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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#781

Post by xeromal »

paxys wrote: post #86

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…

I think they're moving that way with charging for Amazon music. They could just bundle Amazon music and smarthome features into a little package and probably get some sales

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#782

Post by xeromal »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #349
rainbowzootsuit wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This used to be the Sears Kenmore & Craftsman model where appliances were really Whirlpool, or Maytag, Carrier{1}. Hand tools variously came from many OEMs like SK, Plumb, Knipex, and Williams{2}. I suppose they still do, now at Lowes, but the OEM is Chinese. {1} https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/How_to_identify_who_made_your_Ke... {2} https://forum.toolsinaction.com/topic/2118-craftsman-date-co...

The big thing with Sears Craftsman (formerly), and Costco (currently) is that the company will back the product. If I want to return a product to Costco, I have really strong confidence that they will take it back.

I've seen people drop off stained mattresses at Costco for return.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#783

Post by xeromal »

swozey wrote: post #408
dghlsakjg wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Costco in store generally has stuff that tends to follow local consumer preferences. It is worth mentioning that Costco.com does not stock the same things that the physical stores sell, more-so than any other retailer I know of. And different stores have a lot of latitude in what they stock. My nearest store has tons of things like sugar free sodas, pro-biotic soda, kombucha, no sugar added juices, and ju…

Weird, I'm in Denver, pretty healthy crowd here but maybe that Costco is just bad. Nothing like that there.

Yeah, my wife and I always check out the local costco when visiting a city. I can't remember which one it was but I distinctly remember being surprised at all the asian-type foods at one. They had squid chips, sushi, boba, and all kinds of strange things. I want to say it was Oregon or Seattle but it's been a while

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#784

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

alexathrowawa9 wrote: post #114

Throwaway here but I used to work in Alexa org at Amazon and was amazed by how big the org was (thousands and thousands of people) considering it doesn't seem to be a big revenue generator I remember constantly hearing about projects other teams were working on thinking "why would anyone use that" or "how would that ever make money" Just trying to shoehorn alexa into as many domains as possible It was like empire bui…

I am actually surprised that there are thousands of people working on Alexa.

WTF are they all doing?! It's pretty much unchanged from the outside in any way that's relevant to me compared to where it was in 2014. And the few changes I've noticed have been things breaking.

I used to, for instance, have a script (I forget the Alexa term) that would turn off a few lights and then play a Pandora radio station when I gave it a "bedtime" command. Worked great for about a year, and then the Pandora plugin suddenly refused to take any combination of commands that I could figure out to play a particular Pandora station in my account. This is true from outside of the automation as well, by the way. It's just completely broken.

The weather app integration is annoying too. I wanted weather to use a different weather source, and instead of just giving me results from that weather source, it would always preface it with "Weather from BlueSky" or whatever. Maybe it's their fault and they wanted the ad blurb? But as a consumer, it sucked. I just wanted more localized weather, not an ad every time I asked for the weather.

And the "AI" behavior of the app...it was just awful. I could get better answers from Google Home devices across the board. The best Alexa would do if I asked it a question is to read the first paragraph of a Wikipedia entry, and it was about a 1 in 4 chance it would actually choose the correct Wikipedia entry.

OH, and don't get me started on the Android Alexa app (!!!). Again, the most major change was a UI update where the most important feature I ever use was hidden behind another layer of menus for no particularly good reason. And the "Kindle Accessibility" feature of reading Kindle books is so flaky I doubt anyone on the team ever uses it, from random pauses to sudden jumps back to read from the beginning of the section of the book you started on 10 minutes ago, looping forever on those same 10 minutes.

Sorry. I know it wasn't your fault. But I finally gave up on using Echo devices, and the only reason I still even have the Alexa app on my phone any more is so I can have it read a Kindle book while I'm driving, and it's so amazingly frustrating to use that it would likely be better if it didn't even exist. It's more "customer frustration" than useful.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#785

Post by dontlikeyoueith »

paxys wrote: post #131
dontlikeyoueith wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is would it make people shop more? No, that's not the question. The question is would it make me shop more AT COSTCO. And yes, it would make me shift some of my purchasing from my local grocery store to Costco. Costco is a long drive that's only worth it for large trips. But if I could voice order for shipping or (even better) delivery? My local grocery with its god-awful parking lot full of blind 90-y…

Huh, we are not talking about building a delivery network here. The comparison is between ordering on a website/app and ordering on Alexa.

Do you think you go pick up your Alexa orders at the store?

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#786

Post by vondur »

dsclough wrote: post #520
crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Yeah, but I don't know anyone that will just blindly order stuff from Amazon using Alexa like this. They all know that they have no idea what item will be shipped or what price they may be charged. So I'd argue that they are leaving money on the table from potential sales.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#787

Post by ghaff »

sholladay wrote: post #733
Brechreiz wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What shmuck orders paper towels on the internet?

Who you calling a shmuck? /s I have most household items on subscription. It saves a ton of time and costs about the same, maybe a little less for some items. And most importantly, it means I never forget something and then have to make another trip.

For me, in spite of living in an ex-urban location, there's a Walmart a 10 minute drive away. But I can absolutely see (and know people) for whom picking up a big package of paper towels in Brooklyn is sort of a pain.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#788

Post by swozey »

xeromal wrote: post #783
swozey wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, I'm in Denver, pretty healthy crowd here but maybe that Costco is just bad. Nothing like that there.

Yeah, my wife and I always check out the local costco when visiting a city. I can't remember which one it was but I distinctly remember being surprised at all the asian-type foods at one. They had squid chips, sushi, boba, and all kinds of strange things. I want to say it was Oregon or Seattle but it's been a while

I saw a picture of the Costco in Alaska a few years ago and it was full of camping gear and salmon and stuff like that. It was pretty cool. I think it was Juneau, the "smallest Costco."

Yep found it https://old.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1e0t9u6/costco_june...

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#789

Post by xivzgrev »

swatcoder wrote: post #100
paxys wrote: post #86

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…

> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision. This is compounded by the multi-headed monster that large orgs like theirs have no choice but to become. If customers could trust that every day essentials had a relatively stable price and availability pattern like they trust from their local grocery store (…

This 100%.

Their prices are generally too unstable to put anything on "ship & forget". There are some exceptions, like the items you subscribe to.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#790

Post by smolder »

sa46 wrote: post #296
bagels wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't even make sense. Babies cry all the time for a multitude of reasons, none of which are informed by how many diapers are in the house.

Interestingly, there is an app, Chatterbaby [1], that claims to detect why a baby is crying based on the acoustic features of the cry. I've used it with middling success. That'd be a neat integration: "Alexa, why is my baby crying?" [1]: https://www.chatterbaby.org/pages/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-019-0592-4

Your baby is crying over the intrusion of big tech into their private life before they even have object permanence.
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