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Amazon Home Services

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Re: Amazon Home Services

#161
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll address some points here. 1. Safety: drones - multirotors, specifically - are very safe devices, inherently. They are incredibly simple (4-8 motors and no other moving parts). If they are dangerous, it's only because of lack of investment by the manufacturers to make mission critical hardware/software. That's the next step in the drone ecosystem though, as commercial use is gaining traction (multirotors are bare…

The problem with drones is that they're insecure. People will shoot them down for fun, and even if they don't, whenever they land they'll have to leave their packages in places that are either insecure or exposed to the elements. If it really takes off, you will need ways to manage "drone traffic" and insurance will be extremely expensive. To top it off, they will simply not work on most days in Northern Europe, wher…

> People will shoot them down for fun

I hear this a lot, along with comments about self-driving cars being unusable because 'people will run in front of them to make them stop', and I just don't get it. In what country would it be deemed legal and normal for people to shoot down drones? Do people take pot-shots at light aircraft? Why would people suddenly want to shhot at drones? The same with self-driving cars - people don't run into traffic to make human drivers stop, although they would certainly try their best not to run you over, so why would they start doing it with self-driving cars. I've also heard the argument that people will vandalise the cars, destroy the LIDAR sensors and so on, but yet we don't have spates of people throwinf paint over the windscreen of normal cars. I think it says more about the mentality of the commentors that about the peeibilities for automated vehicles, flying or driving.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#162
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with drones is that they're insecure. People will shoot them down for fun, and even if they don't, whenever they land they'll have to leave their packages in places that are either insecure or exposed to the elements. If it really takes off, you will need ways to manage "drone traffic" and insurance will be extremely expensive. To top it off, they will simply not work on most days in Northern Europe, wher…

The security concern (for the drone and the contents) is a bit overblown to me. What about all those ATM bank machines in all sorts of "insecure" places? We've somehow figured out how to keep money inside a machine that is unattended. The amount of theft that occurs on those things is minuscule and banks put the cost of such theft into their profit calculations. The Amazon drone won't take off unless you confirm in a…

We solved that by making ATMs unmanageably heavy. Not the best option for a drone.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For starters. "To your door" urban drone delivery would be nearly impossible as most urban dwellers live in condos, apartments Many such structures in densely-populated areas have large, flat, mostly-empty roofs. (Hell, some of the apartment buildings in my little urban area of ~40k people have flat roofs, as do most of the local dorms.)

And Amazon will co-ordinate the retrofitting of these roofs to allow safe and easy access? Have you ever been up to a typical apartment or condo roof top? Sometimes there's a common area or party area - not suitable for leaving a pile of random packages though. Otherwise it's full of HVAC and utility stuff. There's no way on earth my condo board would approve the costs involved in allowing residents up on the roof or…

> And Amazon will co-ordinate the retrofitting of these roofs to allow safe and easy access?

Easy roof access is typically the default. Landlords sometimes cut off access and a shitstorm ensues. Lawyers sometimes get involved, since it's legally hairy to cut off access to previously-accessible common areas.

> Have you ever been up to a typical apartment or condo roof top?

Several, and you can examine thousands more for yourself on Google Maps, if you like. They're not, typically, "full" of anything. They're mostly empty space.

> Sometimes there's a common area or party area - not suitable for leaving a pile of random packages though.

I'm not sure why not, but even so, there seems little risk of there being a "pile". The whole point is delivery in 30 minutes. Why would you pay for 30-minute drone delivery if you weren't going to be there to pick it up soon after?

> There's no way on earth my condo board would approve the costs involved in allowing residents up on the roof.

What costs are you imagining?

> It's hard enough for security to deal with packages at the front door.

It eludes me why you think tenants picking up their own packages from a roof is more trouble than having security (which doesn't even exist in many such buildings) deal with it.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd pay double for a guarantee?

Why is that so crazy? Depending on the service cost, my time could be worth more than having to deal with the headaches of finding and dealing with a trustworthy vender. Consider we're talking about $150 installation for something in my house, like a TV. That could mean knocking holes in the wall. Searching Yelp reviews and interviewing contractors can be time consuming. Then, if something goes wrong, my wall could b…

You have a higher opinion of the value of Amazon's guarantee and brand in this space than I do. You're talking independent contractors here (just like Home Depot and many others use today) and you can expect lots of outcomes between didn't show up or didn't do the promised task and did a perfect job. Even with contractors I know and trust, things don't always work out perfectly when you're dealing with unexpected problems on the fly.

For me, the potentially interesting aspect is "handyman" type tasks that fall outside the range of services you can have done through Home Depot, Sears, my local plumber or electrician, etc. Though I would guess it's significantly more expensive than you can get from giving someone local some cash (assuming you can find the right person).

Re: Amazon Home Services

#166
post #30
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to see this framed so negative. What they do is essentially being the lean huge startup . They launch a product, gather initial feedback, and if it turns out promising (like AWS) they double-down. If it doesn't work, they kill it. I think it's actually nice to see such a rapid-iteration product development done by a company with that many resources and talent.

It is a negative because Amazon doesn't have that many resources or talent. They are short on engineers. The people building things like amazon movies are being taken off of key things like product search. Bugs I fixed there were regressed in later years and are still broken-- this is key product sales bugs that are still there. The team I was on that wrote the code got dissipated away. Here's a key thing that people…

You sound like a bitter ex-employee. Why would you ever waste your energy on trashing a former employer? Go build something else - it's a much better use of your time.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You called him a liar. That's pretty defensive. Personally, I have no trouble buying a lot of what he's selling, not least because I've seen his posts around here for a good while and he seems like a decent sort, but it also dovetails with my own experience. YMMV, but I'm not calling you a liar.

Not to butt in, but if someone says something untrue, they are a liar. If I accused Amazon of killing babies, that would be a lie (I hope?), and you wouldn't be being defensive by calling me out for it.

Strictly speaking, it has to be knowingly untrue for it to be a lie. It is possible to just be wrong.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd pay double for a guarantee?

Why is that so crazy? Depending on the service cost, my time could be worth more than having to deal with the headaches of finding and dealing with a trustworthy vender. Consider we're talking about $150 installation for something in my house, like a TV. That could mean knocking holes in the wall. Searching Yelp reviews and interviewing contractors can be time consuming. Then, if something goes wrong, my wall could b…

Even Geek Squad's rate is too high. Mounting a TV onto your wall is not a hard thing to do. Find studs, attach mount to wall, attach mount to TV, put on wall. I've done it several times. Granted, it's not fun, but it's not I'd-rather-pay-$150-to-not-do-this non-fun.

Even if you're a high-paid professional it's likely cheaper to do it yourself (assuming opportunity cost for this time was work, and not, you know, enjoying your weekend).

(IMO the TV wall mounting prices are completely out of line with the difficulty of the task. Compared to tire installation that takes more time, tooling, and personal risk, I'm really surprised that it costs so much.)

Re: Amazon Home Services

#169
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't aware of their localized .uk, .de, .jp, etc sites for they have for their markets in other countries?

.us should be for US stores. .com is more universal.

Back when Amazon was registered I doubt anyone was using .us for a company website, so changing everything to point to that years after the fact would probably do more harm than good to the business, plus the fact that they at the start were only US based, so a .com at the time would have and still is the best choice for a US based brand identity.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#170
post #149

Do they offer IKEA furniture assembly services? This usually is a torturous process.

I believe IKEA offers that locally through partners. That being said, someone on Fiverr might be willing to help.
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