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

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 272 posts

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

#181

Post by barry-cotter »

champagneben wrote: post #172
MattGaiser wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If true, Amazon is selling a service that isn't robust or flexible enough for such a season. Nobody in that area is robust enough for a once in a century pandemic.

Does anyone know how Alibaba and the like have fared in China?

I live in Shanghai. There were two or three weeks after Lunar New Year where deliveries were delayed or more expensive or both for everything and grocery delivery slots were scarce for a month. Things are back to normal with all deliveries now.

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

#182

Post by noncoml »

Those who complain about Amazon should try eBay.

I recently bought a relatively expensive item ($3k) that was being advertised as "New - Open box" one month old item.

What I received was a 5 year old used item. Trying to return it was the most stressful online shopping experience I have ever had.

One you open a return request, eBay gives the seller 5 working days to reply to your request. Seller took advantage of all 5.

When I finally got a return label, the seller left the item waiting for pick up for 3 days, until finally picking it up.

Once picked up, eBay gives seller another 5 working days to issue a refund.

In the mean time there is no way to ask help from eBay. All they do is just close the case asking you to wait.

So for a total of 3-4 weeks I have my money sitting in seller's PayPal account.

At least with Amazon, retail* support is usually pretty good.

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

#184

Post by p1necone »

SkyBelow wrote: post #146
admax88q wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A…

Blind box seeds sounds like an untapped market, I'd buy those!

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

#185

Post by renewiltord »

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…

There are things which are fake and things which aren't. For instance, if you get cologne, it can be nonsense.

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

#186

Post by MattGaiser »

ethagknight wrote: post #174
MattGaiser wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If true, Amazon is selling a service that isn't robust or flexible enough for such a season. Nobody in that area is robust enough for a once in a century pandemic.

Companies that have the ability to price according to the strain on their system, like FedEx and UPS, are presumably far more robust in this scenario. Here's the rub: Amazon Prime is a contract for services at a certain annual price between the customer and Amazon. Amazon cannot easily just ask for more if their end of the deal ends up more costly to deliver than forecasted.

They can just not deliver the service. Amazon Prime doesn't guarantee that any item you want will come in two days.

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

#188

Post by nolok »

noncoml wrote: post #182

Those who complain about Amazon should try eBay. I recently bought a relatively expensive item ($3k) that was being advertised as "New - Open box" one month old item. What I received was a 5 year old used item. Trying to return it was the most stressful online shopping experience I have ever had. One you open a return request, eBay gives the seller 5 working days to reply to your request. Seller took advantage of all…

... And eBay/Paypal won their era's fight because they offered the better experience compared to the others, they were considered the safe and reliable one.

Early web shopping really was wild. And not the good kind.

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

#189

Post by User23 »

ethagknight wrote: post #174
MattGaiser wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If true, Amazon is selling a service that isn't robust or flexible enough for such a season. Nobody in that area is robust enough for a once in a century pandemic.

Companies that have the ability to price according to the strain on their system, like FedEx and UPS, are presumably far more robust in this scenario. Here's the rub: Amazon Prime is a contract for services at a certain annual price between the customer and Amazon. Amazon cannot easily just ask for more if their end of the deal ends up more costly to deliver than forecasted.

It's a tangent, but at the All Hands where Jeff introduced Prime, he made it very clear that it was actually a money loser for the company at that point. He did it anyhow because it satisfied both the customer obsession and the long term growth principles Amazon has followed from the start.

Because of this, I very much doubt that Amazon will mind losing money on Prime member shipping during this pandemic. I wouldn't be shocked if some of the current management made noises in that direction and that was part of what got Jeff to take the reins again.

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

#190

Post by Retric »

MattGaiser wrote: post #140
ethagknight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would fall under the "they can't afford to deliver the orders they have" bucket if they can't find anyone that wants to do the proposed work. If true, Amazon is selling a service that isn't robust or flexible enough for such a season. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

> If true, Amazon is selling a service that isn't robust or flexible enough for such a season. Nobody in that area is robust enough for a once in a century pandemic.

This is still far smaller than other pandemics in the last 100 years. The 1957 "Asian flu" had around 1–4 million dead. AIDS is sitting around 770,000 dead per year and the total is vastly higher etc.

What makes things different about COVID-19 is how people are responding to it in the hope of saving vast numbers of lives.

Post reply on HN