131–140 of 191 posts
But it's fairly scummy how it doesn't seem to send you any email, the payments have a very vague generic coding like "AMZ2318971239", and the actual subscription management is super buried. I only noticed it, after years of using Amazon a fair bit, when I went deep into my account panes looking for something else.
I cancelled Prime last year after getting fed up with Amazon in several ways. Bringing ads to Prime Video was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I do still end up ordering from time to time, and the checkout process for non-Prime members is horrific. Multiple Prime sign-up offers that I always need to carefully read so I don’t click the wrong thing, illogical default shipping options, with more tricks to try and…
> I don’t know why any non-Prime customer would want to sign up At least for me, it's easy -- the Prime credit card, which has no extra fee beyond Prime itself. I get 5-7% back, instead of the 1-2% with my other credit cards. It literally pays for itself and more over the course of a year. The faster shipping is just a bonus. And I'm not buying junk I don't need either. It's literally just regular toiletries, my norm…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've wanted to quit Prime a bunch of times, but my recent experiences in the Bay Area: * Sometimes I want my order on my Prime day, but they insist on delivering it to me 3 hours from when I ordered it. * When my son got COVID, we ran around town looking for COVID tests. Target was out of them entirely. So I ordered them on Prime and they showed up later that day. A bunch of them. And 3x cheaper than the COVID+FLU te…
> Yeah, ads on Prime suck. But I'm rewatching a 90s show and ponied up $3/mo for no ads. The $3/month for no ads felt like they were nickel-and-diming the customers. I was paying something like $129/year for Prime. The idea of paying $3/month on top of the $129/year I was paying for Prime felt so petty. Had they just raised the price of Prime, I probably would have shrugged and carried on. But adding a monthly charge…
I'll move to a secondary tier Amazon market where boring retail isn't quite as compromised as the bay area and the equation will probably change for me, but I'm also likely to end up in a rural mountain area and it might be a lifeline for me.
I haven't had issues with Alibaba stuff, and there have been just enough instances where Amazon delivered where local or alts couldn't. Like the light bulbs in my bathroom.. Ace Hardware doesn't stock my item, I couldn't order them elsewhere, but Amazon connected me to a vendor who fulfilled in about 2 weeks. And yes, I went without light in my bathroom for 2 weeks and was looking the whole time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A much simple explanation is that each order is assigned a priority f(elapsed time, is prime) prime orders starting much higher so the processing of your order gets delayed behind all the incoming prime orders until its priority catches up due to longer elapsed time
They obviously have some metric that if you buy something, you’re likely to buy something again within two days so by holding the first shipment until you do the second purchase, they combine shipping and save costs.
I cancelled Prime last year after getting fed up with Amazon in several ways. Bringing ads to Prime Video was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I do still end up ordering from time to time, and the checkout process for non-Prime members is horrific. Multiple Prime sign-up offers that I always need to carefully read so I don’t click the wrong thing, illogical default shipping options, with more tricks to try and…
> I don’t know why any non-Prime customer would want to sign up At least for me, it's easy -- the Prime credit card, which has no extra fee beyond Prime itself. I get 5-7% back, instead of the 1-2% with my other credit cards. It literally pays for itself and more over the course of a year. The faster shipping is just a bonus. And I'm not buying junk I don't need either. It's literally just regular toiletries, my norm…
You still get 3% back on that card without prime on amazon fwiw.
I would have assumed their downfall would have been "free 2 day shipping" since it takes about 4 days for me to get anything from them.
They have an answer for that: "Shipping is 2 day." That doesn't mean it will be shipped as to arrive within two days from ordering, but when we ship it (which may be that day, or may be three days later) you'll get it within 2 days...
> harmed by their deceptive Prime enrollment practices I'm still confused by this part. I didn't use Prime for a long time. I remember lots of buttons inviting me to sign up, just like YouTube asks me weekly if I want to subscribe to premium. But I don't remember anything seemingly deceptive, and none of the news articles seem to actually provide any details. So what precisely was deceptive? And even the cancellation…
This is the resolution of a years-old FTC case against Amazon, which included an internal program called "Project Iliad" to lower cancellation rates by increasing the number of steps involved, among other things. The cancellation process has changed between the initial filing and now.
I cancelled Prime last year after getting fed up with Amazon in several ways. Bringing ads to Prime Video was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I do still end up ordering from time to time, and the checkout process for non-Prime members is horrific. Multiple Prime sign-up offers that I always need to carefully read so I don’t click the wrong thing, illogical default shipping options, with more tricks to try and…
Prime ain't what it used to be. Used to be reliably 2nd day delivery, by a real shipping company, and good movies added, etc. Now it's as slow as "free" delivery, by a random contractor who does God knows what to the package, and prices aren't even better than Walmart or Target on many things. The "avoid subscribing to prime" shuffle you have to do to even order anything anymore drives me away too, I only use Amazon…
Amazon delivery in LA is incredibly fast, frequently it says "will be delivered by 4am"
I hate Amazon, not encouraging anyone, but LA is a special zone.
apart from the free shipping aspect, do they actually delay shipping non prime orders if you live in a metro area? The whole FedEx business model originally was not "you pay extra for overnight" (which you would) but actually "because we deliver everything overnight, we don't need warehouses and all our rolling stock is empty every day, so it's cheaper for us"
I cancelled Prime last year after getting fed up with Amazon in several ways. Bringing ads to Prime Video was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I do still end up ordering from time to time, and the checkout process for non-Prime members is horrific. Multiple Prime sign-up offers that I always need to carefully read so I don’t click the wrong thing, illogical default shipping options, with more tricks to try and…
Prime ain't what it used to be. Used to be reliably 2nd day delivery, by a real shipping company, and good movies added, etc. Now it's as slow as "free" delivery, by a random contractor who does God knows what to the package, and prices aren't even better than Walmart or Target on many things. The "avoid subscribing to prime" shuffle you have to do to even order anything anymore drives me away too, I only use Amazon…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Home Depot reuses SKUs for different products. When they fulfill an order from a local store it's a gamble if you're going to get the item you wanted. You also can't exchange those orders online and are forced to go to the same store it came from.
Best feature for home depot (and lowes) is that you can always constrain your query to the store. And when you do this, each product's page will show the the aisle and row the item is located at. (yes, I know the smartphone app will help you here but 100% of smart phone apps are bad, as are those who recommend them) Just spend a few minutes writing down your items & aisles and go visit the store. Trust me, it's bette…
Then, I optimize my trip around the store to never double back.
It's worth it.