Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#271

Post by SoftTalker » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #217

driverdan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care about providing your credit card number to order something? You're not liable for fraud and most banks will replace the card quickly. In 25 years of having credit cards and using them extensively online I've had them compromised only a few times. It's really not something to worry about.

"not punching in my credit card number to random sites" Not sure about OP, but for me it's about convenience. My pet peeve is credit card forms. Do you know what % of websites I've used that have at least minorly broken credit card forms? It's literally 99%. Random common issues that are annoying but can be fixed: - autocomplete doesn't work at all - autocomplete only fills in half the fields - autocomplete only fill…

Sounds like the real problem is autocomplete. Do what I do, disable it. I never have autocomplete issues on websites.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#272

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

n144q wrote: post #138

nine_k wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough? Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.

Do you actually care that much about fast delivery? My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35. If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go to a store to buy it. This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer impulse purchases. What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often takes 5 calendar days. But AliE…

Why the incredulity?

Yes, people often care about delivery time.

Most of the time, if I'm buying something, it is because I need it for a project, trip, or event. If I could buy it at a store today I would.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#273

Post by Symbiote » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #46

0xEF wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the tone of your comment, I agree with you in a way, but I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live. The US suburbs don't really have what I would call "local stores," just big, well known corporate stores. So, when making the choice of where to buy Product X, my options are giving my money to Best Buy, Walmart, Ikea, Kroger, etc...or Jeff Bezos, whose online empire offers slightly more conv…

> I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live I live in the center of London and out of the 200 non-household goods orders I have on Amazon this year I don't think I would have been able to find even 20% of them in local stores. Actually even when I do go in a store and find an item I need, I scan the barcode on the Amazon app and saw that it's usually a LOT cheaper on Amazon (like, 30% cheaper for th…

I live in the centre of Copenhagen, and haven't ordered anything from Amazon for a decade — on principle.

I have ordered from online retailers in Denmark, and I've made 2 orders from AliExpress, and a few more from eBay.

Can you give five items you can't buy in central London, but can buy from Amazon?

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#274

Post by l72 » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #46

0xEF wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the tone of your comment, I agree with you in a way, but I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live. The US suburbs don't really have what I would call "local stores," just big, well known corporate stores. So, when making the choice of where to buy Product X, my options are giving my money to Best Buy, Walmart, Ikea, Kroger, etc...or Jeff Bezos, whose online empire offers slightly more conv…

> I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live I live in the center of London and out of the 200 non-household goods orders I have on Amazon this year I don't think I would have been able to find even 20% of them in local stores. Actually even when I do go in a store and find an item I need, I scan the barcode on the Amazon app and saw that it's usually a LOT cheaper on Amazon (like, 30% cheaper for th…

I think what shocks me most here is that in a single year, you have placed 200 orders.

What is it that you buy online or offline? I just can't imagine making a purchase every other day, especially if you aren't including groceries...

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#275

Post by Symbiote » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #84

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon in europe went "untaxed" quite a while via the irish route, thus beeing subsidized by mom & pop stores.

Amazon employing people creates a lot of taxes. Don't forget everything's taxed, not just corporation tax. Every employee generates income tax, employee tax, if they invest their money the interest is taxed, almost everything they buy from a shop has VAT, fuel they purchase is taxed, everything they buy has a higher price because that business has to pay tax and so do its employees, ad infinitum. There's tax everywhe…

The local stores also employ people. They also pay business taxes that Amazon avoids.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#276

Post by maccard » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #174

nine_k wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough? Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.

Prime delivery is rarely 2 day anymore, and Walmart/HD/Target often match or beat it. And you still get free shipping over $35 which covers most anything else. Prime is too heavily tied to video now, which is a $0 value for me.

Prime is almost always next day, occasionally same day delivery for me, FWIW. B&Q (home depot equivalent in the UK) can occasionally be the same as ordering off of aliexpress.

In the UK, the only place that I've found beats Amazon for delivery is Argos. For some utterly insane reason, they do their own delivery logistics from my nearest store and it can only be a fleet of vans sitting waiting for an online order to come in. I've _regularly_ had orders delivered in about 15 minutes from them (which is about how long it takes to drive to the nearest store).

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#277

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #248

greesil wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage != Livable wage I don't think it's worth considering the comparison. But sure, maybe working at a distribution center pays well enough where you're located. Likely that's not the case where these strikes are happening. It's expensive out there. Also, what you wrote gives the impression of "I've got mine already so I don't care what happens to you."

Define what a livable wage is then. Is it $25/hr? $50/hr? $100/hr?

It’s not like this is an unstudied concept.

Here is one calculator: https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#278

Post by jimmydddd » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

lobsterthief wrote: post #218

asah wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Amazon cuts delivery times, improves reliability and makes returns 10x easier.

Making me drive 20 mins to Whole Foods to deliver some items, and wait in a line where there’s one kiosk, has completely turned me off of Amazon. This is probably by design, but I don’t return a whole lot.

Mine is 5 minutes away. Two kiosks plus a person is always on site. The most I've ever had to wait for the person is 30 seconds -- all they do is scan the QR code and take the item. So I guess it's YMMV.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#279

Post by ThunderSizzle » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

billy99k wrote: post #240

okokhacker wrote: post #223

I’m not sure why the general sentiment here is that Amazon workers do not deserve a living wage and should be replaced with robots. All the best to the union, I sincerely hope they meet your demands.

Amazon warehouse work pays almost $20/hour where I live, which is well above the federal minimum wage and more than almost every other company in the area for this type of work. This is a living wage. "should be replaced with robots" I also think it's funny we are having this discussion. When songwriters and other creators were complaining about piracy in the 2000s, the general response from the tech community was th…

A livable wage is a wage a husband can make to raise a family, including housing, food, transportation, schooling, etc.

$20/hr is about $40k/yr. Using 30% towards housing, that means they can only denote $12/yr to housing, or $1k/month. At current interest rates, that translates to a $150,000 house.

What can you get for $150? There's nothing in any area I've looked that was actually habitable ever since the government's COVID debacle.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#280

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #246

okokhacker wrote: post #223

I’m not sure why the general sentiment here is that Amazon workers do not deserve a living wage and should be replaced with robots. All the best to the union, I sincerely hope they meet your demands.

> I’m not sure why the general sentiment here is that Amazon workers do not deserve a living wage and should be replaced with robots These are two entirely unrelated issues. If the world doesn't need a particular task to be done by humans, then the task should be performed by robots. Until that happens, the workers should be treated humanely.

> If the world doesn't need a particular task to be done by humans, then the task should be performed by robots.

The problem is, our society isn't ready for that shift, not even close. Employment opportunities for the low skilled have all but gone down the drain - there is a reason why Walmart, Amazon and the other usual suspects love to set up shop in devastated communities: they have a captive audience that has no other realistic opportunities for gainful employment and thus is much, much less likely to resist when faced with exploitative and/or abusive conditions.

Warehouse work and logistics in general is the last employment opportunity many of these people have, and while it being replaced by robots may be better for society as a whole (if one follows the belief that all work should be done by machines so that humans can follow their individual interests), just standing by idling around while the markets enforce the shift is going to be a political disaster.