I first heard about this idea in this video from 2014, and have been talking about it ever since: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xOK2aJ-0Js
There are tiny traces of truth in that video, but like 90% of it is complete nonsense.
Free Shipping
11–20 of 50 posts
Re: Free Shipping
#12Can someone please summarize this bad take? I tried reading it but got lost halfway.
Rant on the gloominess of a disposable society.
No, the reverse actually. More like the rise of objects-as-a-service, which means the objects will be more durable since they'll be shared around among people.
Re: Free Shipping
#13Instead of an Airbnb-style bartering economy, I'd expect a Netflix for household items would be more feasible. No worries about strangers using and breaking your things, no microtransactions to track.
That sounds specially interesting in denser areas. Make it fast and easy for people to request and return stuff, and homes suddenly have a lot of extra space.
Re: Free Shipping
#14Shopping has always been a tiny rush of happiness in many peoples' lives. I think free shipping only makes this rush more convenient, accessible, and addicting.
Traditional shopping just gives you one tiny rush - when you buy the item. But with online shopping, you get the rush when you buy the item, and when it appears on your doorstep a couple days later!
Re: Free Shipping
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess that's why so many people have Amazon Prime. And also, why they offer multiple 30 day trials to every user...
"First one's on the house," said to me once an Amsterdam back-alley coke dealer.
I quite often do drugs, multiple types, though admittedly not cocaine. I've never had the luck of getting this seemingly-common "freebie" everyone mentions
Re: Free Shipping
#16Shopping has always been a tiny rush of happiness in many peoples' lives. I think free shipping only makes this rush more convenient, accessible, and addicting.
Traditional shopping just gives you one tiny rush - when you buy the item. But with online shopping, you get the rush when you buy the item, and when it appears on your doorstep a couple days later!
And F5ing shipment updates. It's like christmas.
Re: Free Shipping
#17Can someone please summarize this bad take? I tried reading it but got lost halfway.
Sounds like the idea of a delivery robot isn't working out in testing, so now focus is shifting to the notion of an Amazon robot associated with each building to fetch packages from a truck. Sort of a mechanical coal chute, except with a bunch of gotchas.
In my mind, this problem was solved a long time ago. We had these mysterious outlets called stores that you went to and exchanged money for product. The root problem here is that people that consumer product companies care about (ie. not poor brown people) are moving to cities, and the belt of suburban shopping centers isn't serving this population well. IMO this is a good thing, as perhaps it will enable a return to smaller scale retail in vital urban communities.
Re: Free Shipping
#18Shopping has always been a tiny rush of happiness in many peoples' lives. I think free shipping only makes this rush more convenient, accessible, and addicting.
For me, it's all about convenience. I absolute hate cloth shopping. Now I can order a bunch of stuff, even the same thing in different sizes, try them at home and ship everything I don't want back. And also with electronics, why should I go to the store if I receive the package the next day?
There's another convenience factor here: being in-stock.
With B&M shopping, even if you know exactly what you want, you have no idea if it's actually in-stock at your local $store. So you drive there (wasting gas and a lot of time), wander around inside looking for it, only to find it's not even there! Then you have to go drive somewhere else hoping they have it, or get someone there to look it up and see what other store does have it, etc. All in all, this can waste a huge amount of time and fuel just to go find one single item.
With online shopping, it's right there on the website: you can see everything the shop has to offer in one place, and you can see if it's in stock or not. If it is, you click "buy" and it shows up at your doorstep. If it isn't, or there's some problem, that might mean a delay in getting your item, but you're not going to waste a lot of time and energy running around in the process.
Re: Free Shipping
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
"First one's on the house," said to me once an Amsterdam back-alley coke dealer.
I quite often do drugs, multiple types, though admittedly not cocaine. I've never had the luck of getting this seemingly-common "freebie" everyone mentions
Wow, the username here really checks out, especially with the misspelling.
Re: Free Shipping
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
"First one's on the house," said to me once an Amsterdam back-alley coke dealer.
I quite often do drugs, multiple types, though admittedly not cocaine. I've never had the luck of getting this seemingly-common "freebie" everyone mentions
Maybe if you lived in poverty in a housing project where many dealers are competing with each other and moving heroin, crack, meth, and fentanyl to desperate people who want to escape.