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Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

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31–40 of 495 posts

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#31
post #6

I’ve observed this with big and small business alike: + bought a baking steel direct from the seller (shipping time ~5 days vs. 1 month+, so I canceled the amazon order) + monitor out of stock for over a week on amazon (in stock at bnh, shipping time ~4 days) + monitor arm I didn’t even bother looking at on amazon (shipping time direct from seller ~2 days)

bnh?

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#32

The estimates on Amazon right now seem way longer than the reality. I'm getting all my packages in 2-3 days despite Amazon estimating a week or more.

Not me. Amazon is estimating 2-3 weeks on most things now, and so far are sticking by their estimates.

I'm guessing a lot of this is location dependent, and based on warehouse-proximity.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#34

If Amazon has shipping delay in US, then it is unlikely other smaller shops can fare it better.

Ebay seems to be doing fine. I make about five orders a week through them (this week it's mostly hardware and electronics supplies). Having the platform truly just be a transaction facilitator means the hard, linearly scaling, work of actually shipping merchandise is distributed among tens of thousands of sellers instead of hundreds of warehouses.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#35

The HN is a very intelligent community, so I'd like to hear your thoughts out loud here. Do you guys think supply chains will move closer to home because of this pandemic? I'm hearing every narrative under the sun right now: "This will establish globalism even more", "No! This marks the abrupt END of globalism." What are your thoughts?

"Globalism"?

It's very hard to say right now. Money will be tight, so the pressure to buy the cheapest will remain. A lot of producers and consumer businesses will go bust. Shortage and oversupply will ping pong around for a while.

A lot depends what the effect of deaths is on politics - do any leaders get killed? Differential effect on older voters? Hopefully the number of those will be small enough not to matter.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#36
post #17

Amazon shipping hack - order what you want to order, wait 48 hours to see if it ships, and if it doesn't cancel and order elsewhere. This assumes you value ordering through Amazon (I do b/c prime shipping, easy return policy, and I have a large gift card balance) One thing I've noticed is that amazon may list a delivery date far out in the future, but it's possible you still get the product quickly, depending on what…

I've also noticed that if you order multiple items, and one of them has a short shipping time, they'll suddenly ship your other items that are waiting. Presumably if they're all at the same warehouse, and they're already shipping one thing, they put the other stuff in the box.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#37

If Amazon has shipping delay in US, then it is unlikely other smaller shops can fare it better.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Amazon was overwhelmed by people panic buying or preparing for shelter in place. The problem was not primarily the shipping industry, it was within Amazon. They've since hired large numbers of people and deprioritized [items deemed] non-essential so that people can get their essential needs in a timely manner.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#38

Can someone please explain to me like I'm 5 why adults have to be told that other retail outlets exist besides Amazon? If you are one of these people, please kindly explain to me how you forgot there are other shops.

For the same reason people who use Facebook tend to forget about people who don't. Convenience is sticky. Amazon, like Facebook, spends a lot to subsidize that convenience and thus that stickiness.

It's the online equivalent of the Wal-Mart effect.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#39
post #17

Amazon shipping hack - order what you want to order, wait 48 hours to see if it ships, and if it doesn't cancel and order elsewhere. This assumes you value ordering through Amazon (I do b/c prime shipping, easy return policy, and I have a large gift card balance) One thing I've noticed is that amazon may list a delivery date far out in the future, but it's possible you still get the product quickly, depending on what…

I really wish they could provide more clarity. I haven't tried ordering things that list as May, but browsing items, I randomly see individual items that for some reason have much closer dates. I even saw one with 1-day shipping. It makes no sense to me. I wish they could give a slightly better window prediction than "this may take a month"...

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#40

Too bad they didn't mention bookshop.org for getting books.

I recently learned about bookshop, and was super excited until I actually started making a wishlist of stuff I wanted and found half of it to either be back ordered or not exist in their system at all. Turns out all orders are processed through a single book supplier and if they don’t have it bookshop won’t either.

As someone who doesn’t use Amazon, I tend to use indiebound, which just pairs you with the closest independent bookstore who has the thing you want.

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