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Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

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Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#41
Help requested.

My wife, who is in her 50s, is immunocompromised, and she also has a history of fast escalating and difficult to treat respiratory problems. We are and have been (for the past 32 days) treating this bug very carefully. If she catches it, she has a very good chance of not surviving it.

Our son and I are at less risk, but we can easily bring this bug home.

We've been having more and more trouble getting food. We have a fair quantity of emergency supplies, but we'd rather not tap into those.

At first it was the various delivery options: instacart, various others, but they became less usable. Early last week we started doing Amazon Prime Now, which allowed us to place and pay for orders at Whole Foods, then wait in the parking lot for them to put the orders in our trunk.

Over the past few days, this has gotten less viable. We'd find ourselves driving 50 miles to pickup a $30 order.

So, we're open to suggestions. We live in Mountain View, the SF Bay Area.

We have been able to buy quite a bit of chicken and beef, and we have a 50 pound bag of flour coming in, so we're certainly not in any danger of starvation.

It's just kind of a low-grade anxiety that kind of sucks.

Thanks!

PS: We have a pretty rigorous decontamination process that everything goes through before it comes into the house, so we feel pretty good about that.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#42
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?

I assume it's B&H Photo https://www.bhphotovideo.com/

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#44
Amazon is holding up much better than other online retailers. Ordering works fine. My Amazon orders are showing up, although slowly. Safeway and Smart and Final can't even give me a delivery slot. Smart and Final's web site was failing over the weekend - Cloudflare timeouts, login timeouts, false credit card declines, HTTP error 461 (there is no standard 461 error.), and a "Site undergoing maintenance" message from their "DevOps Team". Back up now, though.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#45
Yah, the only thing that's been arriving from Amazon lately are the things sold and shipped by 3rd party sellers. Frankly, i've been paying the extra to just order from the smaller shops lately because amazon's critical "prioritization" algorithm doesn't seem to know what is actually critical.

Part to fix my cloths washing machine? 3 weeks from Amazon, two days from Granger.

Problem solved, plus unlike a similar part I ordered a couple months ago from amazon, I'm pretty sure the granger parts aren't counterfeit. The box stamped "Made in U.S.A" is likely legitimate.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#46
post #23

I tried ordering some things from Home Depot the other day, and they silently cancelled half of my order while still charging me the same amount for delivery from the store and while saying that some things can only be delivered from a warehouse and that some things can only be delivered from a specific store and that delivery from each store has a $45 minimum purchase before they'll even consider delivery despite th…

My favorite is how home depot lists stuff in stock on the search results page, but then when you click the individual item it's out of stock.

It's a store. Why the fuck would a store ever show me an item -- at least by default -- that it isn't willing to sell me? Like who exactly wants that "feature"? It makes attempting to buy something from home depot's site an infuriating experience.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#47
Right when this all was starting, I had finally chosen a bass guitar I wanted. I decided to try and support a non-Amazon business in GuitarCenter (the local music shops focus a lot more on school band instruments). So, I order online, and pick the "pick up at store" option, since it says they are in stock.

I show up, and an hour later they figure out that they don't have it in stock, they only have the floor model (which I can have for a whopping 5% off...). Apparently, the system (a green screen app, no less) can't tell the difference between "new in stock" and "floor model". I got the rundown of their logistics chain (which is basically just UPS), and I lost confidence that even ordering ship-to-home online again would even work. So, I bought it from Amazon for the same price and got it later that week...

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#48
post #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.

How does amazon know what is essential?

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#49
I usually prefer to use Amazon just because the experience is so simple and in the UK their logistics delivery service is pretty good with live tracking when the parcel gets near to your home.

Amazon can be annoying when using third party sellers though and might end up getting dispatched with an alternative delivery service, god forbid Royal Mail who don't have any live tracking feature.

I'm always happy to help out smaller/alternative businesses though if they offer competitive prices and use decent delivery firms like DPD.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#50
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…

> 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.

Amazon used to have a history of banning 'bad customers' (lots of returns, cancelled orders, etc), is this no longer the case?

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