Interesting comments in here, but all I have to say is I bought 12/13 Christmas presents this year in about an hour while sitting on my ass enjoying a couple of beers, the only one I had to go out for was because it was an item I couldn't get before Christmas.
Amazon is truly the Devil but I can't help myself and love it.
You antisocial freak . Sitting at home ? On the couch ? Doing something you enjoy vs driving across town to stand in lines , waste gas , and be annoyed ?
You are effectively contributing to the downfall of society . Won’t you think of the teenager who would have been at the cashier who won’t get to see you this holiday season
As an aside since you like Amazon I can help set you up as a drop shipper to make some extra $$ over the holidays . PM me for more info
When I worked retail cell phones, I'd say at least 15% of people would buy the phone, return it a few days later. Essentially using the 30 day warranty as a way to try out the phone. Once opened, the phone could no longer be sold. The whole Amazon returns thing isn't new.
With brick and mortar, you produce the receipt and get the money back instantly. With Amazon, you have to fill out online forms, ship, and then wait for the money back. I don't know which deters people more. Although I guess being able to sit on your ass and order from home, makes you more likely to buy products you wouldn't have in the first place, which means more returns.
Amazon does sell their returns on pallets and there's a significant number of people who make a living reselling returned Amazon products. So not all the products that get returned are wasted.
Apparently, the biggest waster of commercial products are clothing stores. Many just throw away unsold products at the end of a season. Some people make a living buying these clothes, when they go on discount, and then reselling them on platforms like Amazon and Ebay.
The two biggest issues with Amazon are the cardboard boxes, and the capitalist/monopoly nature of it. I've thought about dealing with the second issue. Replace Amazon with a government agency? It's a tough one.
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When I worked retail cell phones, I'd say at least 15% of people would buy the phone, return it a few days later. Essentially using the 30 day warranty as a way to try out the phone. Once opened, the phone could no longer be sold. The whole Amazon returns thing isn't new.
With brick and mortar, you produce the receipt and get the money back instantly. With Amazon, you have to fill out online forms, ship, and then wait for the money back. I don't know which deters people more. Although I guess being able to sit on your ass and order from home, makes you more likely to buy products you wouldn't have in the first place, which means more returns.
Amazon does sell their returns on pallets and there's a significant number of people who make a living reselling returned Amazon products. So not all the products that get returned are wasted.
Apparently, the biggest waster of commercial products are clothing stores. Many just throw away unsold products at the end of a season. Some people make a living buying these clothes, when they go on discount, and then reselling them on platforms like Amazon and Ebay.
The two biggest issues with Amazon are the cardboard boxes, and the capitalist/monopoly nature of it. I've thought about dealing with the second issue. Replace Amazon with a government agency? It's a tough one.
####, I wouldn't even want Amazon to use Canada Post for delivery nevermind destroy the rest of their business with government rot. You might as well demand that they destroy the company by committing suicide right now.
I've pretty much just stopped using Amazon, it's just too much of a mess. In fact online shopping in general has become so f***ing tedious with the endless amount of scams you need to be watch out for, that as someone who already drives around a lot, it's now just faster and easier for me to buy most stuff from a physical store.
The amount of time and energy that is required to make sure you're getting a real product of reasonable quality from a reputable online shop at a reasonable price is just more than I have, at least for most things. Especially in the last year I've repeatedly gone online for something I thought "would be nice", and ended up not buying anything.
(Of course I live in Helsinki which has a decent amount of specialist shops, and delivery times for online products tend to be on the long side because Finland is kind of a remote island geographically.)
I got a counterfeit frypan from Amazon.
The place never fails to amaze me.
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I went to Lee Valley today and bought a bunch of stuff without thinking much of it, because they can generally be relied upon to only stock things that are of decent quality. The super old dude was pretty knowledgeable and helped me find some things.
While there, I found a really cool gift idea I never would have thought of on my own.
But holy #### is Glenmore/Deerfoot an insufferable mess. They should build a Lee Valley in walking distance from me.
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####, I wouldn't even want Amazon to use Canada Post for delivery nevermind destroy the rest of their business with government rot. You might as well demand that they destroy the company by committing suicide right now.
Lol. Yeah fair enough.
I suppose maybe competition is the answer? We could be seeing more competition with sites like Temu, but they all seem to be focused more on selling counterfeit and very low quality goods.
Perhaps there's now room in the market for an Amazon like site that doesn't allow counterfeit and/or low quality goods. I might actually pay little bit extra for a guarantee I'm getting something legit that won't instantly fall apart.
I went to Lee Valley today and bought a bunch of stuff without thinking much of it, because they can generally be relied upon to only stock things that are of decent quality. The super old dude was pretty knowledgeable and helped me find some things.
While there, I found a really cool gift idea I never would have thought of on my own.
But holy #### is Glenmore/Deerfoot an insufferable mess. They should build a Lee Valley in walking distance from me.
Well, don’t leave us hanging? Unless that gift is for us.
I suppose maybe competition is the answer? We could be seeing more competition with sites like Temu, but they all seem to be focused more on selling counterfeit and very low quality goods.
