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Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

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Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#201

Post by JWLong »

hef19898 wrote: post #2

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…

The 5000 sq ft in the back of every Walmart is nowhere near being a fulfillment center. It's already full of items for the low turn-around shelves in the store. Instead, they'll be relying on their warehouses to handle this change. They were already dicking around with modifying scheduled loads to accommodate the internet sales orders, back in 2016. This will just be more of the same, really.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#202

Post by neilv »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #173
neilv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unusual pension funding requirement forced on the USPS might be an instance of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Perhaps. But any company who makes the claim of pensions or "we'll promise to pay you more later" should be legally required to store that in escrow. So if/when they try their little bankruptcy schemes, it won't work.

I agree, at least for modern for-profit corporations. The USPS has a better track record than that class, is at least quasi-gov't, and, as a citizen, I'd be happy considering all USPS obligations backed by the full faith and credit of the US gov't.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#203

Post by chihuahua »

igetspam wrote: post #56
CPLX wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the same boat. I have called and begged and pleaded and escalated to get Amazon to stop using USPS but it just doesn't work. Here in Brooklyn if anything is unusually large they just punch in "attempted delivery" a couple days in a row and send it back. They don't even bother trying, I'm pretty sure it never even leaves the regional sort facility and gets on a truck. I'm not sure I blame them. Amazon once use…

Technically you can flag a shipper. After recording delivery drivers stomping across my landscaping and literally throwing packages at my door, I got them to stop using that particular gig economy delivery service for my packages. Getting them to do feels like pulling teeth though. It seems you can't do it for a single incident but interestingly they'll gladly give you the number to the local shipping logistics compa…

I got Amazon to avoid shipping things to me using their own execrable AMZL (Amazon Logistics) service, by emailing Jeff Bezos. They said from now on they would only use AMZL if there is no other way to ship (e.g. for same-day shipping). So far this has been a good solution.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#204

Post by dsfyu404ed »

cementlady wrote: post #100
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At present Walmart does not commingle its inventory with 3rd party sellers. Things sold 3rd party are also shipped 3rd party so it is currently immune to the counterfeit problem that amazon is having.

That's not entirely accurate. Walmart offers DSV (drop ship vendors) which is basically inventory as a service. Walmart pays the third party sellers for storing and shipping the item, but takes on the overhead of customer service and returns. The customer is never made aware of the fact that they bought it from a third party because even the shipping label is customized to match Walmart's labels.

Right but they don't have the "we pulled a counterfeit widget out of the community widget bin and have no idea who's to blame" issue that Amazon had since they aren't co-mingling inventory from multiple suppliers.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#205

Post by igetspam »

codemac wrote: post #91
igetspam wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's almost no effort. It takes less than five minutes each time, to both order and request a credit. I've wasted a lot more time than that on trying to get them to remove USPS as a shipping option. At this point, it's just a game for me.

A dollar a minute == $60/hr Or around 120k/yr @ 40hr/wk over 50 weeks, pre-tax.

So you're saying this a pretty good investment of my time, right? On top of my salary, I can effectively make an additional $120k/yr? You know the opportunity cost argument you're making is false, don't you? You're arguing that I'm risking doing something else while doing this and there's a cost associated with that risk. In reality, I risk nothing because I'm a salaried employee whose time isn't 100% filled with must-do tasks. If that were true, the time you spent replying would be actually be worth even less than the time I spend getting Amazon credits because it has no return on investment. Or are you saying I should make this my full time job?

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#206

Post by chihuahua »

res0nat0r wrote: post #65
igetspam wrote: post #30

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…

The only way likely for this to be resolved is for Amazon to 100% own the supply chain end to end, which means an Amazon owning last mile delivery company which it seems where most of these delivery issues like. I'm sure Amazon is looking how it can own this part of the chain (along with everything else), maybe someday soon...

Amazon does own a last mile delivery company, Amazon Logistics (AMZL). For deliveries to my house (Seattle area), AMZL was so bad that after many complaints, Amazon offered to block/disable that delivery method for my account.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#207

Post by chaostheory »

igetspam wrote: post #30

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…

This is probably one of the many reasons why Amazon has started shipping their own products with their own fleet.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#208

Post by igetspam »

steveeq1 wrote: post #89
igetspam wrote: post #30

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…

Is that an ethical thing to do?

That depends who you think is in the right. In return for money, a merchant guaranteed a specific delivery date. I paid my money, they failed to to deliver. I contacted them and told them they needed to pick a new shipper. I ordered again. Again I paid money and they guaranteed a delivery date. Again they failed to deliver. Again I contacted them saying they needed to pick a new shipper. Each time they fail to live up to their side of the agreement, they pay me a token amount in restitution. All they have to do is pick a shipper that will actually deliver (or cancel my subscription, which wouldn't pain me in any way) and the cycle will be over.

Who's in the right?

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#209

Post by ascagnel_ »

wpietri wrote: post #46
octocode wrote: post #8

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.

This honestly strikes me as getting close to doable. For Amazon to do next-day and same-day shipping with reasonable efficiency, they clearly have gotten good at this on a statistical basis, as the stuff needs to be in the warehouse in advance of shipping. 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…

Amazon does something similar now -- if they see you're following a repeating pattern (say, ordering detergent the first day of every month, or you buy the newest installation of an annual video game on release day), they'll prep loading the product onto their delivery trucks in anticipation of a last-minute order.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#210

Post by rconti »

throwayEngineer wrote: post #138
rconti wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart is the reason vast numbers of people can no longer buy anything good locally. They were killing local stores before Amazon was. I'm rooting for their death, as I have since I first heard about them in the mid 90s, pushing out local music retailers so they can sell the censored, watered-down crap they strongarmed labels into producing. Never spent a penny there, never will.

>Implying local is better I've found local/mom and pop is significantly more expensive, than our national counterparts. https://efficiencyiseverything.com/dog-food-per-dollar-store... I don't think lowest income Americans could live at their current standard of living off local mom and pop stores.

>Implying megacorp forcing their values on people is undesirable
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