Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#111

Post by dukoid » Fri, Apr 22, 2016, 11:57 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #44

snegu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly unlikely that they're going to implement this in countries that don't have Prime.

There is no Amazon site for Ireland. I can buy things from any of their sites. However... - Amazon.co.uk refuses to ship a number of items outside of Great Britain. - Amazon.com has expensive shipping (obviously), and now this thing. - Amazon.de doesn't usually help. Besides, I can't read German. Looking at the Grand Theft Auto example, it's available from Amazon.com but not Amazon.co.uk; the latter, as mentioned, re…

On amazon.co.uk, you can frequently find a different seller that ships to your country though. I often get the message "this item can't be shipped to Switzerland". Then I click on "new and used from..." and there is the same item only one pence more expensive, but I can get it shipped to CH. No idea why Amazon can't be bothered to display the one I actually can order to CH first.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#112

Post by takno » Fri, Apr 22, 2016, 11:59 PM UTC

morganvachon wrote: post #42

gtk40 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted I don't buy video games with Prime, but my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I live in one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

> ...my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I've had the opposite experience (and posted about it here before). Since I joined Prime last year, I've had issues with the guaranteed 2 day shipping taking 3-4 days or sometimes a week. I don't live in the backwoods either; I'm well within the Atlanta metro a…

Prime in the UK is next day, and whenever they miss that they give you a free month of prime, which was essentially getting me prime for free. I gave up in the end because the waiting in was getting too expensive

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#113

Post by geofft » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 12:14 AM UTC

jghn wrote: post #91

justinlardinois wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely true. Back in the pre-Prime days (ie, 5+ years ago) Amazon would send your package as soon as they possibly could, and even with the super saver shipping you'd still often get your order less than the minimum 5 days. Now I'll order something on Amazon (not a Prime member) and they'll sit on the package for a week and then overnight it to me. I'm not a fan. Paying more for faster shipping didn't use…

That is one of the two reasons I signed up for prime in the first place, I'd always get super saver and 99.9% of the time it'd arrive in 2 days. All of a sudden it started taking the full time. I don't remember exactly what the other reason was, but it involved a one time money savings which was > the cost of a year of Prime at the time.

So I can imagine that this was originally a bug. Probably at some point they reached the capacity of things they could physically get out of their warehouse and onto a shipping truck per day, regardless of whether that truck is heading to other trucks or to a plane. So you need to prioritize, every day, the things that must go out overnight to meet the deadline. If you're full and you have things that could be shipped tomorrow, they wait tomorrow. Then tomorrow, or a week later, or whatever, those things are now on the list of stuff that must go out overnight.

Ideally your capacity isn't filled up by the must-be-overnight stuff. But if you're busy for a few days, suddenly a bunch of regular stuff turns into must-be-overnight stuff. And that delays next week's regular stuff, which then turns into must-be-overnight stuff next week. and there's no way to recover from this automatically. You could recover if you manually added more shipping capacity, or if you told customers that ground shipping would take even longer (so you can spend a few days clearing out backlog), or something.

That said given that the current state incentivizes customers to do exactly what you did, I wouldn't want to be the manager who prioritized fixing the bug....

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#114

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 12:35 AM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #61

justinlardinois wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely true. Back in the pre-Prime days (ie, 5+ years ago) Amazon would send your package as soon as they possibly could, and even with the super saver shipping you'd still often get your order less than the minimum 5 days. Now I'll order something on Amazon (not a Prime member) and they'll sit on the package for a week and then overnight it to me. I'm not a fan. Paying more for faster shipping didn't use…

This may be because it's cheaper/better for them to ship other orders instead of yours, since they can only handle a finite amount of orders per center at a time :)

It's a financial hack. Amazon has low margins so cash flow is king.

They make money off you either way, when they sit on the order for 5 days, they probably book your revenue a month before they need to pay for the product.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#115

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 12:37 AM UTC

longwave wrote: post #57

dingaling wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just games: I tried to buy a Panasonic bread machine on Amazon UK back in January but it was a 'Prime Exclusive'. I bought it instead from Argos nearby for the same price. A few days later it was no longer 'exclusive'. Presumably just more Amazon psychological experimentation. Edit: model is SD-2500

Similarly, Pampers nappies have only been available to Prime customers for some months now.

Not everywhere. In Japan they are available to everyone still.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#116

Post by vlozko » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 12:59 AM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #13

Ever since there started being discounts for Prime-only members I knew it was the beginning of the end of my using Amazon. My last online order was with Walgreens. I never tried them before but I googled for the product I had in my Amazon cart, it was cheaper at Walgreens, I added a few things to get up to $35 for free shipping, those things were also cheaper than on Amazon. I got the delivery faster than my last few…

Somewhat similar experience but with the old brick and mortar. I get taxed on Amazon purchases and a speaker package ended up costing the same as buying from Amazon and even then I was buying through a reseller on Amazon whereas I can get stuff handled faster and easier should I have issues. Besides, Best Buy price matches Amazon nowadays anyway.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#117

Post by kmonsen » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #21

jerf wrote: post #4

I don't get it. As an incentive to sign up for Prime it makes no sense; Prime needs to offer me things I can't get elsewhere (or at least not for the same price), not return to me things that I can easily get elsewhere. I just spot-checked Amazon US's price for GTA 5, 39.88 [1], and it's the exact same price at Wal-Mart [2], so it's not an exclusive deal or something. (Nor did I spend several minutes hunting for a co…

My guess: - They cost more than the free shipping threshold, giving shipping away free - New games are low profit to begin with - Amazon sells enough of these that they are already in every distribution center - Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free This is just bringing some video game sales into alignment with what Amazon wanted Prime to…

The low profit part cannot be true. In the US prime members get a 20% discount on new games!

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#118

Post by surrealvortex » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #40

potatolicious wrote: post #8

This seems oddly customer-hostile, which is something I've grown to expect from tech companies but not Amazon in specific. One can't help but wonder if the damage this does to the brand outweighs the strategic gains through Prime subscriptions. After all, selection and availability is a huge part of Amazon's secret sauce to success, more so than customer service, shipping speed, or any other concern. If customers los…

Amazon is the only place I have seen blatant user-targeted dark patterns. "Order within the next hour to ship today". Four hours later: "order within the next 2 hours to ship today". Never mind the lowest-bid delivery acting like this is the first package they've ever handled (a phone call, really?), or email spam from checking a price. I believe a short time after a company acquires a reputation, customers develop a…

Or maybe the transportation resource Amazon had to use to ship later in the day had some cancelations?

It's impossible to build a distributed system that has fully consistent results. That is usually the reason for inconsistencies between the detail page and checkout page promises.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#119

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 3:02 AM UTC

And remember, Amazon blocks even Prime members from buying Chromecast or Apple TV devices. Then they lie about the reasons, ranging from: "we're out of stock" to "too many user complaints" to "we aren't licensed to sell this" and on and on.

Amazon no longer cares about the customer as top priority. If you're a Prime member, quit. I've been a customer since 2003 and now am looking at alternatives. I even try to find books outside of the Kindle store, though I note they have strong lockin there. (I never thought it'd be a problem, since Amazon used to always put the customer so far up a pedestal.)

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#120

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Apr 23, 2016, 3:03 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #114

DannyBee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be because it's cheaper/better for them to ship other orders instead of yours, since they can only handle a finite amount of orders per center at a time :)

It's a financial hack. Amazon has low margins so cash flow is king. They make money off you either way, when they sit on the order for 5 days, they probably book your revenue a month before they need to pay for the product.

Do they charge your before the order actually ships? I don't think they do.