Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 258 posts

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#101

Post by trophycase »

joering2 wrote: post #38
wpietri wrote: post #33

What I wonder: why did it take them this long? Walmart has warehouse-sized stores that are close to almost everybody. And most of America's houses are already visited 6 days a week by a delivery person. Walmart could and should have made a deal with the USPS a decade ago. It would have been great for all concerned. Instead, they let Amazon practically own the concept, eating away at their huge distribution advantage.

Deal with USPS? Would be hard to find a manager who can make this work and not obviously post it as a huge disaster on their resumee. USPS continues to bleed money, is always understaffed, continues to misplace the mail and is bugged with pretty old technology that is hard to upgrade. Add unions to it and you have a perfect government entity altho USPS is not actually a government organisation. If anything it would m…

Remind me again why a tax funded organization needs to make a profit?

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#102

Post by lotsofpulp »

neilv wrote: post #86
jdeibele wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. USPS continues to bleed money but that's due to the mandate from Congress about pre-funding pensions. That's a requirement that nobody else has - see the articles about the 3rd-largest coal company declaring bankruptcy and shedding its pension obligations. Is always understaffed? Yeah, there are lines a lot of the time. So go to USPS.com if you can and buy postage online. Go to the offices that have ATM-like mac…

The unusual pension funding requirement forced on the USPS might be an instance of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

It might have that dual purpose, but I’d rather them have to properly fund their retiree healthcare and defined benefit pension expenses than be in the situation that most governments are in where today’s taxpayers get to pay for benefits earned in prior years.

Ideally, they would get rid of those retiree healthcare and defined benefit pension benefits and just pay their employees more in cash, and let them buy annuities if they want. That would make the whole operation far more transparent and get rid of possibilities of corruption and numbers games being played with these deferred pay agreements.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#103

Post by sib »

bluGill wrote: post #80
sp332 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has been getting people to sign up to have their homes, cars, garages etc. open to delivery people for stuff that they've ordered. I figure it's only a matter of time before they start warehousing stuff you haven't ordered there. Maybe you can just wander out to your car and browse, scan whatever looks good with your phone and take it. (Hopefully kidding but I guess you never know what people will trade for "c…

John Deere already does that for common parts. They put a shelf in the farmer's shed with oil, filters, belts... and the farmer takes out what is needed. Once a week the dealer comes by and refills whatever is missing, and once a month sends a bill. No need for any of the scanning as you take it out: you are the only one with access to the cabinet so if it is missing you bought it.

So... it's like a hotel minibar for tractor parts. Great idea! (Hopefully the pricing is less outrageous.)

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#104

Post by mercer »

CPLX wrote: post #49
igetspam wrote: post #30

I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because…

I am in the same boat. I have called and begged and pleaded and escalated to get Amazon to stop using USPS but it just doesn't work. Here in Brooklyn if anything is unusually large they just punch in "attempted delivery" a couple days in a row and send it back. They don't even bother trying, I'm pretty sure it never even leaves the regional sort facility and gets on a truck. I'm not sure I blame them. Amazon once use…

Bad delivery is a huge annoyance over here in The Netherlands too. My experience is that the big webshops (Coolblue, Bol.com) are excellent with their deliveries, but as soon as you order from some of the smaller stores or via the brand-sites, it's a mess. DPD in particular is absolutely atrocious, and that's been my experience in multiple cities in Europe.

The problem seems to be that the local webshops work with the more local delivery services, whereas the brand-site-stores and a bunch of others use delivery services that work across Europe. Those seem to be awful everywhere (the aforementioned DPD, but I've heard similar things about FedEx and DHL).

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#105

Post by aeturnum »

jimmaswell wrote: post #34
aeturnum wrote: post #15

I've been trying to use Walmart for most of my household internet shopping needs because I dislike a lot of Amazon's practices[1]. In general Walmart is...ok. Their shipping times are pretty accurate, though they will sometimes split up shipments and don't clearly inform you. It also seems like their shipping pipeline is a lot rougher on boxes than Amazon. I ordered a window-mounted AC unit and the box showed up wrec…

Wal Mart's practices have certainly been much worse than Amazon's in aggregate.

I suppose I shop at Walmart in a digital context, but avoid them in a physical one. Obviously their competitive practices are pretty harmful.

There just aren't good alternatives to Amazon in general. Do you have another recommendation? I've tried to use Target but have found their selection to be quite bad.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#106

Post by criddell »

igetspam wrote: post #30

I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because…

Have you tried calling the post office and asking them to deliver large packages to your door? Our carrier does this for us.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#107

Post by treis »

jdeibele wrote: post #52
joering2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deal with USPS? Would be hard to find a manager who can make this work and not obviously post it as a huge disaster on their resumee. USPS continues to bleed money, is always understaffed, continues to misplace the mail and is bugged with pretty old technology that is hard to upgrade. Add unions to it and you have a perfect government entity altho USPS is not actually a government organisation. If anything it would m…

Wow. USPS continues to bleed money but that's due to the mandate from Congress about pre-funding pensions. That's a requirement that nobody else has - see the articles about the 3rd-largest coal company declaring bankruptcy and shedding its pension obligations. Is always understaffed? Yeah, there are lines a lot of the time. So go to USPS.com if you can and buy postage online. Go to the offices that have ATM-like mac…

>USPS continues to bleed money but that's due to the mandate from Congress about pre-funding pensions. That's a requirement that nobody else has - see the articles about the 3rd-largest coal company declaring bankruptcy and shedding its pension obligations.

The USPS hasn't actually made those payments in years.

All that the USPS has to do is put aside enough money to pay for pension obligations they incur. That's not "pre-funding" anything. It's paying for an expense that the business incurs. If they can't do it then they're bankrupt and should be reorganized so that they don't incur expenses they can't pay. Coal companies going bankrupt and shedding pension obligations is exactly the thing that's trying to be avoided.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#108

Post by criddell »

noonespecial wrote: post #58

They don't need next day delivery. They need a search that works, reviews that aren't fake, and a way to get products that aren't counterfeits half the time. Amazon has skated way out onto very thin ice and is ready for disruption.

> and a way to get products that aren't counterfeits half the time

How often do you actually get fakes?

My family probably gets an Amazon delivery three or four times a week and we've never received a counterfeit item.

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#109

Post by xfitm3 »

steveeq1 wrote: post #89
igetspam wrote: post #30

I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because…

Is that an ethical thing to do?

Why wouldn’t it be?

Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

#110

Post by turtlebits »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #12

Amazon has rolled out same day delivery for my area and it is too convenient to pass up. I used to go to Brick and Mortar to get my items faster and I felt good that I was supporting them, but now I will have a hard time saying no. Walmart has always had a terrible website experience for me. It's difficult to find items that will be in store for pick up and difficult to tell which items are part of the third party ma…

Agreed on the website experience. While co-mingling is almost always bad - at least buying things via Amazon is a nicer experience.

Walmart and others (like Newegg) who have started selling other merchant goods on their website, have made it pretty much clear that I will never buy something not sold by them - exorbitant shipping, terrible pictures and subpar product descriptions for the 3rd party seller items.

Post reply on HN