Perhaps there's now room in the market for an Amazon like site that doesn't allow counterfeit and/or low quality goods. I might actually pay little bit extra for a guarantee I'm getting something legit that won't instantly fall apart.
Would anyone be against that? People were criticizing Amazon and Amazon fanboys, which I legitimately did not know existed anywhere, tried to make this an attack on online shopping or something.
Like, yeah, more competition or similar models that aren’t predatory knock off crap holes? Terrible idea honestly.
Don’t know how big of an impact it will have on their overall supply chain or north of the border but Amazon workers at some locations in the US may begin striking on Monday if the company continues to refuse to negotiate a first collective agreement with them.
I suppose maybe competition is the answer? We could be seeing more competition with sites like Temu, but they all seem to be focused more on selling counterfeit and very low quality goods.
Perhaps there's now room in the market for an Amazon like site that doesn't allow counterfeit and/or low quality goods. I might actually pay little bit extra for a guarantee I'm getting something legit that won't instantly fall apart.
Amazon's power isn't that they're an online retailer. Amazon's power is their logistics network and the economies of scale they have in it it that others won't have. It's basically identical to how Walmart obliterated the competition for brick and mortar in certain categories 30-40 years ago.
Saying more competition is meaningless if people don't realize the method that Amazon is using to be the giant it is. Companies have to compete on delivery and reliability, not online offerings.
Amazon reduces costs and time by using semi-automated methods to address counterfeit, low quality and issues with orders. They'd rather do that and improve the return policy than go back to hiring people to manually address/investigate issues with millions of products/orders per hour.
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Amazon's power isn't that they're an online retailer. Amazon's power is their logistics network and the economies of scale they have in it it that others won't have. It's basically identical to how Walmart obliterated the competition for brick and mortar in certain categories 30-40 years ago.
Saying more competition is meaningless if people don't realize the method that Amazon is using to be the giant it is. Companies have to compete on delivery and reliability, not online offerings.
Spot on.
Most of the general public have no idea how Amazon is structured globally.
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Amazon's power isn't that they're an online retailer. Amazon's power is their logistics network and the economies of scale they have in it it that others won't have. It's basically identical to how Walmart obliterated the competition for brick and mortar in certain categories 30-40 years ago.
Saying more competition is meaningless if people don't realize the method that Amazon is using to be the giant it is. Companies have to compete on delivery and reliability, not online offerings.
Amazon reduces costs and time by using semi-automated methods to address counterfeit, low quality and issues with orders. They'd rather do that and improve the return policy than go back to hiring people to manually address/investigate issues with millions of products/orders per hour.
Also while people can and do return things (sometimes excessively), they've certainly done the math that alot of people don't go through the hassle of returning items. It's similar to subscriptions that get way more expensive down the line.. the calculation is that many people will forget to cancel.
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Don’t know how big of an impact it will have on their overall supply chain or north of the border but Amazon workers at some locations in the US may begin striking on Monday if the company continues to refuse to negotiate a first collective agreement with them.
Barely. IIRC, something similar happened in recent years just around this busy period (IIRC, it was primarily relating to "poor pandemic policies"). Amazon just dealt with each area on a case by case basis and IIRC, some of the orders seemingly started going through Canada in areas where there was no strike to go around these issues. I think it added up to 3-5 days (days, not business days) on a bunch of larger orders, but for stuff that already had supplies and storage in Canadian warehouses, IIRC it was barely a blip at all.
It's not to say that Amazon wouldn't prefer to come to an agreement with each location because it's more beneficial than abandoning it in the long run. I'm just saying that it likely may not slow things down too much if at all for getting things before Christmas... which honestly speaking, most people are concerned about that more than anything else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by calumniate
Also while people can and do return things (sometimes excessively), they've certainly done the math that alot of people don't go through the hassle of returning items. It's similar to subscriptions that get way more expensive down the line.. the calculation is that many people will forget to cancel.
Yep. Rather than pay several million to have people sitting around dealing with it, they'd rather do the formula to have several million in returns, absorbed instead.
Many don't realize that an extra month for returns isn't necessarily for our convenience. It's for the company's convenience and it honestly costs the company less to offer this extended return policy than be stringent on a 30 day return situation while they're ultra busy during the holidays.
I try to shop local(ish) when I can, since it employs local people and builds some Christmas cheer etc, but damnit, can these stores at least get their online inventory straightened out? Two places I went to yesterday (both national chains btw) claimed to have the items I wanted in stock at their stores, only for me to come out empty handed out of both places due to there not actually any stock.
So I bought on Amazon instead and it will be here on Friday.
Maybe this should go in the gear grinder thread, but brick & mortar stores are not helping themselves.
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I left a bad review on Google for the Staples near my place once over that and the store actually reached out to me in response. I didn't reply since it'd probably be something like "oh here's your item free shipping please remove the review".
But yeah that's happened to me enough that I either just get it from Amazon, or if I am going to a store I call ahead and get them to put it aside for me if at all possible.. or like Best Buy you can order it for pickup and if THEY can't find it then they cancel the order so I don't have to drive there.
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