Though it is impressive that Amazon has turned a delivery fee - that most people don't like paying - into an exclusive subscription service. A service that customers fall over themselves to sign up for when it's offered at a discount.
I cancelled it because Amazon's abusing their position. Refusing to sell Chromecast and Apple TV, then lying, repeatedly, about the reason when asked?
I've been an Amazon customer for 13 years. I was rather annoyed to see them go with the anti-Wikileaks and try to be "sensitive" by banning certain cultural items. But this shows they've zero commitment to selling products customers want.
Edit: And it really hurts. Some times I buy stuff from Amazon every day of the week. I've tried Jet.com, which is just a poor experience. I hate to cry antitrust but Amazon really dominates in any usable online sales env, it seems.
Wow, TIL Amazon doesn't sell Apple TV or Chromecast, but instead immediately suggests their own competitors. For a company trying to replace all retail, that's pretty lame.
True, but the point of the Apple store is to sell Apple products, and the Google Play store only sells google devices. Amazon supposedly sells everything. It wasn't created to only sell Amazon products, and it's misleading to consumers to not be more open about that.
Case in point - they sell iPads. Why don't they just sell Kindles? The inconsistency comes off as sleezy.
It's not sleazy, it's smart business. Amazon doesn't sell guns either, and they technically could probably do so if they setup the proper infrastructure and background checks and whatever else to do so.
Just because they are Wal-Mart of the online world doesn't mean they must sell everything everyone wants.
The devices they don't sell are in a heavily contested field, no wonder they don't carry them, that's smart business. It's a bit silly to get self-righteous about it otherwise.
They do sell streaming devices, though. They just don't sell the ones made by their competitors. Using their position as #1 online retailer to bolster their position as a streaming service is more than just smart business.
It's life if Microsoft had used its market position with Windows to push IE.
Apple sells many products that are not owned by Apple. I can buy headphones by Bose, RHA, BlueAnt, Beats (were on store prior to Apple purchase).
Amazon gets the criticism but they all do it.
Remember, we had a store that was willing to sell all these products, it's called Best Buy and it's on the way out. As consumers we choose to boost Amazon into the leading online position.
Yes, Apple also sells premium accessories for their devices including headphones, cases, backpacks, other hardware accessories and even 3rd party software for their devices. They are not a general purpose store. Amazon is, or at least pretends to be.
So you are saying that if you are a general purpose store, you have to offer products from your competitors. Walmart should sell Target brand products, Home Depot should sell Lowes brand products. See my point? Stores just aren't in the business of selling their competitors products.
Store brands are not usually made available through general supply chains (or rather, they come from a shortened supply chain), apple and google devices are. And Walmart does sell its "competitor's" products alongside their store brands (where they are available), as does Target, Home Depot, and Lowes. This is because their main business is selling things and having a store brand is just a means to squeek a little more margin out of the things they sell anyways.
Obviously a store is under no obligation to carry every product ever, but this argument that an apple or android tablet is equivalent to a store brand is just silly.
How is an Apple iPhone not equivalent to a Walmart Basics pack of toilet paper? Apple makes the iPhone, Walmart makes the toilet paper. Or atleast companies build these products for their associated brands.
I also ask you to provide an example of where Walmart sells competitor branded products (Target etc). Walmart's brand products, Basics (I believe) are not sold in any other store. Targets brand products (Archer Farms) are not available in any other store.
Absent the select few exceptions, Amazon is a general purpose store. If we're really going to be picky, Apple(and Google) sell products through their store that are "general purpose".
True - but most of those products support or interact with the core apple products. Amazon offers way more things, like toilet paper and cat food. I'm not sure how they're supposed to interact with a Kindle.
It'd make more sense if they carried it - but advertised their own products heavily around it. At least they would be honest about the "selection" game.
But let's be honest - Amazon devices push more people into Prime, Amazon Instant Prime Video, and their other digital services. Maybe it had something to do with Prime Video not yet being on those devices, but we'd need to see them support Prime on Chromecast or AppleTV and then re-list those products on Amazon.
