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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#261

Post by sillysaurusx »

djeastm wrote: post #180
sillysaurusx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use yours for? Mine’s little more than a fancy voice-activated light switch. Fully agree on the point about not shopping through Alexa. Basic questions are misinterpreted in sometimes hilarious ways.

I have enough Echoes to cover my whole place within speaking distance and they serve as fancy voice-activated light switches and also timers, radios/music/podcast players (via Spotify) and calculators/measurement converters. They also provide local weather alerts and let me know when an Amazon package has arrived, both of which are nice. But whenever it tries to sell me anything, I get annoyed

Thanks for mentioning the Amazon package alert. I hadn’t set mine up.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#262

Post by aragonite »

gortok wrote: post #174
jprete wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point, one can't even pick out a brand-name product directly from Amazon's website and be sure of getting the real thing.

I ordered automated cat feeders and had bought the “honey guaridan [sic]” which is a Chinese knockoff when I thought I was buying “HoneyGuardian” brand automated cat feeders. This is blatant behavior on the part of sellers and Amazon turns a blind-eye to it. I didn’t learn my lesson either. I ordered seat covers, and what came was a misspelled Chinese knockoff brand instead of the name brand I thought I was ordering.…

> I ordered automated cat feeders and had bought the “honey guaridan [sic]” which is a Chinese knockoff when I thought I was buying “HoneyGuardian” brand automated cat feeders.

I have to admit that's hilarious, but I'm pretty sure HoneyGuarDIan (correct spelling) too is a Chinese company, based in Shenzhen.[1] Edit: Actually I'm increasingly convinced HoneyGuarDIan and HoneyGuarIDan are the exact same company: take a closer look at the URL https://www.honeyguardian.com/pages/honeyguaridan-app and compare the second-level domain name with the last part of the URL pathname! Maybe it wasn't a knockoff after all :-D

[1] Go to https://www.honeyguardian.com/pages/honeyguaridan-app and click either of the appstore links to see the company name (Shenzhen Hailong Zhizao, whose corporate website is at https://www.pdpets.com/)

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#263

Post by [deleted] »

paxys wrote: post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

[deleted]

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#264

Post by zyberzero »

mschuster91 wrote: post #238
booi wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

Vote for politicians that campaign on consumer protection legislation. Here in Europe, it's been mandatory to show a price related to a reasonable common base point (e.g. liter, kilogram, piece, usage-unit for laundry detergent) adjacent to the actual product's price for many years now. You can go and use 1/10/100 grams/milliliters though for small scale packages where that is reasonably common (e.g. spices), and tha…

Fun fact: my local store uses different units for the comparisons. Not that you can choose from that many different units, but for example brand A corn flakes comparison price is price/serving while brand B corn flakes is compared by price/kg. Sure, the serving is based on weight but I still need to do some math to figure out which one is cheaper :)

This is one of the biggest food chains in Sweden.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#265

Post by pj_mukh »

paxys wrote: post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

What I want is a truly personal assistant (which LLM's should be capable of). Alexa can barely get me answers to google-able questions.

If I could be assured of privacy issues, I'd be happy to give it access to my email, calendar, bank accounts etc. and then let me just use it like a Chief of Staff.

I know another company is going to come do this, but it's crazy that that company may not be Alexa/Google.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#266

Post by ghaff »

booi wrote: post #220
crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

It'd not even that I care much about small deviations--I just don't trust that something really crazy won't happen if I put it on autopilot. If I walk into Walmart and grab a big armful of Bounty I'm fairly confident things will be fine.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#267

Post by flatline »

S0y wrote: post #113

>Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. “We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer,” said a former senior employee. That's actually really funny to read. Just last night I was watching my brother cook and he asked Alexa to set a timer (It's pretty much the only thing he uses it for...) I jokingly said "You know, that's a really expen…

I use it as a timer and to control a couple smart lights. About 1 in 5 times I use it as a basic utility, it attempts to sell me something. I have nearly stopped using it altogether as a result of this unwanted behavior.

As an added annoyance, I moved states and it reports the weather in my previous location, despite repeated attempts to update my home location through the app. So I don’t even ask it the weather any more.

At one point it was the cheapest whole-home, multi-speaker audio setup on the market. But I use spotify as the music source.

None of these things generate revenue for Amazon, and their feeble attempts to do so run counter to the actual utility of the device.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#268

Post by usrusr »

fantasybuilder wrote: post #183
chaostheory wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind ordering only made sense when Amazon customer service was top notch. That ended when Amazon started having profitable quarters and started Day Two. Now I have to be paranoid about checking product details like if there are 3rd party sellers using FBA which potentially signals fakes. There’s no longer blind trust in Amazon for a lot of customers. I can’t just mindlessly buy stuff with the hope that Amazon custom…

I can't come up with a single item that I would blind order. At most, I could ask Alexa to add an item to a shopping list and then verify the list and place the order myself.

I could come up with a few. And they are all sold exclusively by IKEA.

Never occurred to me before that vertical integration can be a positive factor in consumer trust. Usually I see myself girly in the camp of "oh noes! Sooner or later they will use it against us!"

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#269

Post by playingalong »

hibikir wrote: post #160
paxys wrote: post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

I'd be happy ordering with a voice assistant if it's at least as good as I am at deciding good alternatives. Imagine I want to, say, purchase garbage bags, because I am out. It's not exactly a complicated product, and yet I might care about whether it has any smell reduction agents, whether the bag is tough enough, the size, and possible alternatives that are either a bit better, or quite a bit cheaper. Either the ag…

The system could simply default to whatever I picked the latest (or same brand).

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#270

Post by NickC25 »

swozey wrote: post #240
AlexandrB wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Costco is like the opposite of the Amazon experience. Costco will only carry a few brands of any given item, but they're all generally pretty good with nothing drop-shipped from a random AliExpress vendor. Their house brand - Kirkland - is pretty good as well. It's a curated set of products with a relatively small number of SKUs vs. Amazon's flea-market-like experience.

Costco really needs to get new products in or I don't think it will do well with genz and younger millennials. I hadn't been to a Costco since I was a kid so I had completely forgotten that the only stock (maybe) a few versions of specific items. I went a year or two ago thinking I'd come home with months worth of groceries and I was shocked that it STILL looked like the inside of a 1990s fridge and cabinet with such…

if you want healthier juice....buy a juicer and make it yourself. You're never going to get healthy options from a wholesaler who buys from massive brands that are not known for healthy options. Long term, making it yourself is cheaper too.

Most of the time in the juice space, anything that is designed to be shelf-stable in a warehouse is not. at. all. healthy. It's packed with preservatives and other stabilizers that are not good for you to consume. Or it has been pasteurized, which kills the vast majority of the nutrients in the liquid itself.

I will say as a caveat, that the Kirkland Signature Organic Coconut Water is quite good.

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