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Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

politico.eu

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Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#41

Post by arrrg »

redgc wrote: post #19
navidfarhadi wrote: post #9

I'm very interested to see how Amazon's entry into the Swedish market plays out. I used to shop a lot on Amazon back when I lived in the SF Bay Area and thought I would miss it when I moved to Stockholm but honestly that has not been the case. I get 1-2 day shipping from other online retailers in Sweden anyway (like CDON and Webhallen) and there is quite fierce competition between a few of the bigger names in the gam…

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

I don’t trust the reviews and the selection is such a grab bag of garbage. Besides some obviously branded stuff (I don’t know, any Apple product for example) it feels like playing Russian roulette, especially if you just want something random like, I don’t know, kitchen utensils.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#42

Post by navidfarhadi »

kalleboo wrote: post #36
redgc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

When I lived in Sweden I was a religious user of prisjakt.nu and thought the reviews there were decent

I use prisjakt regularly as well but mainly for the price comparison feature between retailers. The reviews on the website are decent as well though but there are typically a couple orders of magnitude fewer reviews on products than on Amazon DE/UK/US.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#43

Post by josefx »

docdeek wrote: post #27
bkor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After a week or so we started getting our deliveries again, usually with an extra day of delay because it was being fulfilled from Germany. In some other industries (shipping) you have to be really careful to do that. There's various laws against breaking up (the effectiveness of) a strike. That's currently often only applied within one country. If Amazon does something similar more often enough they'll probably ge…

This was less a strike than a forced government shutdown due to COVID-19. amazon couldn’t satisfy the French government that the French warehouses and fulfillment centers were going to be safe for workers, so they were shutdown. I assume that the German ones satisfied the German government to German standards, and so were kept open.

> so they were shutdown

They weren't shut down, that was Amazons decision. The court only told them to reduce operations to specific categories of its store site - the idea was to somehow reduce operations to a safe amount as Amazon had repeatedly failed to so by itself. Amazon then made up the nebulous "essential products" category and made sure to complain loudly about the supposed nonsense the court required while it shut down french warehouses completely.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#44

Post by mikkelam »

I order quite a bit from amazon.de to Denmark, hoping this will be a better experience. I do feel quite bad knowing how the german workers are treated at the warehouse/fulfillment centers, I am definitely hoping Swedens labor unions can make a dent here while still keeping the price low enough.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#45

Post by waihtis »

tokai wrote: post #25
waihtis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially true, my reflection point is Finland instead of Sweden. Unions over here are however thinly masked extensions of political parties, yes they operate somewhat independently but each political party has a 'favourite' union who they influence through unofficial channels.

>each political party has a 'favourite' union who they influence through unofficial channels. its the other way around.

Good correction - although I would say its more or less a two-way influence system.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#46

Post by henrik_w »

navidfarhadi wrote: post #40
redgc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

I actually use Amazon DE/UK/US for to look at reviews but I more often than not end up purchasing from a Swedish e-tailer. There are some exceptions though, like when the price is just much lower on Amazon DE. I had to buy a label maker last week and the price on Amazon DE for a specific model was almost 40% cheaper than buying it from a local store in Sweden.

Same here (mostly buying books). I look at the reviews on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Goodreads.com (great because it has reviews of Swedish books as well), then order from Adlibris (mostly) and Bokus (occasionally). Often the prices have been about the same. Even if they weren't, I don't mind paying a bit more if it means the warehouse workers are treated fairly.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#47

Post by apexalpha »

navidfarhadi wrote: post #40
redgc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

I actually use Amazon DE/UK/US for to look at reviews but I more often than not end up purchasing from a Swedish e-tailer. There are some exceptions though, like when the price is just much lower on Amazon DE. I had to buy a label maker last week and the price on Amazon DE for a specific model was almost 40% cheaper than buying it from a local store in Sweden.

The local Amazon in NL is Bol.com (along with the actual amazon).

But whenever I see: "sold by X" through their platform you can usually find a cheaper offer on their own website.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#48

Post by henrik_w »

redgc wrote: post #16
redgc wrote: post #11

I live in Stockholm, and order regularly from Amazon Germany already. It's free shipping if you order 39 euro or above, which usually delivers things in around a week. Fast shipping of two working days costs 9 euro per shipment. Based on what I've read and this article, it doesn't sound like that much will change once it officially "launches" a Swedish site, although maybe Amazon will lower the minimum amount for fre…

Something I forgot to add: Sweden does have some great gig worker to-the-door delivery companies that have sprung up, particularly around small items like from online pharmacies. When you fulfill an order using those companies they typically have a great monitoring app to track where your delivery is, to input your building door code if necessary, inform you when it's been left outside your door, etc. I always find i…

I agree! Budbee in particular has been very good in this respect! Often you can get free shipping with delivery between 17:00 and 22:00, and if you want a specific hour, you can pay 39 SEK to get that.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#50

Post by UK-Al05 »

josefx wrote: post #43
docdeek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was less a strike than a forced government shutdown due to COVID-19. amazon couldn’t satisfy the French government that the French warehouses and fulfillment centers were going to be safe for workers, so they were shutdown. I assume that the German ones satisfied the German government to German standards, and so were kept open.

> so they were shutdown They weren't shut down, that was Amazons decision. The court only told them to reduce operations to specific categories of its store site - the idea was to somehow reduce operations to a safe amount as Amazon had repeatedly failed to so by itself. Amazon then made up the nebulous "essential products" category and made sure to complain loudly about the supposed nonsense the court required while…

French goverment was trying to apply rules which had a lot of grey area. Amazon decided it was too risky so shut down.
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