But obviously anything Amazon makes is far superior to the competitor's offerings, so by refusing to sell those devices and pushing customers to our own products, we are focusing on the customer. It's for their own good, you see. /s
Not really, it doesn't mean 'completely ignore your competitors and sell their products on your own store', it means 'Develop your products by listening to what customers tell you and not by watching and copying what your competitors do'.
I cancelled my Prime subscription for the same reason. I've been experimenting with using eBay the same way I used Amazon (mainly for computer-related purchases—we never got into the habit of using it for many household goods).
So far, I've found eBay to be in many ways better than Amazon was. Amazon has gotten to the point where you're often buying from some unknown vendor anyways, so in many ways it's already similar to eBay. However, eBay was built from the start to be a simple middleman, so I find its reputation system and expectations for sellers and buyers to be superior in many ways. Of course, I still have to be careful when evaluating sellers, but if I stick to the high-volume 99.5%+-positive sellers, there's rarely an issue.
I mainly only do this for small purchases—rechargeable batteries, game system controllers, cables, etc. For larger items, I try to find a niche vendor that offers more specialized customer service—ideally a local brick-and-mortar, but often an online seller.
> Amazon has far stricter requirements for sellers.
I wouldn't notice. The site is filled with dishonest merchants peddling their misrepresented wares. I've had far more issues with merchants on Amazon than on ebay.
I'm fed up with Amazon's business practices. I've found eBay to be an acceptable alternative that has a decent UI. And I find the closer interaction with the seller to be helpful.
Don't forget artificially tying their so-so Netflix competitor video service to their own so-so Android-based tablets and not allowing it to be used on proper Android at all for years. And now artificially tying their video service to their app store so Android users who pay for it can't use it without compromising the security of their device by enabling apps from unknown sources and manually installing the Amazon App Store on their device with full permissions for everything - and the ability for it to spy on and alter anything it wants.
Amazon sells the nVidia shield TV which is an android device for your tv that has chromecast capabilities but admittedly at a much higher price than the Chromecast. Still, if you buy on Amazon and want that kind of functionality it's a good value for a home theater in a box. The android games are pretty lame though.
Maybe you don't like it, and you are fully within your rights to cancel, but it is not abuse. They can or should be able to carry whatever products they damn well please.
Sure, but it flatly contradicts everything Bezos says in this letter, and elsewhere, about Amazon being customer-focused rather than competitor-focused.
A truly customer-focused company would sell the products its customers wanted, even if they competed with the company's own-brand products. And demand for these competing products would be seen as a spur to improve their own.
I personally don't think the Amazon's talk of customer-focus is entirely marketing fluff, but I do think it's unevenly applied. Petty, anti-customer, monopolistic business practices have been a mainstay of the tech industry for years, and it's inevitable that they would infect Amazon to some extent.
Amazon stopped selling players that don't support Amazon Prime Video. That can been seen as first-order customer unfriendly, but second-order customer-centric, if you take the view that Amazon Prime Video is a consumer benefit overall. (I do, but I'm still annoyed that I can't get Apple TV on Amazon.)
Context: I'll admit to being a fairly rabid Amazon fan (no other conflicts, other than as a retail shareholder). I still cross-shop NewEgg (to support anti-patent-trolling), Ebay, Aliexpress and others, but Amazon wins more than its share of my purchase traffic.
Amazon's customer centric nature is generally pretty good, but they toss it aside at times. AIV on Android is one of those times (took them years to release the app and when they did it required a completely screwy install)
nah dog, Apple has said they are free to make an Apple TV app. But they won't for some reason. They don't even have to sell items through the app and incur Apple's cut.
I don't think it does contradict anything he says about being customer focused. In my opinion, and experience, it doesn't mean 'completely ignore your competitors and sell their products on your own store', it means 'Develop your products by listening to what customers tell you and not by watching and copying what your competitors do'.
If you take that as the intent behind the quote then it's kinda parallel to the issue of whether to sell chromecast or not.
I think that was his point, he's critical of Amazon because they lied about their reasoning for not carrying the products, not questioning the legality of not carrying specific products.
I thought that was obvious, and a charitable interpretation of his post would've made this clear, I think.
Yep. Several CSRs told me "Oh it's out of stock" (not explaining the 404, or no "marketplace" vendors). I escalated. Then I was told the Chromecast was not sold due to "too many complaints". A supervisor then flat out denied that, as well as denied there being any ban on any such product.
