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Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#151

Post by prof_hobart »

buro9 wrote: post #100
shuri wrote: post #3

You have to love this sentence "We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member."

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 t…

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.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#152

Post by ZenoArrow »

hvm wrote: post #116
hinkley wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't have the slightest clue how yahoo stays in business. And I don't mean that as rhetoric, either. Other than Bloomberg I don't get where the money comes from. I hope it's not organized crime... I'd probably read a biography of the company out of curiosity.

They're pretty big in asian markets. When I was in Tokyo everything was set with yahoo as the homepage for some reason.

Yahoo Japan has about 40% of the search engine market in Japan, which is pretty impressive:

http://returnonnow.com/internet-marketing-resources/2015-sea...

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#153

Post by buro9 »

prof_hobart wrote: post #151
buro9 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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) agai…

Yes, I have.

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.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#154

Post by sokoloff »

stupidcar wrote: post #99
sbank wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tal…

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.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#156

Post by sokoloff »

zeven7 wrote: post #53
andys627 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fee is getting paid somehow - either by you up front, as a subscription, or for "free" built into the cost of the item.

That's not what I've heard. A quick search found me this: > The company loses an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion on Prime shipping annually http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-free-shipping-killing-am... Amazon wants market share enough to absorb a loss on shipping costs. It's part of why Amazon is still not profitable.

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".

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#157

Post by michaelt »

ditonal wrote: post #56
sabalaba wrote: post #12

I see this letter as an attempt at vindication for the controversy sparked by the NYT article on Amazon's corporate culture. Jeff Bezos was clearly affected and I see this as a defense of their "distinctive culture". "For better or for worse" that culture got them to $100 billion in annual sales faster than any company in history.

We venerate leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt because they inspired millions of individuals to act directly against their self-interest and in favor of the organizations that those leaders own and manage. "We will fight on the beaches" sure sounds inspiring, but if it was my intestines bleeding out onto the sands of Normandy, at that exact moment, it wouldn't have quite the same ring. Yet these inspiring words sti…

  Churchill [...] inspired millions of individuals to act
  directly against their self-interest
If a Brit is equally happy living under the Nazis or a British government; or if military victory is impossible for the Brits; yes.

But if most Brits would prefer to live under British rather than Nazi rule, you have something game theorists call a "Cooperative game" and it may well be more profitable on average for /everyone/ to fight rather than for /no-one/ to fight. It can even be in the self-interest of a /coalition/ to fight, tolerating non-fighting free riders, as long as the coalition remains large enough to win.

In other words, Churchill convinced millions of people to act in their /collective/ best interests, rather than their /individual/ best interests.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#158

Post by sokoloff »

manyxcxi wrote: post #60
fleitz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 t…

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.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#159

Post by sokoloff »

HashThis wrote: post #64
jacalata wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people who have left Amazon, and are very bitter about how it was to work there. I know some who are waiting out their signing bonus. I also know a lot who've left Microsoft, but they definitely have a lower average bitterness about the company.

I know a ton of people like this. 70% of the people I know didn't stay at Amazon past 4 years.

If you don't work at Amazon, there's a pretty big sampling bias in your data. (You are wildly more likely to work with someone who has left Amazon than someone who has happily stayed there, and in casual interactions, you're more likely to hear from the strongly disgruntled than the happy. In the same way, current Amazon workers are likely to know a higher than average percentage of long-tenured and happy Amazon employees than is reality in overall population.)

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#160

Post by Angostura »

sokoloff wrote: post #154
stupidcar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tal…

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 st…

Why doesn't Amazon Prime video support Chromecast?
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