121–130 of 184 posts
https://outline.com/rjnnqM
Does outline have some special deals with media sites? And if it's simply stealing content, why aren't companies suing outline into oblivion like they did with Napster?
One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…
Should an Uber driver just starve to death because he doesn't fit your specific model of what a worker looks like?
That's a pretty classist elitism viewpoint, and it's completely unwarranted.
One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…
Uber/Fiverr/Upwork automate the trust aspect, so I can be assured decent service or I’ll get a refund and the provider’s reputation will be dinged. Outright scams are hard to pull off in this environment. Amazon... I can only speculate what’s going on there. Maybe the resulting price pressure turns the screws on suppliers? And honestly I’ve never gotten a branded product from them that I thought was fake. This could…
Perhaps the long play is to intentionally reduce trust in competitors brands (read: anyone who isn't amazon) to push people towards an ever expanding amazon basics line, which are presumably more profitable.
As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…
I think Amazon dug themselves into a hole with this one. The Amazon Marketplace is the biggest liability to their brand reputation, but now it is also a big revenue driver. It would be in the long term interest of Amazon to ditch it, or severely clamp down on authorized marketplace participants. But Amazon is now in a sticky situation because the stock price, which they rely on for many reasons, is heavily dependent…
As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…
>I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. But for many things I shop for, that would be extremely inconvenient for me. For example, I needed to buy replacement fuses for a Fluke multimeter. Amazon itself didn't sell it but a 3rd-party marketplace seller did. If the marketplace was shut down, I'd have to go through the hassle of registering a new account on yet another ecomm…
Maybe I'm just extremely cynical, but you don't feel those are somehow gamed? For parts that you've described, I've actually moved to eBay as my first stop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of that seems right, but I don’t agree with the Uber example. Ride sharing has been a much more convenient and reliable service than taxis, and with less fraud (broken meters or credit card machines) and less discrimination (actually willing to drive me to the neighborhood I want). And with Uber I have a record of who drove me where. This seems pretty different from being picked up by a random person on the stre…
problem with uber from a customer perspective is if you are a single woman taking a ride, the drivers are not full time cab employees that can possibly be fired/lose their cab medallion/permits. some women i know are considering switching to licensed cabs due to the harassment they get from uber drivers with no good mechanism to report and avoid those drivers aside from never traveling alone. as a guy, i've only had…
As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…
I think Amazon dug themselves into a hole with this one. The Amazon Marketplace is the biggest liability to their brand reputation, but now it is also a big revenue driver. It would be in the long term interest of Amazon to ditch it, or severely clamp down on authorized marketplace participants. But Amazon is now in a sticky situation because the stock price, which they rely on for many reasons, is heavily dependent…
Probably wait for something to be announced like "Prime Plus" for premium brands as they try to figure out how to differentiate products in the market, or watch them continue to expand into new types of markets altogether... there's very little for them else to do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a matter of chance that they coincide with some 3rd world country models as the latter's fuels are survival/corruption/perceived lawlessness It's not a matter of chance. The earlier government regulation was better than no regulation, but had significant downsides. Taxi regulation got corrupt and the market didn't work very well. Uber and company came in with technology that worked better than the old government…
Uber and company came in with technology that worked better than the old government bureaucracy at cleaning up and regulating the market. To me, at least, this assertion requires some substantiation. It seems to me that what Uber has been better at than traditional taxi services is solely the technology. I can only expect to hail a taxi on demand if I'm in a big city, airport, train station, or other transit center;…
This said, every tragedy of the commons scenario that was previously avoided by regulation happened, the streets of major cities are almost entirely cars for hire, where it's nearly impossible to make a living wage working as a driver on only 40 hours a week. This right here is the cost of neoliberalism, yes more people have jobs, the economy expanded to meet a more desired demand, but the workers in the field are largely worse off than had they all been protected in other industries alongside scarce resources being even more competitive than they were previously.
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And the prices on some of the stuff is just weird, with a lot of the Amazon provided stuff now stuck behind Amazon Prime Pantry. I used to order a lot of our daily household stuff from Amazon: cleaners, dish soap, detergent, etc. So much of that stuff now is priced just horribly. $4 for a bottle from Amazon, but it's just from Prime Pantry so you have to order a bunch of stuff or be stuck with a high shipping cost. I…
Amazon manufacturer/distributor of home and kitchen goods here - the rule of thumb is that if it's Basically we pay Amazon $1 or 15% of sale (whichever is higher + ~$2.50 for shipping before anything else, so after margins and what not that's a minimum of $4 going to Amazon for marketing and logistics. That's why low dollar 1-pack items feel like price gouging -- there's been years of A/B testing on the marketplace t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. But for many things I shop for, that would be extremely inconvenient for me. For example, I needed to buy replacement fuses for a Fluke multimeter. Amazon itself didn't sell it but a 3rd-party marketplace seller did. If the marketplace was shut down, I'd have to go through the hassle of registering a new account on yet another ecomm…
> I just pay attention to the seller ratings and make sure they're better than 98%. Maybe I'm just extremely cynical, but you don't feel those are somehow gamed? For parts that you've described, I've actually moved to eBay as my first stop.
I think the reviews for products are gamed but I don't think the seller feedback ratings are.
I used to sell used books as a Amazon marketplace seller and I once sold a book that was damaged and put that condition in the description. The buyer bought and gave me 1 star rating for it and described the damage that I already put in the description. The buyer just didn't bother to read the description before he bought it. I couldn't get Amazon to remove that unfair rating.
If there's a way to game the seller feedback in a sustainable way across thousands of ratings, I'd like to know how. Sure, sellers could offer refunds to bribe customers to change their seller rating from 1 star to 5 stars (not sure if that's even possible) but eventually, the seller will run out of money with that scheme. On the other hand, product reviews are easier to hack.