I asked about the Apple TV. After other lame "stocking" issues, a supervisor said "oh, we don't have licenses to sell Apple TV" and went on about how there's all sorts of legal issues.
It's vile for a company that's supposedly pro-consumer.
Amazon and Apple have had a long patchy history when it comes to selling Apple products.
Primarily it comes down to Apple's need to control the pricing of their products and Amazon's desire to drop prices far into the realms of lossmaking, which in part is due to their customer centricity. I cannot comment on this specific case but it is not always necessarily as clear cut as you think.
As an aside, the customer obsession is not fluff. It is deeply engrained within the business and is taken very seriously. Any decision that is not customer centric (e.g. Halting the sale of Harper Collins titles) is usually escalated to Diego (head of Retail) if not to Jeff himself.
Any business is well within their rights to make money and preserve their self interests, and occasionally strategic decisions may well clash with the culture so not every decision Amazon makes will be perfectly customer centric. With that said, from both the inside and outside I've witnessed really great customer obsession on the whole especially when compared to other businesses.
The problem is that they won't allow third parties to sell them on marketplace. Even if Apple won't sell to Amazon, as long as third parties want to list they should be allowed to and it shouldn't cause problems. (I'm probably missing something; what is it?)
Amazon is big enough that they could be seen as abusing their power as the largest online retailer to suppress competitors in other markets. These are products that consumers would reasonably expect Amazon to carry, but they don't because it competes with Amazon's other businesses.
I cancelled it because I was buying crap I didn't need. I cancelled it because I noticed the prices of items rising. I cancelled it because I felt guilty about a huge truck delivering an AM radio. I cancelled it because I was having problems with third party sellers.
The real reason I cancelled it; the prices went up. It was slight at first, but after reading feedback, I noticed a trend. They all bought their item at a lower cost than Me.
It's more akin to a used car lot deciding to manufacture cars, and removing Ford & Chevys from their lot. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is interesting that they only removed those two items and not Rokus and other streaming options.
When can we regulate this .... and break this company into 4 companies, that compete with each other :) I bet 3 will sell Ford and Chevy's on their display.
Yeah, the huge vertically integrated corporations are starting to seriously limit competition in several economic markets. Good for their profits, bad for pretty much everyone else. It's like Weyland-Yutani in the making.
The issue is that Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world and they are refusing to carry items that compete with their other business units.
Your example misses the point. People reasonably expect Amazon to carry electronics. Amazon is abusing their position as the largest retailer in world to suppress competition. That's illegal.
But with your example, Ford does not control 90% of car dealers in the US, so they are not in a position of power. Now, if Ford owned 90% of car mechanics in the US and they refused to repair Chevys, that would be abusing their position of power to suppress competition.
Or Microsoft refusing to allow installation of competitive browsers. The line is in market reach, anti-competitive legislation was inacted due to such abuses by a powerful player.
It's the value of certainty that people are buying. Think of it more like 'Shipping Insurance', delivery fees are an unfortunate unavoidable thing, like car accidents.
However, by purchasing 'shipping insurance' one can normalize the cost of shipping similar to the way one normalizes the cost of car accidents through car insurance.
There is a virtuous circle too that is the opposite of moral hazard typically incurred by insurance companies as having certainty of cost makes risk taking less costly. Similarly, if shipping is free, then people order more things, creating economies of scale that reduce shipping costs, enabling amazon to make more profit, or price prime cheaper.
There are other valid reasons besides not paying the initial shipping cossts.
Typically anything shipped Prime is a no-fee/no-hassle return. Great for when you're buying clothes. After accidentally buying something NOT shipped prime, then getting hit with a bunch of fees from the seller to return it I've gotten much more careful about it.
We also get discounts on our monthly recurring purchases that make it cheaper than going to the store to replenish, not even factoring for saved time.
There's also the Prime video- which has a surprisingly good catalog of shows and movies (in the US at least). I still watch Netflix more, but I use prime video at least once a week.
Most non-clothing items are not no-fee returns unless Amazon has made an error or the product is defective.
My wife and I double-bought a gift for our daughter and the return shipping fee was going to be $6.99 as it was our mistake. That's fair enough, IMO, but it's not free.
