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Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

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Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#71

Post by r0m4n0 »

Diederich wrote: post #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…

Personally I have been utilizing Costco same day delivery powered by Instacart. The next available delivery day is usually 5 or so days out but you can modify your order until they actually start physically shopping so I just add groceries all week once I have my delivery day. I start a new order the day my last order arrives so I have a constant flow of fresh groceries every 5 days. Totally affordable (free delivery and only slightly marked up over sticker prices) and I haven't left my house in 3 weeks. Just make sure you setup replacements as I'd say 15% of items I choose are out of stock. Instacart now leaves your groceries at your front door and sends you an SMS so you don't even have to interact with anyone.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#72

Post by jakearmitage »

ebg13 wrote: 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…

HomeDepot's ecommerce is a joke. Not only the shopping experience is poor, they treat logistics as if they were doing you a favor. And, on top of all that, you get damaged items. I made 7 purchases and all 7, in different periods of time, had to be returned or replaced.

Same for Lowe's. There's a reason people shop on Amazon. Other than BestBuy, no other retailer "gets" ecommerce.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#73

Post by stuff4ben »

complianceowl wrote: post #16

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?

It's certainly going to shift manufacturing of some "essential items" for emergencies closer to home. But you can't do a knee-jerk reaction based on something like this. This is a very rare event and it would be foolish to annihilate your existing global supply chain over this. It will probably mean that countries (the smart ones anyways) will start to stockpile and ensure they have plans to follow in the event something like this happens again.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#74

Post by hurricanetc »

ghostpepper wrote: post #30
bluetidepro wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100% with this. It's appalling how many other sites (esp. the direct manufacturer ones, like you mentioned) use dark patterns with their shipping/handling prices. It really does make you understand why everyone wants to use the big sites like Amazon, at least they are pretty straight fwd when it comes to the price, shipping, fees, etc. Nothing worse than getting down an e-commerce funnel only to find you wast…

I’m convinced they do this on purpose. The more time you’ve invested, the more likely you are to acquiesce and pay their exorbitant shipping fee.

I guess I am in the minority because as soon as I see a shipping fee more than 7-10% of the cost of the item I immediately start looking elsewhere. Numerous times I've just decided to not buy an item because I didn't want to pay the shipping costs.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#76

Post by dangrossman »

bluetidepro wrote: post #25
jedberg wrote: post #18

Yeah I’ve ordered a few things now directly from the manufacturer. The problem is in a lot of cases I’ll see stuff that’s slightly cheaper on their site but then shipping is ridiculous. I ordered a mono price stand up desk recently. The price on Amazon was $10 more, but Monoprice wanted $45 for domestic shipping! So I waited three extra days and saved $35. It’s kind of a toss up now between speed and price depending…

I agree 100% with this. It's appalling how many other sites (esp. the direct manufacturer ones, like you mentioned) use dark patterns with their shipping/handling prices. It really does make you understand why everyone wants to use the big sites like Amazon, at least they are pretty straight fwd when it comes to the price, shipping, fees, etc. Nothing worse than getting down an e-commerce funnel only to find you wast…

It's not a dark pattern that shipping actually costs everyone that isn't Amazon a lot. Go get a shipping quote from UPS or FedEx for sending a desk across the country. It's not going to be any cheaper than these stores are charging. They're not hiding extra profit in their shipping fees.

People are so used to Amazon Prime that they have no idea what things cost to ship any more. I run a small online store and every 1-pound package I mail out costs $8-12 in postage by the cheapest shipping method available to me, at commercial shipping rates. If the box is over a cubic foot in size and going to a state on the other side of the country, it can quickly double or triple in cost.

Amazon has $120/year in Prime subscription fees to subsidize the displayed shipping costs, puts some of the shipping fee into the item price (they're rarely the cheapest for most products, especially very cheap or very heavy ones), has a warehouse within 20 miles of every American so that nearly everything they ship is a same-zone local shipment, and has their own delivery network so they don't have to pay carriers. No other business has those things.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#77

Post by rb2k_ »

Diederich wrote: post #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…

We've had no issues getting same Whole Foods deliveries via Amazon in Menlo Park. We just had to refresh a few times over the course of 15 minutes or so and always got a slot.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#78

Post by dvtrn »

x0x0 wrote: post #46
ebg13 wrote: 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.

This has long been an issue I've had when trying to use online shopping/curbside pickup for grocery stores, and this comes even before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and pushed more of us fortunate to live in cities where online grocery buying is a thing to....well start buying groceries online.

Found myself just as baffled/apoplectic as you are: why would this be on your online storefront if you don't have the inventory for me to actually buy?

Even Amazon Prime delivery via Whole Foods has this problem, to bring it back around to the thread topic.

Interestingly it's something that small e-commerce stores are much better about, it would seem (though I don't really have any data backing that up)

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#79

Post by jshevek »

StillBored wrote: post #48
jshevek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Edit: I thought you said "determine" rather than "know", answered accordingly below. Of course they don't "know", that's not a helpful question.

The same way everyone does when trying to solve this problem systemically (vs individually), by making imperfect decisions and leaning on categories.

My UVC lamp was delayed. I think that's more important than someone else's "third month" bunker food, but what are you going to do.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#80

Post by Diederich »

airstrike wrote: post #53
Diederich wrote: post #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…

Consider soylent or other meal replacement items and military rations for emergency. Stock up on non-perishable grains, pasta, tomato sauce and canned fish. And I really mean stock up – at least 3-4 weeks worth of meals. Not in the SF Bay Area, but WF through the Amazon app is still what's been working for us, though I have to log in repeatedly to find a delivery window available...

Thanks for your response.

We do have a fair amount of such emergency supplies, primarily in the form of protein bars, but a lot of other things as well. We would rather leave those be until (and if) there's an actual legit emergency for us to face.

I think the Whole Foods via Amazon is still working, it's just extremely over-used in the bay area, so the orders we actually manage to get through are very small.

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