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Amazon Dash Button

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Re: Amazon Dash Button

#651

Post by sytelus »

kristofferR wrote: post #144

This makes me envious of you Americans. Here in Norway online shopping involves finding an online store that sells what you need (there's no site that sells everything, like Amazon, here), going through a cumbersome sign-up/payment process, paying a lot of money for the shipping costs, waiting several days and having to go to the post office unless the package is really small (or if you're willing to pay even more fo…

Most people in US don't realize what Amazon has done to prices in US. I'm too used to prices like $18 Syma 107G RC heli and $50 waterpiks. Other countries are not like that. They have little competition from online shopping and as a result people there usually pay significant premiums. I recently traveled to so-called shopping capital of the world, i.e. Dubai. My expectation was that everything would be cheaper, well, because most of the Dubai is just made for shopping and its even tax free. I was horrified to find things like Syma 107G at $50 and most other stuff at 20%-50% premiums even at "discount" shops. In my foreign travels, I have yet to encounter a place that consistently beats Amazon on prices anywhere close even with best currency conversion rates and even after high sales taxes in US. Most consumers in world have to pay about 30% margins to retailers while people in US gets away with just 3% - thanks to Amazon.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#652

Post by jay_kyburz »

I'm really late to the game on this one, and there are too many places I want to put this comment, so hell, I'll just drop it here at the top level.

This button prevents you from playing the "specials" game.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia, our groceries are put on special once month for a week or so 30-50% off regular retail. (I would love to see this graphed out somewhere.)

I assume the reason is so that, people that don't care how much their groceries cost, or don't have the foresight to buy in advance pay 30-50% more than somebody who buys things when they are on special.

I like to think the special price is the actual price, and the regular price is the suckers price.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#653

Post by wyager »

evanlivingston wrote: post #627
wyager wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why don't we have more free time? Than we did historically? We do. Things that I am forced to do, I do not consider "free time", although for some reason anti-technologists like to consider at-home labor to be "free time", so they can make it look like pre-industrialization people had less work than we do today. That said, with every passing year there is measurably less stuff that I have to waste time doing, mostly…

The question I'm trying to raise is why we consider all the little things necessary for living to be a "waste of time." There's a sad irony in the image of first world citizen who can't waste time cooking so they consume large amounts highly processed ready-made food from places like trader joe's and sits down to watch Game of Thrones for three hours and browse pinterest.

Why do you think that cooking is objectively better than having an expert do the cooking for you?

Many people enjoy e.g. watching TV than cooking, and there's nothing wrong with that. More power to them.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#654

Post by refurb »

run4yourlives2 wrote: post #649
robotresearcher wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no mortgage deduction in Canada. This is a big difference in the finances of many middle class families.

There's no mortgage deduction in US either. There's a mortgage interest deduction, which I'm sure while significant isn't a major variable in this eqaution overall.

Incorrect! Since most mortgage payments are >95% interest in the first few years, you could easily reduce your taxable income by 30-40% without a large mortgage.

You're also forgetting that the US doesn't have a national sales tax or high taxes on gasoline.

I would agree that the highest tax states in the US aren't that different than the lowest tax states in Canada (income tax only), my own person experience tells me that the US, on average, has a much lower tax burden than countries like Canada. And many jobs pay a higher salary.

Also the US brackets kick in at higher incomes. In Canada the highest bracket (29%) is over $136K. In the US, the highest bracket is 35%, but it doesn't kick-in until you earn more than $375K per year.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#655

Post by SoftwareMaven »

chicknbig0 wrote: post #610
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Amazon Prime (required for this, at least for now), you pay one time per year and get free two-day shipping for the year (along with other benefits like Amazon's Netflix-like video service and free delivery of diapers/nappies). With Prime, you generally don't think about combining shipments, since there is no benefit in doing so . Except for those intangible benefits like reducing carbon footprints. I tend to fe…

The cost is at least another box to fold, move along a conveyor belt, fill with padding, attach a label, route for shipping, gas/diesel/electric energy to deliver from end-to-end and waste to recycle.

Those aren't costs I pay. Anything it costs Amazon is absolutely meaningless to me; I've already paid for it in my Prime membership, and I already brought up the point about the intangible costs.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#656

Post by GabrielF00 »

dkrich wrote: post #464
MCRed wrote: post #46

Remember what I was saying yesterday about Amazon throwing things against the wall? Can you see how this idea is ill considered? IT doesn't make much sense. I predict in 5 years nobody will remember this and it will be gone from Amazon's site. But for this press cycle it's PR that makes Amazon look "innovative" and like a "tech company". Just like the Amazon fire phone did... for a little while. How much was wasted o…

I'll add one more to the list- whatever happened to that ridiculous device that sits in your living room and listens to your every word, responding when it happens to hear something it recognizes? I think it was called Echo? Basically everything you get with any modern smartphone, only larger, more expensive, and probably technologically inferior!

How is it more expensive than a modern smartphone? It's $100

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#657

Post by flinty »

scott_s wrote: post #265
mikeash wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's ridiculous just because it clearly involved a lot of effort to solve a problem that doesn't really need solving. The choice isn't between a button and the massive hassle you describe. The choice is between a button and ordering the product on your smartphone in ten seconds, or picking up the product at the grocery store the next time you're there. How often do you need laundry detergent? Every two weeks?…

This button isn't about saving time, it's about preventing the instances of not having something when you need it. The moment when you realize you need more of something is typically when you're using it. If you can literally just hit a button to order more, that's a significant change from having to do something else to order more.

This. The primary purpose is to avoid the pain of not having what you need, and the arguments and bad mood that follows, simply because you didn't add something to a list or thought you would remember to buy but didn't

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#658

Post by Dylan16807 »

xyclos wrote: post #177
lkbm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your two-year-old also turn on your stove burners? That seems a lot more dangerous. Put them out-of-reach. Worst case: they press the buttons anyway and you have to open an app and cancel the orders.

I can easily go behind my two-year-old and switch the burners off. I can't as easily return 42 jugs of Tide and get refunds.

You mean the single jug that was queued upon pressing the button 42 times.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#659

Post by 616c »

hypertexthero wrote: post #455

Harper's Magazine, September 1996: > From an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in the November 1995 issue of Inc. Technology. Vonnegut was asked to discuss his feelings about living in an increasingly computerized world. >> I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this…

And the funny thing, as guy in the IT department, is people come to fart around (Vonnegut's sense, not literally) in our office and chat us up. I get the best of both worlds! Computer at my fingertips, and travel through novice conversationalism!

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#660

Post by r00fus »

freehunter wrote: post #216
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that door-to-door supermarket deliveries are a thing (at least, they are here in the UK) it actually seems that a lot of items would just be more convenient to order on a subscription basis. For example, I'm pretty much always* going to need toilet paper, soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, tea bags, salt, pepper, etc. at about the same rate as I need them now. None of those things will spoil fast enough for it…

Amazon here in the US does that. You can even get a single package of gum sent to you once a week, and you'll get a discount on it. There are other services like ManPacks, Dollar Shave Club, etc that offer subscriptions to everyday essentials.

I like the idea (diapers and UHT milk packets) until they tell me they can't fulfill the order every once in a while (or fulfill it significantly later). I get an email (and not in time to order a replacement elsewhere in time) and have to go about ensuring that I have enough.

If it's not reasonably reliable, it's not really worth subscribing to.

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