Returns are often free on clothing/shoes and around Christmas.
Prime Video is indeed a bigger benefit than I originally thought. The kids watch it several times a week and I probably once a week.
I got prime pretty much for the new Top Gear, everything else is just gravy. And now that I know I can return stuff I'm probably going to start buying clothes through prime.
It's very effective sleight of hand. The cherry on top is 2-day delivery being prepaid. I wouldn't have paid for 2-day otherwise. They "fixed" that for me.
The whole thing makes going to a brick and mortar store feel like going to the DMV.
With the exception that if you drive to store and back home for a single item, you'll have the item inside of an hour. If you live close, inside of 15 minutes?
When I know I will need batteries in a week, I'll buy a box on Amazon and get it in a few days. If I need batteries now, I'll have them within an hour. It's certainly not "like going to the DMV."
Here in the UK Amazon seem to be heading for same-day delivery for Prime customers (we already have free next day on Prime) and ultimately "within the hour" types of delivery in major cities.
Well, the advent of prime now means you can get many things in an hour from Amazon, though of course there are additional fees that are not covered by the annual prime membership fees.
It's funny, it feels like the opposite to me. Going to a regular store is pretty simple. Buying with Prime is a pain in the ass, since half the stuff they sell isn't eligible. Amazon is rarely the cheapest option anymore, too, so I no longer have the luxury of skipping the price comparison and knowing I'm getting a pretty good deal anyway.
> Buying with Prime is a pain in the ass, since half the stuff they sell isn't eligible.
From what I can see, Amazon sells very little that isn't Prime eligible. There are lots of "Marketplace" offerings that aren't Prime eligible, but you can filter those out by clicking the "Prime" checkbox that pops up on the left whenever you're in a search or category view.
From the user's (i.e. my) perspective, "Marketplace" offerings are still things that Amazon sells. The "Prime" checkbox doesn't work well. It doesn't filter out add-on items (which can be removed with another checkbox), and it doesn't do a very good job of only showing me Prime items. Searching for hard drives, just as a random example, I get results where the primary seller isn't Prime, and the Prime option is either more expensive than what's listed, or is a used or refurbished item. I'm sure there's a combination of checkboxes that will do what I want, but they sure don't seem to be optimizing for the common case.
I was gifted Prime and it surprised me how awesome it was. Say I want to buy a few pairs of SmartWool Socks, but since I'm buying them over the internet don't get a chance to try them on. Do I buy 7 pairs and risk it? No, I just buy 1 pair and get it in 2 days with no shipping fee.
In fact I buy all kinds of things now on Amazon because I can get them in 2 days with no shipping fee.
I get that I'm paying upfront for shipping, of course, which really only incentivizes me to shop more on Amazon. After a certain number of orders I'm beating the system, and that's fun.
Saying Amazon is absorbing a loss on shipping costs to get market share implies that that they're engaged in predatory pricing (i.e. they're selling below cost to get market share with the intent to raise prices once competition has been destroyed).
There might be some truth to that, but the better explanation for why Amazon isn't profitable is that it's simply plowing all of its profits back into the business. This link is older, but it does a pretty good job of going through the numbers and Jeff Bezo's thinking: http://a16z.com/2014/09/05/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why...
It's not uncommon for an ecommerce site to charge less for shipping than it actually costs them (for perception/psychology reasons), and make up the difference on margin or services.
How much are Walmart, Home Depot, and BestBuy losing on "operating retail stores"?
It's a cost of operation or cost of sales, IMO, and you have to look at it in the context of overall profitability and revenue growth, not as a standalone line item. Otherwise, you might argue for those other three to close all their retail outlets or charge admission in order to "stem the losses".
It's an operational cost, not COGS. And, sure it's a standalone line item as much as any other.
Not sure I understand the distinction you're attempting to make. It's a function of their model that can affect their competitiveness and may well argue for (or against) closures.
I used "cost of sales" when I meant "cost of revenue". However, I suspect the revenue from Prime counts as top-line and the shipping cost losses are absorbed as a cost on the COGS line, so the net effect is probably reflected as revenue and COGS. If I get some time, I'll poke through their last 10-Q/10-K to see if I can confirm that treatment.
