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Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

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Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#31

Post by briandon »

thetechlead wrote: post #23
briandon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for years. There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with them beforehand, your purchases may not ship…

Don't lie about your experience living in China. There is already too much China-related misinformation on HN. For 99% of the time, you go straight to click-n-buy which should get your order delivered on time, and for the 1% you prefer to talk to the seller the option is a blessing, not a curse. I used to work for Alibaba.

Speaking truths that you find objectionable is not lying.

If you haven't encountered these issues, then I'm happy for you. For my wife and I, phantom inventory is a regular problem. Usually, we can catch the problem over WangWang, but it's not unusual for us to place the order and, just before paying, give the order number to the seller and have them confirm they've got it before paying, then pay and a few days later when the order hasn't shipped, message them again and get an apology and a sad story about one of the items being out of stock or only available in a different version.

Shopping on Amazon is like buying in Target and shopping on Taobao or Tmall (a slightly better experience w/re to seller flakiness) is akin to buying from a shabby flea market. If the nearest Target is a few hours' drive away and the flea market is ten minutes' drive from your house, you'll shop at the flea market but it's not really an enjoyable experience.

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#32

Post by briandon »

atr_gz wrote: post #28
briandon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for years. There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with them beforehand, your purchases may not ship…

I use Taobao weekly as well. It's not nearly as bad as you're saying. I've never run into any of those issues. That said, the shipping times definitely aren't as consistent as Amazon (although I've only used Amazon in Seattle). I'm not in a Tier 1, but I am in a provincial capital. I'd estimate about 50% of my orders take 3 days, 30% take 2 days, 10% take 1 day, and 10% greater than 3 days. With Amazon it was like 80…

I am not complaining about delivery times (i.e. the time from logistics service pickup to delivery). I know that China is a developing country and logistics operations in China have a ways to go. Once an order gets moving, it will arrive in a few days.

What's aggravating are the delays in shipping (the time that passes after you pay and before the seller hands off the order to a logistics service provider) and the excuse-making.

Usually, after a couple of days have passed (depending on that seller's "ships within [time]" promise), and I get on WangWang and ask them what's holding things up, it's due to nonexistent inventory. China's many long festivals and holidays can be an issue because enough people stop working earlier pre-holiday and resume working later post-holiday than promised to cause delays.

Buying stuff, having to hop onto WangWang to tell the sellers that, yes, the address they got from Taobao is the address they're to ship to and then having to keep an eye on it and periodically load AliWangWang to see if a seller has sent me some emoji-laden sob story to explain lack of inventory, and then deal with that. It's not fun.

On Amazon, we buy, pay through the nose for shipping, and then don't have to give the order a second thought. Amazon for us just works, painlessly.

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#33

Post by est »

briandon wrote: post #13
dazsnow wrote: post #6

So now it’s about 10% as good as Taobao

Taobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for years. There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with them beforehand, your purchases may not ship…

I think you are describing Ali-express or 1688.com, not the actual Taobao.

And don't buy items from Taobao with zero sales per month.

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#34

Post by briandon »

est wrote: post #33
briandon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for years. There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with them beforehand, your purchases may not ship…

I think you are describing Ali-express or 1688.com, not the actual Taobao. And don't buy items from Taobao with zero sales per month.

Nope, we've never used Ali-express or 1688.com.

I'm talking about Taobao. We also often purchase from Tmall, but Tmall sellers are usually better organized or less shady.

Sales numbers and reviews aren't 100% trustworthy. If someone buys X but X is out of stock and the buyer asks the seller to send some Y of roughly equivalent value instead, Taobao won't show the next buyer any new sales of Y but will show the (nonexistent) sale of X.

And if you leave unfavorable reviews, sellers will wheedle you endlessly on WangWang, begging you to get rid of the negative feedback and offering partial refunds or free stuff in a future order.

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#35

Post by maccard »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #11
_tb1_ wrote: post #3

You know, if Brick & Mortars entered some sort of alliance, they could ship same day deliveries to an equally large chunk of the population.

I made the mistake of online ordering from Home Depot and they "conveniently" shipped from a local store. Only problem is that they apparently have a habit of reusing SKUs and sent me an older model that I didn't order. Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.

>Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.

Let's not pretend Amazon are innocent of fuck ups like this. I'm a semi regular shopper with Amazon (uk) and in the last 12 months I've had: - used products sold as new - products sent by Amazon's own courier service for "next day delivery" show up after 3 days - flat out wrong items sent - previews for books sent in place of actual books - received knock off cables when ordering manufacturer cables.

That's not to consider the mess of trying to order goods from Amazon and figuring out when they'll arrive. Searching for "prime" or sold by Amazon doesn't actually guarantee next day delivery on rh item, nor does it guarantee the item will be correct.

