Is it considered insider trading to short a competitor before making an announcement you suspect will impact them?
Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
321–330 of 333 posts
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
+ I'm wary of Amazon Grocery. We had a bad experience with home delivery 10 years ago and my wife refuses to do it again. For packaged goods and non-perishables it's fine, but with fresh meats and produce it's hit and miss. It may not be failure but I doubt it will kill or disrupt the grocery business.
I never used Grocery, but used Amazon Fresh a few times in recent months. The experience was awful and after 3 orders I went back to just going to a store. Amazon clearly pays their last mile delivery people way under market and it shows. Rude, unprofessional, late and then harass you until you until you fork over a cash tip high enough to make it worth their effort. They also have a strange hangup about getting the…
Maybe, at this stage, Grocery pickup is The right thing to build.
A very convenient experience, and it gets a lot of people doing the order online.
Once you have that, and if you can convince people to get their orders at a fixed weekly window, you get delivery density, which is key at lowering shipping costs.
And as far making delivery times convenient in this method - you need to loan your customers a passively chilled box they can put on their porch, so they can pick the deliveries when they come home.
Maybe Amazon could have done this while skipping pickup. But since it's less convenient , it's hard to convince people to pay more, and maybe competitors are cheaper.
But going straight away to on-demand deliveries, with 2 hour delivery time? Sure, that's crazy.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
From a consumer adoption standpoint, the only thing standing in Amazon Register's way was a lack of marketing. As a merchant, it was amazing. They offered promotional rate of 1.75%, which is basically impossible to beat for any small business. For context, Square and most "simple pay per swipe" merchant service providers charge 2.75%. If you go out and get a really good deal from a intrchange+ provider, you might be…
My credit card cash back is 2.00%, your 1.75% promotional rate was losing them money.
They also make money on the data.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#324What about the environmental impact of the PillPack packaging strategy? http://assets.coolhunting.com/coolhunting/mt_asset_cache/201... (note: above image is of an already mostly empty PP box, they often come stuffed completely full) https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Jz4Xw7Xs-Fxnige1c2qnDlez-c0=... I used PillPack a few years ago, and appreciated the reliable auto-refill (in fact their behavior was borderline insanely…
There are probably ways to create a cleaner packaging system.
But I'm not sure if the plastic problem (a huge one, and I really love nature) will be solved by individual action.
In practice it would require laws, like the anti plastic bag law reduced demand by 70% in the Netherlands.
Or technology, like a better bio-degradable plastic alternative.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but is it worth the trouble? Also, you may be able to build robots to dispense pills. But have you seen a European automated pharmacy supplier? Everything is automated. They dispense all the blister packs into a small cart that gets delivered to the pharmacy. In the end it does not matter if you supply a pharmacy with 2-20 medicines or a consumer with 1-10.
Yes, but is it worth the trouble? The "schedule II drugs" jeherr mentions as being counted twice are things like cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl. i.e. drugs that could be readily sold onto the black market.
While cocaine and methamphetamine are schedule II, those are poor examples. I don’t think pharmacies ever carry them, and their medical use is very rare.
Fentanyl is commonly carried in pharmacies but it’s not a commonly prescribed medication. Better examples would be adderall, vyvanse, norco and oxycontin.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#326Meanwhile, CVS + Walgreens lost $6B in market cap on the news Amazon is moving directly into pharmacy space. It's crazy how competitive Wall Street views Amazon moving into a market; have there been examples of Amazon making a large purchase/move but completely failing? (sure there are, just not coming me off the top of my head)
Seems like in any market where Amazon can reasonably compete with a brick & mortar, Amazon will win... Consider how expensive real estate is these days, especially in urban areas (and how much "millennials" like delivery). It's a solid formula.
But think about how much it costs to have the item physically delivered. There is no way that Amazon can make money on a $10 item that they need to deliver in a two day time frame.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d be utterly shocked if you’re correct. Controlled substances most likely do get some kind of kind of courier delivery, but there’s no reason to do it for anything else. If it needs to stay cold you slap in an insulated box with ice packs. I’ve gotten deliveries before from Blue Apron and Omaha Steaks. Believe me, they have no problem keeping things cold.
You seem to think I'm describing some special courier service. I'm not. I'm describing the standard USPS/UPS/FedEx experience all packages get, which is indeed how most of the stuff a retail pharmacy gets will be shipped. The parent's concern with direct-to-home delivery is valid - the inside of an in-sun mailbox on a 90 degree day is going to well exceed safe thresholds for many medications in a way the rest of the…
I can't speak for the others, but UPS definitely doesn't use climate controlled facilities or well ventilated trucks. In particular the semi trailers that transport packages between facilities are saunas in the summer and ice boxes in the winter after hours on the road.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Carts queues and parking still happen, they're just being hidden from you.
Only with services like Instacart where they literally pay people to go and do your shopping for you. Real, end-to-end grocery services like FreshDirect do not.
Even then, there are trucks that park somewhere and containers of grocery product queueing up to be loaded into them...
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#329Just an FYI. I measured the inside temp of my mailbox in August’s once and it was 150 degrees. You want to be careful getting medications in the mail.
This already a regular thing - see Medco/expressscripts who will mail you items. Additionally Pill pack address this on their website for temp. Controlled teams being shipped in a temp controlled way door to door (see Omaha steaks as an example of ‘it’ll be fine)
My employer recently changed up their prescription drug plan and now we're required to get any and all regular 'maintenance drugs' via expressscripts (we're also now limited to using Walgreens for acute/temp medications - apparently dictating which pharmacies you can use is becoming a thing with medical insurance).
ExpressScripts is absolutely terrible. What once was a simple problem: Get a Rx from your doctor, go to any pharmacy and get it filled, has now become a painful process of:
- Call doctor's office, ask them to send the Rx to express scripts.
- Call express scripts, verify they have the Rx.
- Two days before you run out of medication, you get an automated call from Express scripts telling you to call them back.
- Call Express Scripts, wait on hold for 30 minutes.
- Someone finally tells you that there's a problem with the Rx, and you need to call your doctor and have him re-send the Rx specifiying dosages, etc. in a a very specific way. This is Friday afternoon, of course, and your Doctor's office is already closed.
- When you explain you're going to a miss a dose of a medication that is dangerous to stop suddenly, they absolutely do not care ("You'll have it in 5-7 days, once we receive all the info we need", click).
It isn't just me. I overhear a lot of angry phone calls between employees and express scripts in the cube farm at work now. Employees are wasting work-time dealing with something that used to be simple - getting their prescriptions filled. Hope the shareholders are happy.
Re: Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B
#330What about the environmental impact of the PillPack packaging strategy? http://assets.coolhunting.com/coolhunting/mt_asset_cache/201... (note: above image is of an already mostly empty PP box, they often come stuffed completely full) https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Jz4Xw7Xs-Fxnige1c2qnDlez-c0=... I used PillPack a few years ago, and appreciated the reliable auto-refill (in fact their behavior was borderline insanely…
How many pills were you taking daily? The plastic waste of 4-5 pill bottles a month is quite large. But yes it is wasteful, just like the rest of for-profit healthcare.
I agree; The film pouches used by PillPack look to use significantly less plastic than those orange bottles.