Imagine being dumb enough to have one of those in your house.
Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
831–840 of 871 posts
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#832Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they tried hard to create an experience user would like. Their shopping features is honestly very lacking. I think Alexa was just because of Amazon's norm of spending very high on R and D. That was the reason AWS was born. No one thought people would pay something like 10x just for consistency in cloud, but here we are. One AWS could cover 20 Alexas.
I'm not sure there is a good means for buying over voice only, and I'd argue it's only possible to know now that users overwhelmingly prefer digitally handling the product (title, pictures, description, reviews) before making even repeat purchases. Similarly, I'm not sure Amazon could convert consumers to a tablet-based purchasing device like they envisioned Alexa; we all have smart phones and tablets already.
e.g. I order a particular soap/shampoo or coffee beans every few months. If they had tried recognizing it, they could actually have improved the experience.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#833Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's irrelevant. Give me the total price, so I know how much something will cost. I don't care what percentage of it goes where. I only care about easily evaluating whether something is worth the price. Seriously. I don't care if the total price consists of 100% tax or 0% tax. I care only what it is. I don't ask to know how much you pay the cleaners, how much it costs to operate the pool, how much corporate profit…
> The amount of tax is equally useless to me. Not if you are voting someone in a political office in the next election.
Nope. Don't care.
I care about what effects the policies are having, not how much I pay in taxes. The impact of the policies is what actually matters. The tax rate is one tiny detail. I'm not wired to automatically assume collective action is evil, so I only care about it in the context of the effects of all policies combined.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#834Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government routinely hides what you're paying in taxes. Case in point - the so-called "Employer's Contribution" to your social security taxes. There's no such thing. That comes out of your pocket, too. This is because employers have no interest in what your paycheck amount is. They care about "total compensation", which is what it costs the employer to employ you. Seattle added some "payroll taxes" and successful…
Do you really think people don't know that the tax deductions on their payslip are actually their money?
Actually, no... At least not quite the same way.
In the US, a lot of people think of tax day as a "good day" because they get a refund from the government! Psychologically it is very different if you steal the money before they even see it than take it from them once they have felt it under their tongue.
Plus, I think the OP is referring to money that is technically paid by the employer but effectively passed through to the employee, because that's what happens, not some item on their payslip.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#835Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The amount of tax is equally useless to me. Not if you are voting someone in a political office in the next election.
Then you can look up how much the tax is when you are making your voting decision. This isn’t secret information.
I can look it up if I am already motivated, but it is much easier for me to convince you to take a collective political action if you feel the depth of the government's dong in your rear end every day.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#836Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end. I’d much rather transact in the US than Europe. The entire retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched. The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.
How will the government enforcing a minimum bar on return timelines lead to a worse experience at stores that already exceed those metrics? It might be unnecessary, but how would it hurt?
Various negative consequences but off the top of my head:
- Any regulation needs to be written, read, analyzed, made sure to comply with, defend in court, etc. which costs money.
- I might want to be very generous and voluntarily take back items from my legit customers because I find out it was good for business, but also have mechanisms in place to prevent abuse by a small minority of bad customers (restrict a subset of products, limits on the number of purchases you can return, etc). Once you codify it in law, it forces my hand in many ways, increasing prices making experience worse for my good customers.
- The regulation may change and the retailer may need to suddenly adapt to comply.
- It may not hurt those particular stores, but prevents cheaper competitors from emerging, which is a bad thing.
To show this whole thing is kind of stupid, where does "two years" come from? Some asshat in European parliament? Why not twenty years? Why not two months?
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#837Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I am aware and I stand by my statement. Have you actually returned stuff to stores over there? I have returned half eaten cake that I did not like the taste to Costco and didn’t have to face a weird looking employee. No law and regulation necessary just capitalism.
How many half eaten cakes would you have to return to monetarily make up for, say, a PC or washing machine that stops working after 4 ½ years? Because you can get that device replaced or repaired in much of Europe, for free. I'm not aware of any US company that offers such a warranty window and actually keeps its word (look at crappy fridges where the company will replace one faulty unit for another with the same pro…
Interestingly, the particular retailer in question, actually offers at least "second year warranty" for free to products you purchase from them at no explicit additional cost, so you don't have to make a trade-off by summing all the halves of poor-tasting cakes. The point is there is a choice of retailers. You don't need the regulation hammer for everything.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#838Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is that the "usual case" really? I find it very rare actually.
You really think "Smart TV" is some collusion/conspiracy and not emergent from the market behavior? The most malicious theory I can come up with is that Smart TV makes more money for the manufacturers due to the ad opportunity, therefore they sell an inferior product to the consumer —in our minds— similar to bundling crapware in Windows laptops, but that still does not make it collusion or market distortion.
Under that theory, it just means dumb TV would have to be a comparatively more expensive product and I am willing to bet even the nerds who care about dumb TV will be buying the smart one, airgap it, and connect an Apple TV. Effectively no one would be paying even $50 more for dumb version of a TV.
In reality, I believe the average Joe & Jill actually strongly prefer Smart TV.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#839Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store Where I live price labels must carry the per liter or the per kilo price too. It's printed with a smaller font size but it's visible and it's often the only price I look at.
At my store they are free to choose their unit and they strive for unit heterogeneity within a specific product you might want to compare
That's a good store.
My store has a few different brands of coconut milk. Some of the unit prices are per pound, while others are per quart. I make the approximation that coconut milk has the same density as water, which is two pounds per quart. The unit prices are all odd three digits numbers. It's a pain.
You could have one person who works in an office somewhere who's responsible for itemizing inventory for the whole grocery chain. They could solve this problem (maybe automatically!) with a spreadsheet. They could also solve the problem of tomatillos not being registered in the self-checkout catalog. But what is that person's salary paying for in the company's eyes?
To be fair, maybe the real explanation is "lots of stuff, shit happens." And it's only a factor of two (for watery goods, anyway).
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#840Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many half eaten cakes would you have to return to monetarily make up for, say, a PC or washing machine that stops working after 4 ½ years? Because you can get that device replaced or repaired in much of Europe, for free. I'm not aware of any US company that offers such a warranty window and actually keeps its word (look at crappy fridges where the company will replace one faulty unit for another with the same pro…
Interestingly, the particular retailer in question, actually offers at least "second year warranty" for free to products you purchase from them at no explicit additional cost, so you don't have to make a trade-off by summing all the halves of poor-tasting cakes. The point is there is a choice of retailers. You don't need the regulation hammer for everything.
So? You’re stuck with a warrantied product that you know has the same defect, unless they’ve changed things since last I saw it. What’s a two-year warranty on a product that breaks after three? The market is not fixing this particular issue. Sure you can choose another manufacturer next time but you’ve already been screwed by one. There was no need for that in the first place.
Consumer laws are always a benefit!