Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 495 posts

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#291

Post by tmaly »

Amazon was sold out of bakers yeast as were the local grocery stores. I was able to order from a specialty place. The order was delivered 2 days later. The price was very reasonable.

For certain things, I am seeing some serious prices. People are selling cotton masks 4 for $25. That seems a little steep given that a box of N95 masks went for $6 before this.

I just ordered parts for building a new computer. I had to order from 4 different places as Amazon did not have half of the items in stock. There are definitely some supply chain issues.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#292

Post by LatteLazy »

>Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

They sort of are at the moment, at least here in greater London...

My normal groceries company have cancelled online orders silently and will not deliver anything. They can't even update their websites with new opening times.

The local DIY (B&Q) store are taking order for essential items only (loft ladders and plants are essential, but not light bulbs or fuses wtf?)

Amazon randomly added a month to all their delivery estimates but everything is still coming in a few days and I can get whatever I want.

To be honest, it makes sense to manage infrastructure of supply centrally. That's the genius of amazon, not retail but supply. While other companies can barely ring up items, Amazon connects buyers to sellers before either know the trade will happen.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#293

Post by blacksmith_tb »

ckosidows wrote: post #268
monadic2 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I just ordered a bunch of shit from home depot, it arrived faster than amazon could deliver it and everything I was looking for was in stock. I've also never had any major complaints in person with unhelpful staff—just the opposite. My only gripe with them is the self checkout you mentioned (why am I doing the store's work for them?), which certainly is not going to improve if Amazon moves into the retail space.…

Perhaps it's different with a store like Home Depot where products are much bigger and perhaps harder to scan, but do people actually dislike self checkouts? "Doing the work for the store" seems like such a non-argument to me. I would much prefer to scan things myself as I feel I can often do it faster, and I don't have to wait in a line if the store only has two cashiers staffed at a certain time. You pump your own…

One possible reason is that eliminates a whole category of unskilled labor? (full disclosure, writing this from Oregon, where we can't pump our own gas to preserve another category of unskilled labor jobs - except right now, thanks COVID-19?) I personally would probably prefer to have a human checker for that reason, I don't notice much improvement in speed or ease of checking out when I do it myself, there's just a line for the self-checkouts instead...

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#294

Post by shadowoflight »

Diederich wrote: post #99
Cerium wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instacart releases slots throughout the night. 2am to 5am are great for getting one. There are many currently lesser known delivery systems - search for ones targeting minorities. For example Yamimeal (despite having meal in the name - they do groceries). Also, buy bigger orders if you can. I have been getting at least a couple hundred dollars at once, good for 7-10 days. I would get more at once, but I want to eat s…

> throughout the night We haven't tried at very odd hours as you suggest; we'll give it a try, thank you.

My mother-in-law's strategy for getting a slot with Wal-Mart grocery pickup has been to pre-fill her in-app cart in the evening, and set an alarm to wake up a few minutes before the window to place the order and get a pickup slot opens up (I think somewhere in the 12:00-2:00am timeframe). This may be applicable for placing Instacart orders (and the like) as well, unless they require you to pick an available slot before populating your cart...

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#295

Post by jeromegv »

bluetidepro wrote: post #105
dangrossman wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't know the cost to ship you things until they know what's going to be in your cart and what address it's getting mailed to. Shipping costs are based on package dimensions, weight, and distance between the sender and recipient. This is the reason that in nearly every ecommerce platform, shipping costs get displayed at the second to last step of the checkout process, or in the shopping cart only if you provide…

Again, you still aren't following. I'm saying many sites don't do that. You are correct, I should be able to see estimated shipping from my cart on any e-commerce site by just putting in a zip code in, and them knowing what is in my cart (product wise). It's a dark pattern that MANY sites don't do this, they make you fill out a ton of info to get to that point. It's sketchy and a dark pattern to put that many walls b…

Where you see dark pattern is in fact a limitation of most ecommerce platforms. Shopify, which powers millions of retailers website, doesn't offer this out of the box. You need the advanced plan ($$) and on top of that you need a special app/theme that would allow you to do it before checkout.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#296

Post by drewzero1 »

mauvehaus wrote: post #175
jakearmitage wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I beg to differ. Rock Auto is where it's at for auto parts. The website is ugly as hammered shit, but it's fast, shows you the options grouped by rough quality level (economy/you cheapskate, daily driver, performance, etc), shows you what part to select so it ships from the same warehouse as the parts already in your cart and saves you shipping, and returns are painless (disclaimer: I've only ever done returns for co…

I hope Rock Auto never replaces their website. Sure I have to scroll down the whole page to find my manufacturer in the alphabetical sidebar listing, and then open the nested categories like I'm looking for a folder in Windows 3.1, but once I get there I find a list of parts that I know will fit my car arranged so I can tell the quality vs. price trade-offs.

I used to look for parts on Advance and O'Reilly's sites, half of the time it seemed the search results would have parts that wouldn't fit my car. So I really like the way that RA's nested folder structure ensures the most important constraint (compatibility) is met during the search.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#297

Post by jbay808 »

smolder wrote: post #251
jbay808 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like McMaster-Carr, but I often hear them being held up as a positive UX example when, in my experience, their website is endlessly frustrating. They often force you into choosing arbitrary categories too early, break tabbed browsing expectations, and have a frustrating mix of metric and imperial measurements that can't be escaped. Their pricing is also generally at quite a premium. For example, let's say I want a…

I know what you mean, and I can say that most of the categorization, which may seem arbitrary, reasonably comes from how those items are manufactured and used historically. An example is pipe versus tube; they are measured differently and have differences in ranges of wall thickness, precision and so on, because different needs and processes developed between pipes that carry fluids vs structural tubing. Most but not…

I know that pipe and tube have different specifications and applications -- that's specifically why I picked this example. But those differences don't always apply to me. I'd prefer a UI with a check box for pipe, tube, or both, because sometimes I want my search to cover both things. Maybe I want to use a pipe as a paperweight or an art piece or whatever. If McMaster could accurately guess what I was going to use something for, my employer wouldn't need me.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#298

Post by rkho »

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…

I ordered some things from Home Depot the other day as well. They did not fulfill half the order, instead marking it as delivered. Attempting to resolve this issue, they refunded only 1/3rd of the missing items and then required me to go to a physical store to resolve the issue because their system literally could not fix the problem without them offering a physical cash refund.

This is likely to do with the store which fulfilled the order; I've found Home Depots to be very hit or miss in their service quality and the location which fulfilled this order has been consistently bad in-person.

Don't even get me started on how Home Depot uses location settings and keeps changing preferred stores when ordering. It's a nightmare.

Re: Amazon Isn’t the Only Shop Online

#300

Post by jbay808 »

btrettel wrote: post #243
jbay808 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like McMaster-Carr, but I often hear them being held up as a positive UX example when, in my experience, their website is endlessly frustrating. They often force you into choosing arbitrary categories too early, break tabbed browsing expectations, and have a frustrating mix of metric and imperial measurements that can't be escaped. Their pricing is also generally at quite a premium. For example, let's say I want a…

Having used McMaster-Carr for over a decade, I strongly agree about the filtering being non-ideal and also the prices being high. There's an interaction between the two as well: You can't sort by price. Often there are many items meeting the specs I want but I just want to see which ones are the cheapest. At the moment I skim everything, making notes about candidates, and them manually compare them on price.

Yes, this exactly. This causes searches to take hours for simple things. Sometimes if I look in "steel" expecting to find something cheap, the only part matching my dimensions is military-grade superalloy tool steel that costs a fortune, so I have to go back and look again in "stainless steel" where there's perhaps a reasonable price.
Post reply on HN