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Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

businessinsider.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#141

Post by WaltPurvis »

stevenmays wrote: post #129
MattGaiser wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend at Amazon and they say absenteeism among employees is through the roof. They can neither hire nor keep the employees they do have.

Unemployment compensation is high, so the incentive to show up to work has decreased. They can solve this problem by paying more, although wage increases are hard to turn back time on. Maybe they should consider "hazard pay" during the pandemic.

You can't collect unemployment if you just decide to stop showing up for work. Unless Amazon formally lays you off (and Amazon hasn't laid off anybody) or you fall into one of the very specific categories of COVID-related exceptions, you're eligible for $0 in unemployment.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#142

Post by unethical_ban »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #117
bedhead wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to provide basis for any of these claims.

Sure: everyone I know almost exclusively uses Amazon (20-40 age bracket) aside from the grocery store, so Amazon clearly can't be as bad as HN's Chicken Littles suggest. If only my friends read HN to know how useless Amazon was!

One final comment on this thread for me:

I don't think people are saying "Amazon is useless" or "Amazon is going to go out of business".

They are bloated with Chinese knock-offs. No name brands that are all the same thing with a different sticker and a bribe to offer a 5-star review. Listings are manipulated to get max reviews. There is so much wrong with trying to find consistent brands and any quality.

That said, if you want knock-off stuff that may work as well as you expect for the price, it's not bad. When the pandemic isn't here, you have quick shipping on everything. And certainly, many other stores have inferior navigation to Amazon.

One more time: No one is saying Amazon is going anywhere or that it sucks for everything. For the goal of looking for non-Chinese crap, though, it has regressed significantly.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#143

Post by WaltPurvis »

emmp wrote: post #138
hansthehorse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Florida unemployment is a max of 235 dollars for a max of 12 weeks. Nobody is going on unemployment for a raise here.

In normal times, true. However unemployment insurance has been significantly boosted by the CARES act during the pandemic

Even with the CARES act, Amazon employees can't just quit their jobs and choose to collect unemployment instead. People who quit their jobs aren't eligible for unemployment.

There are a few exceptions under the CARES act if you can't work because of something directly related to COVID, e.g., if you're a parent who has to take care of children because schools are closed. Being afraid you might catch the coronavirus at work is not a valid reason and would not make you eligible for unemployment payments.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#144

Post by loeg »

admax88q wrote: post #102
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

I find this odd. I read these sorts of comments every time Amazon in mentioned on HN, how its literally only clones, fakes, and scams, and impossible to find legitimate products anymore. I have literally never received a fake/clone/scam off amazon, and I can't explain that discrepancy. I personally only buy things that are sold or fulfilled by amazon, never shipped by third party sellers, but surely everyone else as…

I'm in maybe a similar boat, except I've gotten exactly one thing that was later determined to be a fake (and AMZN refunded).

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#145

Post by [deleted] »

admax88q wrote: post #102
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

I find this odd. I read these sorts of comments every time Amazon in mentioned on HN, how its literally only clones, fakes, and scams, and impossible to find legitimate products anymore. I have literally never received a fake/clone/scam off amazon, and I can't explain that discrepancy. I personally only buy things that are sold or fulfilled by amazon, never shipped by third party sellers, but surely everyone else as…

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#146

Post by SkyBelow »

admax88q wrote: post #102
WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

I find this odd. I read these sorts of comments every time Amazon in mentioned on HN, how its literally only clones, fakes, and scams, and impossible to find legitimate products anymore. I have literally never received a fake/clone/scam off amazon, and I can't explain that discrepancy. I personally only buy things that are sold or fulfilled by amazon, never shipped by third party sellers, but surely everyone else as…

>I have literally never received a fake/clone/scam off amazon, and I can't explain that discrepancy.

Shopping patterns?

I buy a lot of things, not just for myself but as gifts for a large family. I have found some areas are so filled with scams that I no longer buy items from those areas on Amazon. Other areas (which make up the majority) I have no problem at all, at worst getting a slightly delayed or damaged box.

Any sort of name brand small electronic was a scam more times than not to the point now I no longer order them off Amazon. But books, board games, or video games have been 100% what I payed for. As far as I can tell I've never received a fake Amiibo, though a few times I never had it delivered and had to call for a refund. Even my few orders of used electronics have been good (though I never did get around to converting my used PS Vita into an emulation center).

