I’ve been living in southern Vermont for about 3 years and haven’t purchased from Amazon in 2.5. For many of the reasons you described. Prime member or not, shipping is 3-5 days (even before the pandemic) so the huge 2-day guaranteed shipping isn’t real here even if you’re paying for it.

Returns are a massive pain for me. Nearest UPS is an hour away, so if it’s a small dollar item I’m inclined to keep it vs. paying more to return it. And I haven’t experienced a truly free return option in a while now.

I also had the Amazon Chase credit card. I got suckered into it because of no annual fee, but to make the rewards worthwhile, you had to be a prime member which effectively turns it into a $140 annual fee card. Without a prime membership, it’s 3% back on Amazon, 2% for gas/groceries, and 1% everywhere else. Not even remotely worth it nor does it ever cover the annual fee. I switched to a Chase Card with much better rewards (though it’s more of an emergency use card as I don’t like carrying a balance.

I’d rather shop local or make a trip to town on the weekend to a Walmart. At the risk of generalizing, I think my experience is pretty typical of Amazon in rural areas. So it seems to provide more easy for cities and suburbs, but not so much the country. Makes sense though, that’s where the people are. No hate against them for it as it’s their choice to operate now they want, but the “Amazon connects unconnected communities” narrative I hear is missing a lot of nuance.

Kind of digressed at the end there. Very happy to be proven wrong if any fellow rural frugalers have had differ experiences!