The refrigerator example is stupid. I'm talking about buying something from Amazon, so if I have buyer's remorse or it's broken I won't ever buy that model of the same thing again from Amazon. I would at most return it, which the ad might remind me of.
There's a certain truth to you being in that buyer's class now, because there is a certain population that buys laptops. Yet as he stated, I'm not in the buying cycle. I would probably be in the buying cycle again in 1-2-3-4-5 years from now. So immediately advertising for something you buy rarely (refrigerators more, laptops less, phones maybe more often) is still wasted ad space.
David Scotten's comment on that thread is a bit more on point: "There's the opportunity cost of not showing another ad in that slot, though. So they're showing you what they think is the ad with the highest expected value for them."
I think they don't calculate the opportunity cost right. They will advertise right away for something that is unlikely in their best slot in my emails.
It would be better for them to advertise other related electronics (headphones that work with bluetooth if you just bought a new phone with bluetooth, loudspeakers, computer screen, external keyboard, docking station, etc.) Those would actually be much more likely buys for me.
Funny actually how babies are mentioned. I never had a baby, nor do I have a girlfriend (something Amazon should probably know with some basic data science), yet they always advertise baby diapers to me, even to the point of sending me some as advertisement. I still can't figure out how that happened.
For me Amazon is a store where I always look for something specific. Only the book recommendations have really made me buy something I didn't think of before. I think there's a lot of lost potential here for Amazon.