81–90 of 96 posts
I had said many times Amazon had too many ways to order groceries: 1. Amazon.com 2. Amazon Prime Pantry 3. Amazon Fresh 4. Whole Foods via Amazon Prime Now 5. Amazon items via Amazon Prime Now* *I never figured out what exactly this was. Was it just Amazon.com listing reproduced in the Prime Now app? Was it Amazon Fresh and/or Prime Pantry items? Was it some other set of items?
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Why would someone with prime use prime pantry if it was free shipping anyway?
Pantry was actually sold by Amazon and met expected retail parameters. The coffee beans I used to buy through pantry would have a typical expiry date - 18-24 months out. Once that product moved to normal Amazon, it transitioned to the standard jobbers and hucksters... you’d buy a can of coffee whose best by date was 30 days out. I think this segment is really being replaced by Whole Foods, it is somewhat constrained…
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FWIW I used to order kitty litter on Prime. Free shipping and all that. Turns out they hugely marked up the retail price for the free shipping. I’ve since found it on Walmart’s website for about 40% cheaper. Free shipping if I order 5 at a time.
> FWIW I used to order kitty litter on Prime. Free shipping and all that. Turns out they hugely marked up the retail price for the free shipping. I’ve since found it on Walmart’s website for about 40% cheaper. Free shipping if I order 5 at a time. This is really common on Amazon, even for things that aren't heavy/large. Amazon used to be a place that gave you some of the best prices on things, but that hasn't been tr…
Oftentimes I would have been overpaying 20-50%, especially on small, It seems like something for $11 is a good deal, until you can get 3 on eBay for $8.
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Amazon Prime Now was intended to be same day delivery. Amazon Fresh usually wasn't. AFAIK when you order whole foods, someone goes to the store and picks it up for you. They don't have nearly as accurate inventory tracking as Amazon Fresh/Prime Now do. If you order things from Prime Now, they will arrive guaranteed. (well, 90% guaranteed)
Yep. The advantage of Prime Now/Fresh is that if you put it in your cart, it's yours. With Whole Foods online, your personal shopper is competing with in-store customers. On a slightly related note, I've given up on Walmart for groceries. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was among the best. Now it's terrible. My last order, almost 80% of the items I wanted were either suddenly unavailable and removed from my cart…
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I think it was a product from a different era. When Prime Pantry launched, Amazon hadn't acquired Whole Foods, and they didn't have a story for last-mile delivery yet. So they had to ship your order from a warehouse, and the only way to do that profitably on low-margin grocery items was to batch them up into a large order in a box of uniform dimensions. The fact that they no longer need to do this speaks to how far A…
Among the growing list of documentaries I would love to watch, but have yet to find, Amazon's logistlics solutions is one at the top. Would be very cool to get a deep look at how all the various types of orders are handled.
Good riddance. Most people just want to buy mundane household items without having to solve knapsack problems.
Ahahah, well for at least a year now they had dropped the whole box filling aspects, which made it more or less identical to shopping for anything else. Honestly the only difference then is how it was shipped and what items were available. That said, I do miss the "Buy 6 items in this category for $6 off" discounts, especially the few times that there were items for less than a dollar in that category. A couple years…
Yes, yes, welcome to the supply chain.
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Many people naturally do this. The "I can't wait to grow up and get out of here" trope is universal to basically every small town in America. Many people with the means to do so also like to leave the city to move to small town America. There's really nothing wrong with either of these life experiences. People's needs are varied, both by person, and by the stage of their life. Living in an economic hotspot is more im…
Yet those small towns continue to exist, until some very poor last remnants eventually stop having children and the town dies off in a literal sense. A market based solution isn't going to repair a fault like a place doesn't want to economically exist on the map. That's a spot for market regulation to exist and limit suffering.
Serious question: do you have any friends or family who choose to live in rural areas?
There are a lot of people who enjoy the peace and quiet, wide open spaces, and tight community that is unique to life outside of urban areas. Some people like the lack of noise, air, and light pollution more than they like instacart.
There are people on this forum who live in rural areas and participate in the economy quite well, and have a higher standard of living than 98% of the world.
Although, even the idea that people are poorer in rural areas might not be correct. According to the 2015 ACS, poverty rates were higher in urban areas. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/...
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A better headline would have been "Amazon merges Prime Pantry > into regular .com site". Not exactly. The products for sale are still for sale on the site, yes. But the "pantry" product including a volume-based flat rate shipping. You entered products until you were told that your box was filled and then they shipped it to you flat rate. I used to fill it with kitty litter, dog food, cans of stuff and other heavy pro…
FWIW I used to order kitty litter on Prime. Free shipping and all that. Turns out they hugely marked up the retail price for the free shipping. I’ve since found it on Walmart’s website for about 40% cheaper. Free shipping if I order 5 at a time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better headline would have been "Amazon merges Prime Pantry > into regular .com site". Not exactly. The products for sale are still for sale on the site, yes. But the "pantry" product including a volume-based flat rate shipping. You entered products until you were told that your box was filled and then they shipped it to you flat rate. I used to fill it with kitty litter, dog food, cans of stuff and other heavy pro…
Why would someone with prime use prime pantry if it was free shipping anyway?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ahahah, well for at least a year now they had dropped the whole box filling aspects, which made it more or less identical to shopping for anything else. Honestly the only difference then is how it was shipped and what items were available. That said, I do miss the "Buy 6 items in this category for $6 off" discounts, especially the few times that there were items for less than a dollar in that category. A couple years…
> A couple years back I scored absurd amount of Spaghetti Os this way, paying effectively negative money. The only downside is I ended up with a lot of Spaghetti Os :'( Experiences like this have taught me to be careful about over optimizing. If I want one of something, and can't use (or don't want to use) more than one, it doesn't matter if buying two (or more) costs less than buying one; I should just buy one.
Bulk-buying mentality is so prevalent in the US, it can sometimes be hard to avoid, and I think US urban planning has a lot to do with it as well - e.g. in many cities I've lived in the US, it would take longer to walk to my car than to walk to a grocery store when I was living outside the US, so you get trained to focus on economizing trips.