41–50 of 258 posts
This is still only on orders over $35. Walmart still does not realize what Bezo's has done with Prime. He has made it the default option and incentivized users to check there first by removing all the friction. Having these weird caveats and no 'membership' (which again, makes users think of Prime first) is going to keep Walmart behind for a long while.
I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because…
What I wonder: why did it take them this long? Walmart has warehouse-sized stores that are close to almost everybody. And most of America's houses are already visited 6 days a week by a delivery person. Walmart could and should have made a deal with the USPS a decade ago. It would have been great for all concerned. Instead, they let Amazon practically own the concept, eating away at their huge distribution advantage.
I've been trying to use Walmart for most of my household internet shopping needs because I dislike a lot of Amazon's practices[1]. In general Walmart is...ok. Their shipping times are pretty accurate, though they will sometimes split up shipments and don't clearly inform you. It also seems like their shipping pipeline is a lot rougher on boxes than Amazon. I ordered a window-mounted AC unit and the box showed up wrec…
Wal Mart's practices have certainly been much worse than Amazon's in aggregate.
This is still only on orders over $35. Walmart still does not realize what Bezo's has done with Prime. He has made it the default option and incentivized users to check there first by removing all the friction. Having these weird caveats and no 'membership' (which again, makes users think of Prime first) is going to keep Walmart behind for a long while.
I'm excited for the future when we'll finally have day-before shipping, where ML predicts what I want before I even order it.
A plausible next step to me is something like the Amazon Corner Store, where they have neighborhood caches of goods. I go to order something and they say, "Hey, we figured you might want that, so it's just down the street if you want to pick it up now, or we'll drop it off later today." Or once self-driving improves a little more, maybe a mobile truck-sized warehouse with delivery bots, so they get delivery times down to 10 minutes or so.
And for the future, they have huge historical baselines for a lot of customers; I've been using them for more than 20 years. Most of the day their software sits in my pocket, so it wouldn't be hard for them to start collecting the sort of sensor data that gives them a very good idea of my activities and metabolic stats. It seems entirely believable to me that they could know that, for example, colds are going around, that sensor data indicates I'm going to feel the symptoms soon, and to dispatch a delivery robot with a package of tissues, OJ, and Nyquil.
That is maybe the first sign of brick and mortar retail finally waking up. Considering that technically they have one fulfillment center in every small town they should be able to achieve really short lead times out of these. Fulfillment Centers obviously being all their stores. While it is a non-trivial thing to connect all these stores to last mile courier services it is not necessarily overly complex. Just what th…
What I wonder: why did it take them this long? Walmart has warehouse-sized stores that are close to almost everybody. And most of America's houses are already visited 6 days a week by a delivery person. Walmart could and should have made a deal with the USPS a decade ago. It would have been great for all concerned. Instead, they let Amazon practically own the concept, eating away at their huge distribution advantage.
Deal with USPS? Would be hard to find a manager who can make this work and not obviously post it as a huge disaster on their resumee. USPS continues to bleed money, is always understaffed, continues to misplace the mail and is bugged with pretty old technology that is hard to upgrade. Add unions to it and you have a perfect government entity altho USPS is not actually a government organisation. If anything it would m…
I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because…
I'm not sure I blame them. Amazon once used USPS to send me half a dozen office chairs. I called Amazon as soon as I saw the shipping update and said there's zero chance whatsoever they will ever reach my door. Nothing they could do. I just ordered from another vendor the same day and waited the inevitable 2-3 weeks for the Amazon order to work its way through the system and back to Amazon without delivery ever attempted.
It's one of a few things that perplex me about Amazon. Like why can't I just flag a shipping method as unusable. Why can't I search for stuff only sold by Amazon. Why can't you fucking stop selling fake chargers and headphones?
But what do I know about running a multi billion dollar business right?
I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because…
https://i.redd.it/p816orvkrr021.jpg
Hopefully Walmart will have better shipping logistics.
