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Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

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Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#261

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

bumby wrote: post #190
culi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point is there's not really a way for us to tell which is the "substance". It's all just correlations and it's all just a matter of what aspect you choose to highlight

You don’t think you can isolate variables and analyze effects? For example, you can’t study the opinions of people with high education who live in rural areas?

Group A: College Educated + Urban

Group B: College Educated + Rural

Group C: No post-secondary + Urban

Group D: No post-secondary + Rural

Fairly simple analysis to do, and I suspect (as I think you do) that the trend will align with a split between A/D vs B/C not A/B vs C/D.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#262

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

ferminaut wrote: post #123
saxonww wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had already canceled my Prime membership and started shopping elsewhere. I'm not exactly outraged by this news - although I did always buy through Smile - but I'm now doubly sure Amazon won't be my first choice going forward.

I think a lot of folks can get by without a Prime membership. My prime subscription ended almost a year ago now and I don't miss it. Amazon shipping has got progressively slower as time went on. Prime video is terrible UX with subpar content. At $15 a month it just isnt worth it. I've now opted for the "free" shipping that you get when you spend $25+. Items that I cannot wait for I will buy local, which usually now o…

> Amazon shipping has got progressively slower as time went on.

While there are definitely periods where I would have agreed with you, recently Amazon has seriously increased the % of products which are deliverable same day.

It's also not just for common items. I can buy a thermocouple amplifier board and have it delivered today. It really scratches an itch when you can get components for a project delivered THAT DAY. I could be playing with thermocouples TODAY. Hard to resist.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FZZ2FDK

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#263

Post by bumby »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #261
bumby wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think you can isolate variables and analyze effects? For example, you can’t study the opinions of people with high education who live in rural areas?

Group A: College Educated + Urban Group B: College Educated + Rural Group C: No post-secondary + Urban Group D: No post-secondary + Rural Fairly simple analysis to do, and I suspect (as I think you do) that the trend will align with a split between A/D vs B/C not A/B vs C/D.

Now do it for all the other confounding variables. This is why social science is hard and requires a lot of statistical analysis.

I'm not making any claims one way or another. All I'm saying is knee-jerk assumptions based on a simplified mental model probably isn't a good idea unless you have the data to back it up. (Especially true on complex systems like human value systems).

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#264

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jzb wrote: post #77
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…

But smaller organizations will be missed entirely. My charity is a cat shelter in St. Louis. I’d rather they get my cut than a larger charity that means less to me and has bigger fundraising machinery.

I'd encourage you to ask the shelter how much they get from Amazon Smile. My guess is it's $200-300 max, which is barely enough to save a single cat.

Worse, there is a well-known phenomenon [1] where if people's "guilt" is taken away, then they are less likely to donate overall. That is, for at least some portion of people, they probably mark a small charity as their Amazon Smile recipient and then think "Great, I'm donating to charity!", not realizing their donations are like 50 cents. But if they didn't sign up for Amazon Smile they might be more likely to actually donate a real amount.

To be clear, I'm all for small charities getting money, but I'd almost rather it be like a lottery or something so a smaller number of small charities could get money they could actually do something with.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomi...

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#266

Post by jxramos »

bombcar wrote: post #260
jxramos wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's up with shipping, it's so inconsistent. Are they testing their customers patience or something? It's getting to the point where I'm considering starting a spreadsheet to quantify how poor the experience has been of late.

For me where I am they use UPS and once they actually ship it gets here in a few days, but even prime orders don't seem to bother leaving the warehouse for a week or more (for in-stock things). It's like every order is now "Amazon day orders" or something.

yah they play the whole get a $2 digital credit or whatever for orders. It kind of blurs the expectations too when now it's becoming the norm for things not to meet the 2day shipping expectations that is prime. Things are also blurred in the opposite direction with same day shipping or one day shipping on certain items. It's the inconsistency that's confusing and kind of invites you to stop guessing and just patiently wait like the old days of ordering something through the mail.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#267

Post by hackersgnahack »

ferminaut wrote: post #7
nicklevin wrote: post #2

There were seemingly odd hoops for customers to jump through to have their purchases qualify for Smile. Didn't type in the 'smile' URL? Too bad, no donation for you. One of the oddest was requiring push notifications in order for mobile purchases to count ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233815 ).

I've personally used chrome extension "Smile Always". It automatically converts all amazon links to amazon smile links. This is sad. I am currently at $417.30 in donations to my local charity. Amazon is in denial if they think this hasnt had an impact.

Of course it had an impact. It's guaranteed to just be something that's not seen as 'sexy' internally, and therefore has probably had no-one championing it, and it gathered dust and finally... someone just wanted to kill the code.

I've seen it happen first hand in similar sized companies.

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