691–700 of 871 posts
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I'm not saying Alexa would be used more, but what if it confirmed with you on either the quantity or the last quantity of the item you ordered? "The same order of Tide Pods as last time?"
Except then you have to wonder if the price changed. Or if something else about the listing changed.
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I had to do a double take a few weeks ago when I found the price/unit to be drastically different for the name brand to the store brand of something, until I realized they strategically switched the (# to oz I think it was) to make the store brand look astronomically cheaper instead of just slightly cheaper.
> strategically More like deceptively... If a person did that, I would consider the behavior antisocial.
This is sneaky as hell.
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The problem is it's completely undiscoverable. You can tell Alexa "play some music" because you're pretty sure one of these linguists added a rule for that. But can you tell it "play me a song that lasts longer than 5 minutes"? Doubtful. The only way to know is to try it. The problem is the space of possible commands is waaaaay bigger than the space of commands you can manually handle, which means if you just randoml…
It’s worse than that. These systems can be adapted by looking at failed user commands, but people don’t really sit around trying out fun things and watch it fall on its face for longer than the first day or so. After that, the novelty wears off, so you’ve trained your users to accept the device’s limitations. Then, even when you do improve the functionality, your users won’t know! They won’t try it, and those command…
Isn't this what thumbs-up/down RL is for? To improve the quality of the results.
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The fact that a retailer is willing to accept it despite not being forced to is absolutely the result of capitalism. If they don't, you buy from a competitor. This is not some hypothetical. People in the US routinely choose retailers based on their service experience. In any case, the overall retail experience is much better on west side of the Atlantic and prices are generally better too, without the need of too man…
But, the usual case is that the major companies in the market collude to strip away these kind of offerings, as "free unconditional returns" hurts bottom line of all companies in the market. This is the real power of capitalism. Think about it, for example the TV sector: All companies colluded to reduce the selection of TVs to "Smart" TVs only. I can't just go and buy from a competitor, because it simply does not exi…
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This is fun. The person you’ve replied to has stated a concrete (what they perceive to be) benefit of consumer protection regulation. One that doesn’t seem to limit choice at all, but rather improves visibility. I’m also inserting my own personal experience here. The country I live in, which isn’t in Europe, has similar regulation in place. In response you’re throwing around some vague notion of “freedom” and vague i…
I tried to book a small-group (~12 people) conference room at a US hotel and when I asked for a flipchart, they added "resort fees" and a $200 staff "service fee" to bring the flipchart into the room. This was on top of renting me the flipchart for $107 for 6 hours.
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This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…
You lost me when you said their processes for books was "fine" -It may be good in some ways, but my experience of how they wrap it for consumer use is a giant mass of anti-patterns. Charles Dickens should be the top match on the actual author, or at the very least biographies. But no. Amazon want us to go to "in the style of" or "related to a series which tangentially discussed Oliver twist" linkages "for your conven…
The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…
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This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…
To be fair, Amazon didn't create this. Even supermarkets position products at different height to steer their sales, and the majority of customers grab the laundry detergent from the mid-shelf with the most sensational pricing-tag. A specific book is also a far more unique product than i.e. "laundry detergent". To be comparable, you would have to compare laundry detergent to a genre of books, and maybe also the publi…
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The crazy thing to me is that you’re confused about this. These companies make huge margin fooling consumers who aren’t paying attention. Nearly all the consumers I know are barely conscious, the first promoted link on Amazon is the one they buy. Losing customers like you who actually inspect the listed price is a pittance to the Amazon machine. How much time have you spent in physical stores observing the physically…
It's absurd that you have to become a being of continuous price comparison in order to be considered conscious. This is predatory behaviour loaded with decades of psychological research around manipulation strategies to increase purchases (e.g. price anchoring, physical positioning on shelves, store layout). These things only work because of innate human biases and cognitive defects. The idea that anyone less than a…
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To add to your point, one can't even pick out a brand-name product directly from Amazon's website and be sure of getting the real thing.
These days, you can't even pick out a brand-name product from a brick and mortar store and be sure of getting the real thing. People will buy something from a store, buy a fake version of that thing on AliExpress, swap the fake into the box, re-shrinkwrap the box, return the shrinkwrapped fake to the store, and sell the real one on eBay. The store will often put the thing back on the shelf, because it's still shrinkw…
Amazon put tons of stuff back on the shelf. It’s not quite as bad as Fry’s Electronics where every single thing they sold had obviously been opened and shrink up, but it’s getting close.