I'm doing my part. Every time I search for a product I filter out Amazon from the results.
I’m doing mine by never having bought a voice assistant
Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
281–290 of 871 posts
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#282That "Downstream impact" metric sounds like a big yikes. Massive incentives to game that metric and before you know it you've got 10 projects all claiming credit for some theoretical downstream impact all of which are actually just canabalizing existing revenue. Like, Amazon is doing $5Bn of revenue selling tide pods, the Alexa team make some claim about people's likeliness to order tide pods via the Alexa and before…
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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision. This is compounded by the multi-headed monster that large orgs like theirs have no choice but to become. If customers could trust that every day essentials had a relatively stable price and availability pattern like they trust from their local grocery store (…
This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…
Third party sellers make up most of the inventory. Means Amazon has less inventory risk, but the buyer experience is terrible. Really unfortunate.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#284Speaking of Alexa: Can anyone explain the thought process behind making it possible to change the volume in small increments via buttons, but not via voice command (only in 10% increments)? I only use it as an internet radio player for background music and it's extremely annoying that it can't do that.
Voice command on volume modulation used to work. Then Video, Music, Shopping and Home Automation built a "revamped" Alexa system and broke it. This is also why people struggle to turn of alarms, why Alexa Pay broke, among many other service-side performance degradations.
Pretty cringe, the number of people who were promoted for this.
10/10 not worth working for Amazon.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blind ordering only made sense when Amazon customer service was top notch. That ended when Amazon started having profitable quarters and started Day Two. Now I have to be paranoid about checking product details like if there are 3rd party sellers using FBA which potentially signals fakes. There’s no longer blind trust in Amazon for a lot of customers. I can’t just mindlessly buy stuff with the hope that Amazon custom…
I can't come up with a single item that I would blind order. At most, I could ask Alexa to add an item to a shopping list and then verify the list and place the order myself.
I put baby diapers on recurring order every X weeks, it just worked, and Amazon would inform me that there was an upcoming order and give me the time to either move the date or cancel it. Super convenient for working parents!
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
> gross cooking hands I cook a lot and totally get this feeling, but honestly your cooking hands probably aren't gross. And if they are you're probably doing something wrong, in which case some cooking classes will be both very enjoyable and eliminate the problem.
A cooking class won't eliminate the raw meat on your bare hand
You should be washing your hands immediately after handling raw meat.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#287The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…
Ahh the Dash buttons. I remember those. I remember thinking I'm not a gambling man at all, so what use would that buttons be? Will I pay £5 or £10 today? No thanks lol.
Amazon had low trust back then. It's even worse now
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.
Vote for politicians that campaign on consumer protection legislation. Here in Europe, it's been mandatory to show a price related to a reasonable common base point (e.g. liter, kilogram, piece, usage-unit for laundry detergent) adjacent to the actual product's price for many years now. You can go and use 1/10/100 grams/milliliters though for small scale packages where that is reasonably common (e.g. spices), and tha…
Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end.
I’d much rather transact in the US than Europe. The entire retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched. The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.
It'd not even that I care much about small deviations--I just don't trust that something really crazy won't happen if I put it on autopilot. If I walk into Walmart and grab a big armful of Bounty I'm fairly confident things will be fine.
I'm in the process of moving. I thought maybe I'd give Prime Day a try and send some soaps ahead to my new place.
In my last apartment, I used Method's pump-dispenser laundry detergent and their basil-scented kitchen hand soap.
Amazon is selling the laundry detergent for $75 and the hand soap for $15. I'm guessing Method discontinued the SKUs I was used to, and there's some leftover stock on Amazon with crazy prices.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really enjoy this joke, "Wow, my laptop is a really expensive clipboard today" "My monitor is a really expensive webcam stand" "My phone is a really expensive alarm clock" It's never not funny to me
It's a very old joke, by computing standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expensive_Tape_Recorder
haha TIL of the origin! thanks!