Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#31

Post by nathankleyn » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:11 PM UTC

fatjokes wrote: post #19

dman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to make the case that walmart is a monopoly. For what its worth amazon has pulled similar stunts like not selling the chromecast.

I can see the argument* to say "we can't invest the work to support chromecast". Whereas it's harder to say "we won't talk to these other truckers who work with our competitor". *A argument, not one that would hold in court. IANAL. EDIT: It seems I misunderstood Amazon's lack of Chromecast support. I hadn't thought of trying to buy Chromecast through Amazon before. I own three of them and bought all through the Googl…

I think it was less that Amazon wouldn't provide support for Chromecast with their services and more that they refused to stock and sell Chromecast devices at all.

I suppose the difference between this and Walmart's move is that we are not entitled to buy the things we want from every shop, whereas these drivers are probably entitled to employment without discrimination in regards to other customers they provide services to?

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#32

Post by revelation » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:12 PM UTC

dman wrote: post #14

Hemospectrum wrote: post #6

First AWS, now this. At what point does the DOJ step in? Isn't this anticompetitive behavior? I've heard that Reagan-era deregulation changed a lot of the relevant law, but I'm not clear on how. Is Walmart doing this with the expectation of impunity because there's no longer a crime to charge them with, or because they see themselves as immune to prosecution?

Hard to make the case that walmart is a monopoly. For what its worth amazon has pulled similar stunts like not selling the chromecast.

A monopoly is not some magic necessary condition for illegal anti-competitive practices. The most obvious example is price fixing.

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#33

Post by giobox » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:13 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #18

fuck Walmart. You don't hear anything about Amazon workers being on public assistance because they are payed enough and get enough hours to survive on their own. Around the holidays Walmart takes food and toy donations for their workers inside their break rooms. It's a bad company and I hope it gets killed off.

I can't tell if this comment is sarcasm.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/11/amazon-ac...

http://www.businessinsider.com/brutal-conditions-in-amazons-...

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/life-and-deat...

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#34

Post by StevePerkins » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:13 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #18

fuck Walmart. You don't hear anything about Amazon workers being on public assistance because they are payed enough and get enough hours to survive on their own. Around the holidays Walmart takes food and toy donations for their workers inside their break rooms. It's a bad company and I hope it gets killed off.

Amazon is as awful to their employees as any other retailer, and worse than many.

There are pretty much only two only MAJOR retailers with good labor reputations. One is Costco, and that's only because they can run their business with a fraction of the employee-to-square-footage ratio that most retailers need. The other is Whole Foods... which has been getting worse for years, and will probably accelerate down that path now that they're owned by Amazon.

It's a race to the bottom. There are no good guys.

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#35

Post by ctdonath » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

Both may be reaching scales which strain the limits of the shipping industry. To retain needed capacity, each has to elbow the other out of the way, while they ramp up alternatives.

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#36

Post by ryan-c » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #16

madamelic wrote: post #8

"Amazon offers $0.10 more per mile, leaving Walmart with no truckers" But really, Wal-mart needs to get over themselves and do what they need to do to adapt, rather than being the bully they've always been. It isn't like they refuse technology, they have a pretty decent technology team as far as I can tell.

Where did you read this quote?

It's not a quote, it's a possible response.

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#37

Post by __d__ » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

I've posted before about Walmart and I'll post here again. They routinely would pay us late and underpay invoices on delivered products. Sometimes racking up to $50-$100,000. The worst part for us is it would be an average of one year before they would pay it in full. You'd have to submit a claim and fill out endless paperwork to get paid. It was so hard on us as a company. You also had to pay them a per package fee that added up to a lot per year. No other company was doing this.

With Walmart trucking things were worse. If we delivered a product and it arrived not well, you had limited options on checking the reasons why. Several times we wanted to pull the temp recorder and just by doing that Walmart charged us around $1000 if we lost. On several occasions our own temp recorders were taken off of our product and were lost when we challenged their rejection of product, and in this case we lost. Even though the product shipped pristine. When our temp recorders were found on the product it showed that it did not ship under the terms of the agreement. In this case we won.

Again, to challenge this with Walmart I had to call or email more times then I could count. I always felt they purposely made it difficult.

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#38

Post by kissickas » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

fanpuns wrote: post #12

If this is true (keeping in mind the source is an analyst who is relating conversation between other parties for which they were not involved), it might not necessarily be a negative for the freight market. If the contractors become territorial about which freight companies they will hire it will effectively reduce the supply available for both (once a freight company commits to one or the other) meaning Walmart/Amaz…

But higher prices would also encourage Amazon to invest more in automating their fleet, at which point the market will collapse.

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#39

Post by syshum » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:18 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #34

solotronics wrote: post #18

fuck Walmart. You don't hear anything about Amazon workers being on public assistance because they are payed enough and get enough hours to survive on their own. Around the holidays Walmart takes food and toy donations for their workers inside their break rooms. It's a bad company and I hope it gets killed off.

Amazon is as awful to their employees as any other retailer, and worse than many. There are pretty much only two only MAJOR retailers with good labor reputations. One is Costco, and that's only because they can run their business with a fraction of the employee-to-square-footage ratio that most retailers need. The other is Whole Foods... which has been getting worse for years, and will probably accelerate down that p…

The race to the bottom is the elimation of those jobs completely.

Today a store that used to have 5 cashiers needs 1 to monitor 5 self checkout stations.

Amazon and others are working on eliminating that final job...

They are also working on ways to fill the shelves with no human involvement, and robot shopping assistance that you can ask for help

we are probably less than 10 years away from the first retail store with no human employees, or at most 1 or 2 to monitor the robots

Re: Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon

#40

Post by Upvoter33 » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

bedhead wrote: post #17

This is a misguided, myopic decision done out of sheer desperation. It's a symptom, not the disease.

It's not desperation, it's using your leverage to your advantage. Isn't that the smart business decision? How is that any different then Amazon, Uber, or anyone else deciding to raise prices once they're the dominant participant in their respective marketplace? "Competition is for losers." - Peter Thiel

You misattributed the quote:

""Competition is for losers." - Peter Thiel." -Michael Scott.

More seriously, I hate this quote, for so many reasons. Sure, it's great if you can do something no one else is doing and do it so well that no one can really compete with you. But there are plenty of people who compete with others and the world is often a better place as a result. It feels like people lose sight of the goals: not just becoming really wealthy, but perhaps serving the public?