The point I was trying to make is that Prime (and any associated losses) is part of Amazon's go-to-market strategy, just as opening retail stores is part of HD, WMT, and BBY's strategy. Saying that Amazon is "losing money on Prime" but that the others aren't "losing money on stores" seems a double-standard to me.
I guess you can parse it any way, but I consider those to be very different. A more valid comparison is between the retail stores and Amazon's distribution network, fulfillment centers, warehouses, etc. These things all fall under capital expenditures (CapEx) and represent hard costs that must be paid/financed.
Like retail stores, they are also part of the required infrastructure to fulfill customer orders.
Prime, OTOH is more a marketing expense. I would compare it to coupons, store savings cards, etc.
So, the double-standard doesn't exist in my view; unless you were to count retail store costs without counting Amazon fulfillment costs.
amazon is very profitable but they plow back all profits into new business ventures so they pay 0 taxes because they can report no profit. If you make a billion dollars profit and then immediately spend that building a new datacenter or warehouse whether you need it or not that still counts as a business expenses that is subtracted from profits. Amazon will never stop trying to enter new businesses because they have no plans to ever pay out dividends or hold on to cash profits
That's a concise description of why I (as an Amazon fanboy) have probably unconsciously abstained from becoming a Prime member ... something just smelled off.
How can subscription to a shipping service be compared to membership in a community? Where is the "community" in this? Do Prime-subscribes gather sometimes to discuss how they are subscribed to Prime?
> Though it is impressive that Amazon has turned a delivery fee - that most people don't like paying - into an exclusive subscription service.
Where Amazon has convinced people to prepay $100 per year for shipping on select items similar to how Apple has convinced customers to overpay on hardware and accessories to be part of the same style club. Community was probably the wrong word, but exclusive/elite membership maybe? And yes I hear people all the time talk about their prime memberships, especially at work.
Amazon is too good at what they do. The feeling that they give too good of a value, while I spent thousands of dollars on their site was a weird kind of high. That is the end game, you spend a lot with Prime since, it shows up in two days and no shipping etc. I cancelled my Prime membership, and just that saves me a hundred or two a month, because now I have to think twice before ordering anything since shipping cost is involved and also have to bundle enough items such that I qualify for free shipping.
side note: jet.com is not collecting sales tax yet. That is 8.25% differential where I live.
You shouldn't consider Jet.com not collecting sales tax as a "good thing" since you are technically required to pay it by law (in most places, normally, afaik, IANAL)
So you technically do still need to pay that 8.25% differential.
Indeed you do. Many years ago I had a business. One year the state decided to audit my business. No biggie, I had paid all my taxes as required. Except I hadn't. My business was located near a big box warehouse and you could order on the website and go pick it up. This was when almost all online orders were claimed to be "tax free". I did that for a few hard drives and some other stuff. I ended up owing about $150 in back taxes and penalties because I hadn't manually figured out the sales tax I was supposed to pay and reported it. I was a little annoyed at my accountant whose reaction was, "Yeah, nobody pays that, though technically you're supposed to." Needless to say, I have a new accountant.
> Many good accountants will weigh the chance of you getting audited + fined against the ROI of an "oversight."
"Good" is a questionable descriptor here. I would think that a good accountant should follow ethical rules, which would exclude the possibility of knowingly breaking the law to under-report taxes.
I went to the site. They popped up a window that asked for my email address and there was no way to dismiss this without giving it something. I closed the tab.
I think I'm being plenty responsible by (1) finding cheaper prices outside of Amazon (2) buying few enough things that the cost of Prime amortizes to an expensive shipping rate and (3) not making impulse purchases and being patient enough that I can live with the free non-Prime shipping.
I recently took advantage of Prime but I don't buy from them often enough, not even every year. I cancelled before the 30 days free trial expired. If they somewhat manage to get me buy stuff on Amazon often, I'll be back.
I don't know why this guy is being downvoted, it's true. I've had several orders I ordered on a Monday, sold by Amazon, shipped by Amazon, on Prime two-day that didn't get here until after Wednesday (once, even the following Monday).
Then Amazon is going to have to become much much better.