Their only saving grace is that every time I have a problem, I can resolve it with live chat, they send a replacement and a courier picks up the old item from my office (if they even bother asking for it back)

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#36

Post by atr_gz »

briandon wrote: post #32
atr_gz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Taobao weekly as well. It's not nearly as bad as you're saying. I've never run into any of those issues. That said, the shipping times definitely aren't as consistent as Amazon (although I've only used Amazon in Seattle). I'm not in a Tier 1, but I am in a provincial capital. I'd estimate about 50% of my orders take 3 days, 30% take 2 days, 10% take 1 day, and 10% greater than 3 days. With Amazon it was like 80…

I am not complaining about delivery times (i.e. the time from logistics service pickup to delivery). I know that China is a developing country and logistics operations in China have a ways to go. Once an order gets moving, it will arrive in a few days. What's aggravating are the delays in shipping (the time that passes after you pay and before the seller hands off the order to a logistics service provider) and the ex…

Yeah, weird that you have so many problems. I've never experienced any of that. Those delivery times I gave above are from the time I ordered the product. I've never spoken with any seller.

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#37

Post by llaappqq »

briandon wrote: post #13
dazsnow wrote: post #6

So now it’s about 10% as good as Taobao

Taobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for years. There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with them beforehand, your purchases may not ship…

Just as a few others have mentioned, I too never have such problems using Taobao.

The way I use it is with the app, click to sort by number of sales, and usually buy from one of the top sellers. I don't usually talk to the sellers unless I have questions about the stuff I'm about to buy, and I turn off the notification for the app so 80% of the time I just never reply the seller. They might still send the message asking me to confirm the address, but they'll still send the package even if I don't reply.

As for the delivery time it depends on where you live and where the seller is in. When I lived in Shanghai most of the packages arrive in at most 2 days as I usually choose the sellers from Zhejiang, Jiangsu or Shanghai

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#38

Post by lsc »

marak830 wrote: post #26
lsc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own amazon (except through the indices) but I am a customer who buys almost all of my consumer goods through amazon. You are absolutely right. Amazon is a luxury brand, and amazon doesn't seem to know this. I mean... it really is a pretty great luxury brand? There's a lot of crap I don't have to own if I know I can order it the day before, and I'm willing to pay extra for that convenience. I mean, there's thr…

Amazon is a luxury brand? Look I'm in Japan and from this side of the pond as it were, Amazon is a shitty aggregate selling site. There are many around and they are all to be steered clear of unless you desperately can't find the item you want somewhere else

>Amazon is a shitty aggregate selling site.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was complaining about. The "shipped and sold by amazon.com" experience is super luxury. For consumer goods, and a whole lot of industrial parts? I have next-day access to a giant warehouse of stuff. I'd pay a lot extra for that. They cheapen that by adding in the shitty aggregator capabilities. (though, like I said, the biggest problem is mixing reviews, and making it hard to limit your search to just 'shipped and sold by amazon' - when looking at a listing, an experienced user can easily see if it's amazon or a shady third party)

A lot of my friends have big storage units full of stuff for projects, books they found that they want to read at some point, etc, etc... things we have bought before we needed them because we didn't know that those things would be available when we needed them.

As amazon gets better, there are more and more classes of things I don't need to own until the day before I need them. For those of us who live in areas where storage or living space costs way more than "stuff" - this is huge.

Think about a world where we don't have to go shopping. Especially where we don't have to go exploratory shopping, where you don't have to buy the things you will need ahead of time.

(actually, I mean, this is a very silicon valley perspective; I visit family members elsewhere in the USA, and it is so weird to me that one day shipping isn't available if I forgot to pack a thing I needed. At that point, it becomes a lot less luxury.)

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#39

Post by lsc »

tracer4201 wrote: post #30
marak830 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a luxury brand? Look I'm in Japan and from this side of the pond as it were, Amazon is a shitty aggregate selling site. There are many around and they are all to be steered clear of unless you desperately can't find the item you want somewhere else

Until very recently, my experience shopping on Amazon.com was top notch. I always get what I order within a couple days. My account was opened in 2006. Between 2006 and 2014, I had one problem in total when ordering. It was for a $500 item that was marked delivered but never arrived. Amazon just sent me another shipment. I was so impressed in fact, I put every dime I had left after purchasing the Sp500 into Amazon. T…

What about amazon fresh? That seems like ridiculous levels of luxury to me. I mean, this is America and most of us have giant vehicles we could take to the store to get food... but amazon will deliver fresh food to your door. You don't even have to talk to anyone; they'll stack it by your door and you can deal with it when you get home. (The Safeway service makes you be there and makes you sign papers... a lot more work)

(I personally don't really relate luxury to good customer service... Luxury, to me, is about convenience and comfort. If you have to deal with customer service at all, they've blown it. But then, I guess I don't really understand the concept of loyalty, either, at least when it comes to corporations, so we might just be talking past oneanother.)

Re: Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows

#40

Post by odiroot »

_tb1_ wrote: post #3

You know, if Brick & Mortars entered some sort of alliance, they could ship same day deliveries to an equally large chunk of the population.

The company I'm working for (getbyrd.com) tries to be an answer to that. Basically "logistics add-on" for your existing business.
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