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Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon

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

#111

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.

For a few years I was in the same boat: dozens of items delivered without issue. Within the last year or so it's become more common to hear about counterfeit issues on HN as well as personally be confronted with them--I've had to return 4 items that were obvious fakes and a 5th item that was already opened and probably not legit.

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

#112
post #49

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…

Unfortunately, in my case, they've switched from being mostly UPS to mostly a combination of USPS and, increasingly, their own trucks. USPS is fine for smaller envelopes and packages and I even bought an extra-large mailbox to accommodate somewhat larger boxes. But USPS hates to come down my driveway (long and rough) so bigger packages often get hung off my mailbox, the mailbox door is left open, or sometimes just sent back to the post office for pickup.

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

#113
I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

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

#115

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…

Non pre-funded pensions are absolute madness. Pension funds are going bankrupt left and right. They are built on the ridiculous premise that the fund’s investments will perform well or that the parent company will be making enough money to pay out anyway.

They should probably just switch to defined-contribution plans and abandon the pension program altogether. I imagine politics got in the way of that, and that pre-funding the pension is the compromise position.

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

#116

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…

You still get stuff through USPS? Everything I've ordered has been through AMZL, which means 100% of my orders are left at a neighbor's house, marked as delivered and then show up a few days later, or marked as lost after 5 days and refunded.

The $5 credits they give me are only good on stuff sold by Amazon, which seems to be getting slimmer. I got three things last week figuring I'd get $20 off, and it was only after I checked out that I realized none of them were by Amazon.

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

#117
post #113

I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

>I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

I kind of feel the same way, but damn if this isn't one of those things that me from 15 years ago would think was insane.

People like Microsoft? Apple is being brought up on anti-trust issues? Walmart is "good" now? What even is this reality we live in?

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

#118
post #8

I'm excited for the future when we'll finally have day-before shipping, where ML predicts what I want before I even order it.

reminds me of this fun little promo short https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwK02wNVOy8

that was not as fun as advertised.

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

#119
post #113

I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

Just so you know, Walmart is not the underdog. Walmart sells many multiples the volume that Amazon does, and to boot, most of the products sold are owned by Walmart. Amazon is merely a fee-taker on the majority of the product sales that it facilitates.

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

#120
post #113

I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

It's so odd to see Walmart getting cheered on as a plucky neighborhood underdog. They were Amazon before Amazon, using their huge scale to drive local competition out of business and relentlessly pressuring suppliers to drive down prices.

All that said I'm rooting for them too, simply because competition with Amazon is good for everyone.

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