Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

Post by GoldenMonkey » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 8:50 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #308

Retric wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t seem to be very concerned about injuries. One example that comes to mind is storing 40 lb bags of dog food such that people had to duck and lean over and drag them under a low shelf, that’s practically designed to cause back injuries and in fact caused multiple in a single warehouse.

Yeah but are they actually worse than the competition though? The whole industry is rife with that kind of crap (not like you're expect otherwise for a razor thin margin industry). I once worked somewhere they'd crib between the ground level pallets and first level racking so they could overload the racking (but my immediate manager was good and they put me on a forklift so I didn't care). If anything the dehumanizin…

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 8:52 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #378

rcme wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the sins of Amazon are any worse than most other major U.S. retailers.

> I don't think the sins of Amazon are any worse than most other major U.S. retailers. monopolies are bad, for consumers and for competitors. Even if you build your monopoly "fairly" by inventing a better mousetrap, putting the competition out of business is a reward that that is unfair and does not belong to the owner of the mousetrap. For example, Amazon could be split into 3 smaller Amazon mousetraps that compete…

Post by rat9988 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #324

Retric wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There warehouses are significantly worse than average in terms of injuries per hour. They also frequently sell fraudulent items directly harming consumers. I can’t think of a metric where they aren’t worse than the average retailer.

Injuries per item picked or per capita might be a better metric. It's pretty easy to say the injuries are higher if you have more employees and higher volume than the competitors. Same thing with fraudulent items on Walmart.com.

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #344

gharman wrote: post #307

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Funny thing is I’d bet the small amount trickling in to the long tail charities is more impactful to them than a larger amount to the big mega-charities. I run one of those long tails and Amazon Smile was just right to cover running costs for hosting, bank fees, etc.

Honestly I'm surprised they're doing this; something must have bit them on the paperwork side, because $100-$200 for each tiny charity (think local dog shelter, local church, etc; even if they're 'branded' they're often independent charities) was a cheap advertisement for Amazon. Now that's over.

Post by llanowarelves » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #365

perlgeek wrote: post #274

> "our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin" If that's the supposed reason, I call bullshit. Could've just reduced the number of charities.

Unpopular opinion, but charities are like carbon credits. Most of the money goes into people’s pockets and very less percentage of the donations actually make it towards helping the cause they run on. Very few legitimately use the money in the way we expect it to be used. So I’m okay with them losing $400M.