I live in London, UK and do not use Prime. I've almost stopped using Amazon altogether now.
Why?
1. Delivery - For our flat, their network either fails to deliver, mis-delivers or screws up in some other way far more than they succeed. There is no option to choose the one postal service that shines for my property: Royal Mail. Anything I order from Amazon may turn up eventually, but certainly isn't going to arrive whenever they claim. This is my #1 reason for abandoning Amazon.
2. Range and choice - Either you can't find what you want (the range within cycling for example is extremely limited) and have to look elsewhere, or you're swamped with marketplace sellers and what feels like a million grey goods. The Google engineer's "Which USB type-C cables are good" illustrates the sheer number of items that are of shoddy quality but are represented on the site as being of quality. There is simply, too much crap and not enough quality.
3. Price - I simply don't find Amazon the cheapest at almost anything. On their site it looks cheaper, always discounted, but if you take the manufacturers' SKU and Google it one quickly finds a whole load of places selling it for the same price or cheaper, also with free postage, or cheaper to the point that postage is irrelevant.
4. Bundling - Amazon Prime Video really isn't as good as Netflix, Amazon Prime Now isn't beating Shutl for me in London https://shutl.com/uk/, free postage hasn't been compelling (point #3)... but somehow bundling all of these things together into an
~£80 per year subscription is supposed to make a range of sub-par offerings value for money?
5. Warranty - I've purchased things on Amazon Prime, thinking they were covered by Amazon's customer service, only to discover that the obscure market place seller is really the seller and so my warranty complaints go back to them. They've been overseas and uninterested, and I've had to simply write-off the value of those items. If I buy elsewhere I can factor this in a lot more and choose a reputable seller. Depending on the item, i.e. I recently purchased a 40" 4K Sony TV, then I really want to be sure these high value items are going to be covered by a company that delivers great customer service... John Lewis in my case. There needs to be a Public Service Announcement in the photography section for the sheer number of lens that wouldn't be covered by warranty.
I actually view Prime as nothing more than a hook, to keep shoppers too lazy to look around under a spell of "this is a bargain, you're receiving great value".
In reality what Amazon once was is a long way from what they now are and Prime is a mask for that.
6. Marketplace sellers lying about the origin of delivery. Says ships from Germany, so should arrive in few days but arrives a month later from China.
7. I use a redelivery service for goods from German Amazon (because delivery to German address is often free but out of Germany very expensive). Amazon displays items to be delivered as one shipment before placing an order.
Right after ordering it displays that the items would be shipped in 4 separate shipments making the price of the delivery 4 times more expensive for me.
I actually emailed Amazon asking for other couriers to be an option as I hate everything about royal mail. They "lose" loads of mail, they lie by posting "you weren't in" cards when I'm working from home all day specifically to receive a parcel and if you want to pick up a failed delivery you have to travel at inconvenient times to a hard to get to location. This was around the time Amazon dropped them for certain categories of delivery; I doubt I had much, if any, impact on their decision but it felt good. When I've used other companies I've literally been able to follow the van on a map on real time, and my heart always sinks when having ordered an item and clicked on the tracking button I see "tracking isn't available on this item" as it means royal mail will be involved. They only survive because of being a state monopoly which also benefits from junk mail which they require to stay a viable business.
Have you ever contacted Amazon about the delivery firms that you've had issues with? I contacted them on 3 separate occasions about CityLink - they refused to leave parcels either in my porch or with a neighbour and their nearest collection depot was at that time 3 bus journeys away in a different county.
After the third one, I said I would be cancelling my Prime if they ever delivered (or rather didn't deliver) again. I don't know if was coincidence or not, but I don't think I've had an attempted delivery from them since.
It has not resulted in any change. They prefer their own drivers, and these are what we have issues with.
We live in a high-rise, one of several, and have a concierge from 8am through to midnight. Even so, the items are seldom left with the concierge, and frequently we get "attempted delivery" when the concierge is on-duty and open or whilst we are in (no delivery attempt is made at all).
Sometimes the driver gets to our door and leaves the item without knocking. We discover the item the next morning as we head out to work. Which explains why so many items don't get through as next door to us is a drug dealer with a lot of their customers coming and going at all hours.
