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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

#211

Post by ethagknight »

User23 wrote: post #189
ethagknight wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that have the ability to price according to the strain on their system, like FedEx and UPS, are presumably far more robust in this scenario. Here's the rub: Amazon Prime is a contract for services at a certain annual price between the customer and Amazon. Amazon cannot easily just ask for more if their end of the deal ends up more costly to deliver than forecasted.

It's a tangent, but at the All Hands where Jeff introduced Prime, he made it very clear that it was actually a money loser for the company at that point. He did it anyhow because it satisfied both the customer obsession and the long term growth principles Amazon has followed from the start. Because of this, I very much doubt that Amazon will mind losing money on Prime member shipping during this pandemic. I wouldn't…

Losing money on the two-day shipping in order to make money on the volume of sales is just like saying “we will lose money on leasing planes but make it up on the product sale”. That announcement was certainly divergent e-commerce strategy at the time, but Amazon intends to cover its basis on the overall transaction.

In today’s plight, it’s the sheer scale of money Amazon might lose fulfilling its backlog of orders, and potentially why its delaying shipping with the “essential items” reasoning, that’s of particular interest.

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

#212

Post by rsync »

canada_dry wrote: post #201
erik_seaberg wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add anything plugged in unattended that could burn down your apartment. There are reports of fake UL certs.

> reports of fake UL certs. When I visited Shenzhen a few years ago I marveled at how any certification label you needed (UL, CSA, ESA) were being openly sold by the roll by dozens of vendors. They even had "PASSED" and "TESTED" labels with what appeared to be hand written (blue ink) signatures/initials - making them look like ones that a QA person on the line would stick onto the product after testing.

I've been through Shenzhen a few times and saw rolls and rolls of tamper proof hologram stickers (for Nokia and Microsoft and Sony and so on ...).

I did not see fake UL stickers ... however, I don't doubt that they are there.

Know this: a fake UL sticker is a criminally negligent act. Setting aside the appallingly negative morality of anyone that would deploy one, Amazon needs to be brought to regulatory action in the US and the EU for each and every single counterfeit UL device they ship.

This is a life and death issue. People should not pay, with their lives, for the refusal of Amazon to regulate this behavior.

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

#213

Post by chc »

geerlingguy wrote: post #108
willio58 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is a great example of an echo-chamber that's developed in the HN community. Some of it is deserved, but not all.

It's highly dependent on what you're looking for. If you search for "Belkin USB charger", you'll usually end up getting some good results at the top of the listings. But if you search for "USB charger", you need to prepare yourself for pages upon pages of identical-looking chargers from "Amoner", "RAVpower", "iSmart", "Ailkin", "Anker", "Power7", "Nekmit", etc. And most of them have hundreds or thousands of 4/5-star…

From my experience, Anker make good products. I specifically look for them when I'm buying charging hardware, and they've never failed me. I think it's possible you're dismissing perfectly fine products unfairly.

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

#214

Post by vmception »

jlj wrote: post #198
Retric wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still far smaller than other pandemics in the last 100 years. The 1957 "Asian flu" had around 1–4 million dead. AIDS is sitting around 770,000 dead per year and the total is vastly higher etc. What makes things different about COVID-19 is how people are responding to it in the hope of saving vast numbers of lives.

> This is still far smaller than other pandemics in the last 100 years. > What makes things different.. We are still in the early days of this pandemic. The history of COVID-19 is still being written. No one knows how long we're in for or what the final death count will be.

After the meat shortage starts we'll all come out of this with a BMI of 20. It won't be because those remaining all lost weight.

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

#215

Post by reeddavid »

admax88q wrote: post #102
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.

I find this odd. I read these sorts of comments every time Amazon in mentioned on HN, how its literally only clones, fakes, and scams, and impossible to find legitimate products anymore. I have literally never received a fake/clone/scam off amazon, and I can't explain that discrepancy. I personally only buy things that are sold or fulfilled by amazon, never shipped by third party sellers, but surely everyone else as…

Fakes: Are you sure you haven't received a fake item? If you don't have a reference point, you might not be able to tell unless/until something goes wrong with it.

Clones: If you shop through referral links (e.g. click through from The Wirecutter) or seek out a specific model number from a major brand you won't experience the clone problem.

But how confident do you feel starting your search at Amazon for items like Bluetooth Headphones? There are 20 pages of results that look identical. Or how about a search for Bike Tail Light?

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

#216

Post by FireBeyond »

bratsche wrote: post #33
amluto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I agree. I stupidly ordered a copy of Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier from Amazon and it just arrived yesterday, and the back cover was all bent along the edge because they did a terrible job of packing it.

Yes. Especially when most of the physical books I do order from Amazon are hardcover photography coffee table books. Probably at least half get sent back for obvious damage, and I could go more if I was even more picky.

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

#217

Post by edoceo »

s0rce wrote: post #176
philjohn wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the opposite in the UK - saying they'll take up to a week to deliver, and then the item turning up the next day, or the day after.

Same experience here (SF Bay), some items with moderate delays are on time (3-7 days), items with very long lead times (15-30 days) end up coming much faster. Still happy to not have to go to the store.

Same, Seattle, CPU, RAM and MB I ordered came a day early (last week). Was surprised, it was a day before the scheduled arrival I got when order was placed. Maybe just lucky.

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

#218

Post by Klinky »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #141
stevenmays wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment compensation is high, so the incentive to show up to work has decreased. They can solve this problem by paying more, although wage increases are hard to turn back time on. Maybe they should consider "hazard pay" during the pandemic.

You can't collect unemployment if you just decide to stop showing up for work. Unless Amazon formally lays you off (and Amazon hasn't laid off anybody) or you fall into one of the very specific categories of COVID-related exceptions, you're eligible for $0 in unemployment.

You might if you can demonstrate that the employer had a hazardous work environment. Given reports of conditions in some Amazon centers, a person could probably make a strong case, especially if they are someone or know someone who falls into a vulnerable category.

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

#219

Post by cylinder »

philjohn wrote: post #151
ethagknight wrote: post #109

My theory: Prime, and its 2-day shipping service, is a flat rate deal, priced according to 10.5 normal months and 1.5 batshit crazy delivery months. Since they can't charge on a demand basis for shipping like FedEx can, they've run into an internal train wreck where they can't afford to deliver all the orders the've received. So their bottleneck is actually a bottleneck of budgeted "delivery slots" for these Spring m…

I've noticed the opposite in the UK - saying they'll take up to a week to deliver, and then the item turning up the next day, or the day after.

same in Australia.

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

#220

Post by tanilama »

s0rce wrote: post #176
philjohn wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the opposite in the UK - saying they'll take up to a week to deliver, and then the item turning up the next day, or the day after.

Same experience here (SF Bay), some items with moderate delays are on time (3-7 days), items with very long lead times (15-30 days) end up coming much faster. Still happy to not have to go to the store.

Can confirm. Order something pretty unessential, delivered in 3 days.
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