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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

311–320 of 572 posts

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#311

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huh. What's the product listing? I don't think this story rings true.

Amazon also did this with diapers.com They are notorious for doing this.

https://archive.is/2020.07.29-212026/https://www.bloomberg.c...

>“We have already initiated a more aggressive ‘plan to win’ against diapers.com,” longtime Amazon retail executive Doug Herrington apparently wrote in an email released by the committee. “To the extent that this plan undercuts the core diapers business for diapers.com, it will slow the adoption of Soap.com,” another company owned by Quidsi.

>Herrington called Quidsi Amazon’s No. 1 short-term competitor. “We need to match pricing on these guys no matter what the cost,” he said in the email.

I bet Quidsi was also selling the diapers at a loss since they were using UPS and Fedex, so not sure what the difference is if Amazon sells diapers at a loss or Quidsi was selling diapers at a loss.

The innovation would have been in the logistics buildout, which Quidsi obviously wasn’t doing.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#312

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This comment completely misunderstands why NYC (and the core of most major cities) is not impressed by a supermarket. Wegmans is popular because Wegmansnis good. But if you have a local baker, a local grocer, a local deli, and a small grocery store within the same block, all within walking distance of your apartment, you don’t need to deal with the hassles of finding stuff within a massive supermarket. You get the hi…

> Further, when you don’t have to drive 20-30 mins to go to a grocery store but the stores you need are within a 5 min walk, Once you get used to have everything at a walking distance, you wonder how you could put up with having to drive to a supermarket. Two are the main advantages. The first is that you don't need to plan much in advance. Want to make hamburger tonight ? Cross the street, get meat from the butcher,…

I'm a Costco booster, and I have storage space. One of the greatest feelings for me is returning from a Costco and knowing I have enough in the house to last a month for a family of four.

But your second point is spot-on: this strategy has to be augmented by weekly (or more) runs to get fresh food. I like to make fried rice with vegetables, so having a local market is essential.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#313
Amazon Fresh provided lots of good jobs in my community. Family members worked there. Good pay and they employed locally (or can walk to work). Same with whole foods. Too bad Amazon couldn't make it work. Interesting timing with their push for more online grocery offerings.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#314

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I'm not aware of any Amazon product lines or organizations that specializes in devices for truckers. Can you provide a listing?

There's no listing. The story is made up. While the general premise is true (big company will try to rip off small company), Amazon doesn't have the magical power to get around patent law and the economic penalties are fairly harsh, which is why most companies don't do it. And no war chest of tech patents is going to get Amazon around a patent in the trucking industry because the inventor of the trucking gizmo couldn…

Amazon currently sells fake fuses that have probably already killed people.

Amazon cares just slightly more about breaking the law then they about killing people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#315

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> operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores Wouldn't surprise me. I know a guy who invented a device for truckers that became ubiquitous in truck stops across the US. This would've been like 2014. He refused to sell on Amazon, so Amazon duped his product and sold it at something crazy, like half price, until he agreed to list (at which point they dropped their…

Did he have a patent?

I just looked it up - yes, and far in advance of the timeframe

This is (or was) a very small business. An office and a warehouse, basically.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#316

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This is basically the playbook of every "disruptive technology" startup or FAANG initiative of a similar stripe - set prices incredibly low to bleed out competition and gain market share, then raise them once you are in the dominant market position.

Nobody on this forum believes in startups or technology anymore.

Heck, Elon's ownership of SpaceX even got to me to not really care about space travel anymore, one of my biggest passions since I was 6. But I just can't root for whatever his vision of space faring society would look like.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#318
post #305

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Yeah I agree that it can potentially go wrong but in my experience here in east TN the machines have gotten better to the point that hasn't happened for me in the past few years. Also it seems like the "just walk out" process would have more potential error modes but I never visited one.

I've had three failures in the last week. I had the "thought my bag was product" problem, the "I somehow double scanned" problem and the "need a reset but no one can explain why." The first and third were on the same visit.

Interesting! Thanks for the reality check. I personally like the home depot ones with the very prominent handheld scanner for big items. Hopefully it will keep improving. The days of waiting in line to check out were terrible and I don't want to go back.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#319

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Do people really have problems with self-checkout? I use it all the time in box stores like Kroger, Walmart, Home Depot, etc. It seems to work just fine for me and doesn't add more than a minute or two vs just walking out of the store.

If you find value in it, that's fine. I not only find value with interaction with the lovely checkout people, I dislike the cost of scanning and managing the items during checkout being my problem so a huge company can save money. If they were to implement a discount as a way to say "we'll pay you for your work to give us your money" I would consider it. That's not to say the value of the convenience is never worth i…

Yeah true. I do enjoy visiting with the cashiers but I don't love waiting in line.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#320
post #26

Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief? I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontin…

Loved the Go store in Chicago (Ogilvy), had some great lunch options and even a take home "dinner for two" bag of premade ingredients.
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