Food is good too, but I rarely buy it and only for a few specific items as most other things are far too overpriced. Mainly I order tea and I pay close attention to who is filling the order.

Gardening supplies are probably the most mixed bag of the bunch. Often enough I don't get the seeds I order but it can sometimes be fun to see what actually does spout up.

Result: A few areas: 90%+ rip offs. A few other areas: 50/50. Most areas: 100% good.

As a side note, on anything I buy I go read the 1 star reviews and skip if they mention fakes or if there aren't any at all.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#147

Post by bdcravens »

ethagknight wrote: post #109

My theory: Prime, and its 2-day shipping service, is a flat rate deal, priced according to 10.5 normal months and 1.5 batshit crazy delivery months. Since they can't charge on a demand basis for shipping like FedEx can, they've run into an internal train wreck where they can't afford to deliver all the orders the've received. So their bottleneck is actually a bottleneck of budgeted "delivery slots" for these Spring m…

Amazon is still delivering "non-essential" items, or else, what they consider "essential" is extremely broad. I use Amazon a lot - I've had energy drinks, candy, a radio wiring harness, fitness (Pilates) equipment, paper plates, pre-printed eBay thank you cards, a flood light, and more all delivered in the last few weeks, most of which arrived inside of the Prime window.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#148

Post by dan-robertson »

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

I’ve had an annoying time with books too. In particular with ordering a book which is not particularly common and getting something that was printed on demand. The quality has been terrible, much worse than something offset printed. But I’ve heard that Amazon’s print on demand offering produced pretty good quality books so maybe this is an issue with the sellers of the books I’ve bought. Obviously I notice bad printing but don’t really notice good printing

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#149

Post by bdcravens »

ethagknight wrote: post #133
ethagknight wrote: post #109

My theory: Prime, and its 2-day shipping service, is a flat rate deal, priced according to 10.5 normal months and 1.5 batshit crazy delivery months. Since they can't charge on a demand basis for shipping like FedEx can, they've run into an internal train wreck where they can't afford to deliver all the orders the've received. So their bottleneck is actually a bottleneck of budgeted "delivery slots" for these Spring m…

One more little note: I can't think of any other stores that have had to make a similar claim of 'focusing on the essentials.' At the other end of the spectrum, my local Costco has been fantastically stocked at all times except for the few super-demand items like toilet paper and soap.

Chewy has been delaying delivery (they usually are two day deliveries). I've noticed some items take longer than others, and it seems to be on a priority basis (a poop rake set took longer than prescription medication, for example; like 2 weeks vs 2 days)

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#150

Post by toasterlovin »

arkades wrote: post #9
sytelus wrote: post #4

This is quite significant given market is very bullish on Amazon (Goldman is just all over it). The expectations are set sky high to do well during these times. But if you look at things as consumer, it doesn't look so good. Personally, I've significantly less orders on Amazon these days because of huge delivery times. Sure, orders for "essentials" might have gone up but can that offset the gap? Also, sellers are ver…

Delivery times are up because of the volume of business. As essentials business falls down (or 'if', if people get used to using Amazon over their local store), delivery times will fall as well. This isn't a meaningful long-term criticism.

FWIW, I think that several things are getting confused in Amazon's messaging. A while back, Amazon shut down inbound shipments of non-essential items (since opened back up, but with quantity limitations on a case-by-case basis). I think people mis-interpreted this to mean that they were shutting down outbound shipments of non-essentials. But that was not the case. Then, as my sibling commenter mentions: you can't even buy essential items right now, so they can't be over capacity in general because of shipments of essential items.

My take is that they are experiencing something akin to holiday season levels of sales, but that they're not staffed for that kind of volume, since it's spring. So they temporarily shut down inbound shipments of non-essentials so that they could free up warehouse staff for outbound shipments in general. If this is correct, then I think their delivery times are dependent on two things: 1. how quickly they can staff up for the increased volume, and/or 2. how quickly and to what degree retail spending shifts back to physical stores. But demand for essentials returning to normal will probably not make a difference.

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