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Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

businessinsider.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#91

Post by ivanech »

amluto wrote: post #23
agundy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books aren’t even reliably great with certain knock offs and or different version/condition substitutions. No Starch Press has had issues With counterfeit printed books. https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch...

Books also often arrive damaged due to the bizarre way they get packed.

I recently ordered from Powell's and was shocked at just how good the packing job is. They basically shrink-wrap your books to a thick piece of cardboard to prevent damage. With Amazon, I don't think I've ever gotten a book without a bit of damage.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#92

Post by burrows »

krazyk8s wrote: post #69
guylepage3 wrote: post #20

Maybe he should set his sites lower and get some work done to fix Amazon Fresh. I have tried to order something everyday since Mar 12 and no time slots have been available.

I'm willing to give Amazon a pass on this one for the moment. I haven't been able to use any grocery delivery services in weeks. If there are time slots available they are getting filled pretty much immediately when they open up, and I've not been lucky enough to catch it.

Do they lack sufficient personnel (deshelvers, drivers) to increase delivery slots?

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#93

Post by intopieces »

realtalk_sp wrote: post #81
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

It even sucks for books. Defaulting to the Kindle/Audible versions, changing the search category to Kindle/Audible, and the unique key of a book in a list is (format, title), so collision detection is predicated on you remembering which format you preferred. Absolute garbage overall and very hostile to prospective bookbuyers who prefer paper formats.

I've switched to https://bookshop.org. I'm in a better place financially than I was when Amazon was my default for books, I can afford the mark-up and don't mind.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#94

Post by intopieces »

programmertote wrote: post #55
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

Agree with you about Amazon experience becoming less ideal. Since the beginning of 2020, I submitted a couple of product reviews with detailed and factual explanation about why products in question aren't good enough. One of them was Amazon basic chair [ https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Low-Back-Computer-Chair-... ], which makes squeaky noises after 6 months of use (I'm a 135 lbs male), and another was Secura milk…

I'm curious about your product review diligence. Mainly: why do you bother? I stopped around 2015 when I started to sense that I was shouting into a void. Now I don't give any feedback, ever, not even stars. I either keep the item or return it; that's about as far as I'm willing to go in terms of being unpaid to provide a signal to the producers of items.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#95

Post by libria »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #80
sytelus wrote: post #4

This is quite significant given market is very bullish on Amazon (Goldman is just all over it). The expectations are set sky high to do well during these times. But if you look at things as consumer, it doesn't look so good. Personally, I've significantly less orders on Amazon these days because of huge delivery times. Sure, orders for "essentials" might have gone up but can that offset the gap? Also, sellers are ver…

Amazon is more than just amazon.com. AWS is a behemoth all on its own. While everything about AWS isn't amazing, it does a lot of things well, which is why they are one of the leaders in that space with a dominate market share of 33%. I don't know if Amazon breaks out profits from AWS in their financial reports or not, but I would venture AWS is probably their biggest cash cow. I bet Amazon.com could bleed money year…

It is broken out. AWS has provided Amazon's largest operating income since 2018.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#96

Post by jonas21 »

sytelus wrote: post #68
jdm2212 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sort of a "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded" criticism. Huge delivery times are because they're getting so many orders (which means so much revenue, which means so much profit).

> Huge delivery times are because they're getting so many orders From my limited probing, it doesn't look like that. Instead my guess is that operations are violently broken right now at Amazon. You can find lot of non-essentials shipping in 2-3 days while a lot more important items with waits exceeding 3 weeks. This would explain Bezos turning off self-drive button and taking the wheels.

Isn't that because they're sold out of the essential items and don't expect to get enough to satisfy your order for 3+ weeks? Or in other words, they've gotten too many orders.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#97

Post by alexhutcheson »

Someone1234 wrote: post #49
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

They also removed customer-based recommendations and replaced them with paid ads. Two examples: - Search results used to be order-able by popularity, but now only "featured" aka who pays the most. - "Customers also purchased" or "Customers also viewed" boxes on item pages now replaced by sponsored boxes. Amazon has gone from a site which made it effortless to find things and buy them, to a site that values advertisin…

Walmart at least has a filter you can enabled for "Retailer: Walmart" to remove the third-party stuff from search results.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#98

Post by viburnum »

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

Amazon used to protect books for shipment, sealing them in plastic with a piece of carboard so the book couldn’t move. Now they just shove it in an envelope. Almost all books are delivered with at least minor damage. You’re better off buying a used book.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#99

Post by hombre_fatal »

iagovar wrote: post #27
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

This. I used to read this comments and think it only applied to the US. Also happening to Spain. Amazon has become useless. Rankings are weird, quality stuff is is very hard to find and I have to resort to forums that point to Amazon links that you cannot find using Amazon search. Also, I'm more and more attracted to specialized shops again. For example for the last two years I've been buying most electronic stuff fr…

> Why should I use Amazon if I can go to Alibaba or Aliexpress

Because you want it tomorrow and not in 3 months (if ever)? And want to be able to return it?

I'm all for hating things that are popular, but I don't think anyone suggesting AliExpress as a replacement for Amazon has seriously used it.

AliExpress is for things like a replacement cable you don't need soon but you'll need sometime in the next few years, so you can save a few bucks. Anything else I'd use Amazon.

Buying from manufacturers' websites rarely seems worth it to me either. There's always an issue. I've been trying to talk to the manufacturer of my high-end ski goggles to get them replaced. They leisurely take a month to reply to my ticket. Some manufacturers don't even bother.

Amazon has issues, but let's not forget how good we have it. The alternatives aren't exactly slaying it either.

Basically getting some echo chamber fatigue where every HNer has to hop on the whiny bandwagon. We can order anything to our doorstep anytime from anywhere and return it. It's not that bad just because you can enumerate some issues and pet peeves.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#100

Post by libria »

whoevercares wrote: post #88

Buy Amazon. It’s seeing Black Friday traffic everyday and AWS can’t be feeling better then ever during this period

I think retail will be more consistent than AWS. IMO the economic impact to AWS is delayed a few months. Businesses are making personnel cuts now and will shore up ops costs by Q4 2020 if not sooner.

From Q1 2021 it'll be hard to sell and onboard new service till the economy recovers.

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