All we want to achieve is: put it through the letterbox or leave it with the concierge. Neither seems to be possible.
No amount of complaining to Amazon has resolved it, but shopping elsewhere means the Amazon delivery network isn't used and every item then ends up through the letterbox or with the concierge.
I can graph my non-digital orders for the last few years, I've gone from 5-10 orders per month 2 years ago, down to 1 order every 3 months last year.
The only thing I still order from Amazon are Kindle books, for everything else, I now look elsewhere first.
Delivery has gotten really bad. When they used DPD it was great, but really nothing to do with Amazon, DPD are just far and away the best UK courier.
Recently around me they switched to "Amazon logistics" which to me is code for "a man in a van we hired". All in all quality of delivery has dropped; I've got about a year of free prime because one delivery driver, delivering to an obvious business address, couldn't wrap his head around "work hours" and kept turning up at 7pm.
LaserShip still gets my Amazon packages. After the last one, even with their "here have a refund" (after digging around trying to find a help/support contact on Amazon's page for 20 minutes), I stopped ordering off of Amazon completely. I've spent at least $20,000 on their site in the last 5 years.
LaserShip is universally reviled and has the worst complaints in the entire logistics industry. Amazon does not care. Amazon just cares who and where the lowest bidder is, and for small packages in Midtown Manhattan, LaserShip is it. If you don't live in a doorman building, you are fucked.
Agree with everything you said. I will add DPD in addition to Royal Mail - first, you can track the delivery van on a map, in real time. Second, you can text DPD in-flight and ask them to deliver to a local pick-up location instead of your home address. And most of all yes, shopping online with John Lewis is amazing. Their products are quality, and their service is awesome. Amazon, in comparison, is a £ shop.
I tried to by the Dragon Book as an eBook. I managed to purchase it, paid good money and it was revoked as I wasn't a U.S. citizen. I was never refunded.
I grabbed a copy from... elsewhere... and then never shopped at Amazon again.
> 1. Delivery - For our flat, their network either fails to deliver, mis-delivers or screws up in some other way far more than they succeed. There is no option to choose the one postal service that shines for my property: Royal Mail. Anything I order from Amazon may turn up eventually, but certainly isn't going to arrive whenever they claim. This is my #1 reason for abandoning Amazon.
Very few online stores give you a choice of delivery service. For me Royal Mail are the absolute worst (DPD are ideal, others are close), but it seems to vary by area. I find Amazon gives you a lot more choice than any of their competitors (they integrate with four or more different "collect a parcel from here" services, in London you can almost always find a pickup location very close to wherever you are). I mean if you live somewhere where Royal Mail are better than XYZ then a Royal Mail-only store is better for you than Amazon, but I don't think anyone's better in general. (Also in London you have Prime Now as an option).
> Either you can't find what you want (the range within cycling for example is extremely limited) and have to look elsewhere
Oh? A week ago I was looking for some specific bike accessories (to go with a specialized bike that I'd bought from the one shop in London (perhaps even in Britain), but even they didn't have the accessories for it); on ebay they were badly described and the range wasn't good. Amazon had what I needed. Maybe a specialized online bike store would have an even better range, but I don't want to have to figure out and trust a new store for every product category I might want to buy; I want a generalist, and Amazon is good at that.
> 4. Bundling - Amazon Prime Video really isn't as good as Netflix, Amazon Prime Now isn't beating Shutl for me in London https://shutl.com/uk/, free postage hasn't been compelling (point #3)... but somehow bundling all of these things together into an ~£80 per year subscription is supposed to make a range of sub-par offerings value for money?
Doesn't it? Their video isn't as good as Netflix, their music isn't as good as Spotify, I'll take your word for it that Shutl is better - but a year's subscription to Netflix and Spotify and Shutl and ... would cost a fair bit more than GPB80, the Amazon options are good enough a lot of the time, and having it all integrated in one place is valuable.
> I've purchased things on Amazon Prime, thinking they were covered by Amazon's customer service, only to discover that the obscure market place seller is really the seller and so my warranty complaints go back to them.
I would agree that the UI isn't as obvious as it might be, but it's still pretty easy to see who the seller is
> They've been overseas and uninterested, and I've had to simply write-off the value of those items.
