible for what they do.

For many, that depends entirely on the availability of alternatives. With duopolies like Uber/Lyft, you survive after one kill and then you're done. Amazon hardly has a direct competitor. For merchants with plenty of direct competitors, I agree with you.

I understand. I prefer to minimize risk, though, so I don't use services like Uber/Lyft, and I stopped using Amazon and eBay entirely.

Interestingly, I stopped using eBay precisely because they left me stuck with a fraudulent charge. The process of trying to dispute it using their system was so drawn out, though, that by the time eBay told me to go pound sand, it was too late to do a chargeback. But even so, I'm certainly not willing to risk trusting them again.

I'm referring to competitors of the overall Amazon experience, not really the individual products, in which the main value proposition for me is the extremely fast shipping. Those other stores typically don't offer it at a reasonable price, because they don't have warehouses a stone's throw from most customers.

Yes, but the problem is when you have already purchased a bunch of other things that can only be accessed through that service.

They should be required to refund every purchase on an account that they close.

> They should be required to refund every purchase on an account that they close.

I could not agree more.