What? No. If they're not honouring their warranty, do a credit card chargeback.
> Very few online stores give you a choice of delivery service.
The ones I'm now using all do.
The different options of exigency are usually different providers, which is very convenient.
> Oh?
As a quick experiment I built a bike from components and accessories last year and couldn't find any of the items I wanted on Amazon, but have just tried again.
No Rohloff hub, Enve rims, Gilles Berthoud mudguards, Schmidt dynamo hub, etc.
Only the brake pads for Hope brakes, not the brakes themselves.
The only bits of an entire bike that I managed to find was the Carradice bag and the Fizik saffle. No other part was on Amazon.
> Amazon options are good enough a lot of the time
They're only "good enough" if having them means that you do not have the Netflix, Spotify and other things in place. A quick survey of the people sat around me with Prime is that every one still has those subscriptions elsewhere.
It's not a saving if it's in addition to other costs.
> If they're not honouring their warranty, do a credit card chargeback.
A warranty period is measured in years, a chargeback period is measured in days... 60 days is usually the upper limit.
Such as? What's the Amazon-like where I can buy a big range?
> The different options of exigency are usually different providers, which is very convenient.
That's true on Amazon too
> They're only "good enough" if having them means that you do not have the Netflix, Spotify and other things in place. A quick survey of the people sat around me with Prime is that every one still has those subscriptions elsewhere.
Hmm, weird. I don't know why you'd get Prime in that case - I guess they find the next day delivery worth the GBP80 on its own?
Prime Video isn't anywhere near as good as Netflix in terms of content or in terms of technical prowess. The Xbox apps are pretty bad. The Android Prime Video app can't even be used without enabling Unknown Sources and then manually installing the whole Amazon App Store on your Android device. Even then, it doesn't work that well. It's kind of a joke.
Yes, but it's probably also the only justification for paying money for prime.
I also use it mainly because it's a requirement for their DVD/Blu-Ray rental service. However that got a massive price increase the last month - so I'm considering stopping to use both.
Regarding delivery the interesting thing is that before prime emerged nearly all orders here in Germany were delivered on the next day. Then prime came up and from there on orders without prime took 2 days and looked artificially delayed so that you would have a reason to pay for prime.
I observed the same thing in Germany: pretty much all delivery services deliver packages the day after they receive the package, so that for Amazon to achieve 2-day delivery they need to deliberately wait a day before they start packaging a non-prime order. Maybe not so customer-obsessed after all.
I had the same experience with much slower normal shipping suddenly after the introduction of Prime. But I just recently allowed my Prime subscription to lapse, and based on my very limited data it seems back to normal again.
We got a price reduction for DVD rental. However, we use Lovefilm-1DVD-without-streaming, because streaming does not work reliably for us. Amazon streaming often stutters and hangs. For comparison, Youtube works great.
The reason I got Prime in Germany (at student rates: €24/y) was free delivery without a minimum amount. Nowadays it's even free same-day delivery (when it's available).
I was surprised how popular DVD rental still was in Germany. Someone I know from Amazon was telling me. I get the impression they desperately want to kill off the market for it though?
I also got the impression because after they took the company over that provided the rental service before (Lovefilm) everything got worse. Amazons website is far worse than what existed before, prices got up and in the first phase the delivery also took longer.
However Streaming and especially Amazons offering is no alternative for Blu-Ray rental in my opinion:
- The video quality for streaming is lacking.
- The amount of movies (not shows) that amazon is offering through VOD is quite low and most of it is old and uninteresting stuff. Outside of prime you can get newer videos also through VOD. But the prices are not really attractive when you can get a higher quality version on disc for a lower or equal price.
Dude kind of missed the point that Bezos has clearly read a lot of Buffet's shareholder letters and is now taking on this good-natured, funny grandfather tone to soften public percpetion the hard economics that run his business - cost cutting, ruthless management, etc. that have recently come to light. Smart move, not subtle, but also not meant to be subtle.
Wouldn't be surprised if Bezos starts madly pitching for the USA and including pictures of him and his employees soon...on the other hand, nobody breaks down the business of insurance/multi-national conglomerate management as elegantly, wittily, and insightfully as Buffett so we have that to look forward to from Bezos.
