9 ms·
Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows
- Noobmaster69 7y agowell that's impressive!
- Fat_Thor 7y agoLog off this site immediately!
- _tb1_ 7y agoYou know, if Brick & Mortars entered some sort of alliance, they could ship same day deliveries to an equally large chunk of the population.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoI made the mistake of online ordering from Home Depot and they "conveniently" shipped from a local store. Only problem is that they apparently have a habit of reusing SKUs and sent me an older model that I didn't order. Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.
- maccard 7y ago>Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed. Let's not pretend Amazon are innocent of fuck ups like this. I'm a semi regular shopper with Amazon (uk) and in the last 12 months I've had: - used products sold as new - products sent by Amazon's own courier service for "next day delivery" show up after 3 days - flat out wrong items sent - previews for books sent in place of actual books - received knock off cables when ordering manufacturer cables. That's not to consider the mess of trying to order goods from Amazon and figuring out when they'll arrive. Searching for "prime" or sold by Amazon doesn't actually guarantee next day delivery on rh item, nor does it guarantee the item will be correct. Their only saving grace is that every time I have a problem, I can resolve it with live chat, they send a replacement and a courier picks up the old item from my office (if they even bother asking for it back)
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoFixing Amazon mistakes is relatively painless. With Home Depot their phone support was 100% useless and I had to physically go to the store the item shipped from. I made sure the new product was on the shelf and tried to do a simple exchange. Unfortunately the duplicate SKU was a problem and the price had increased since I paid for the order so the drone wanted me to pay the difference. That wasn't going to happen so my time had to be further wasted arguing with them over their mistake.
- maccard 7y agoYeah that's awful, and like I said, Amazon's policy of "refund and we'll pick it up" if there's a problem has kept me shopping there. My latest issue was a clearly used item being sold as new, and it was damaged. The price had increased since I ordered it, and with one live chat they couriered me a replacement, and picked up the old one, at no cost to me.
- godzillabrennus 7y agoI learned recently that only about 5% of Walmart revenue is from e-commerce. The industry average for a brick and mortar is just about 10%. They don’t do much online revenue because they don’t invest in growing it. They don’t invest in growing it because it’s too small a portion of their business to warrant investment. Online first companies are eating brick and mortar alive because of this.
- oldjokes 7y agoI tried to order a few boxes of hardwood flooring from Home Depot one time and despite being in stock at the store 20 miles away from me they somehow managed to outsource delivery to some local company that delayed delivery repeatedly because of "weather" for four months. This local company never picked up the phone or returned emails. I had to do a chargeback as Home Depot refused to refund me, they seemed confused as to where the shipment was. I don't think HD or any company run in the HD mold will ever be competitive if these are the outcomes.
- Fins 7y agoI've had pretty much the same experience with Amazon (for a "sold and fulfilled by Amazon") item. Except that Amazon kept lying to me about pretty much everything, from whether they've even shipped an item to whether I could get a refund of Prime membership to a lot of other things. They aren't any better, and their customer "service" is pretty much limited to "throw the customer another month of Prime (it's worthless anyway) and hope they go away".
- ec109685 7y agoGoogle Express tried this and gave up on the idea after a year or two. I think Amazon Prime Now was what did them in.
- vinay427 7y agoI know same day shipping was offered on Google Express, but it seemed very rare (at least in my area) so I was never able to use it. This was despite having locations of many of the partner stores within walking distance, so it seemed to defeat the purpose of taking advantage of the geographic coverage of existing physical retail.
- windowsworkstoo 7y agoThis is how Interflora works.
- odiroot 7y agoThe company I'm working for (getbyrd.com) tries to be an answer to that. Basically "logistics add-on" for your existing business.
- godzillabrennus 7y agohttp://www.shoprunner.com http://www.shoprunner.com
- jamisteven 7y agoYea, but not all at the same time, and not for a consistent period of time.
- dazsnow 7y agoSo now it’s about 10% as good as Taobao
- briandon 7y agoTaobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for years. There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with them beforehand, your purchases may not ship because one of the items is out of stock or no longer available in that size/color (despite it being listed w/claimed inventory of 9898998 pieces in stock) and when you do get on WangWang, you've got to waste more time haggling over individual item cancellations, substitutions, etc. And even if everything you want is in stock, you're lucky enough to be ordering when the seller isn't away from their phone/computer because they're asleep/eating/whatever and so is available to confirm this, they're as likely as not to wait until a bit later to confirm your shipping address. If you're not on WangWang to respond to the shipping address confirmation query, then your order sits around unshipped until you do (and until they read your confirmation). When you do receive your purchases, you can expect them to be cellophane-envelope wrapped or rolled up in clingfilm, which is usually sheathed in a layer of Mainland grit and grime (hence the cellophane/clingfilm) and this in turn is often packed in crumpled Chinese newspapers or scores of the foam webbing collars one sees used around individual apples, pears, etc. in supermarkets here. If you live in China or HK/Macao, then you'll probably use Taobao much more than Amazon, but only because of the shipping costs. Actually enjoying using Taobao after having used Amazon, though, would require a strong masochistic streak.
- briandon 7y agoHN doesn't allow inline images, so I've tweeted a combo screencap of a recent example of a sellers messaging to confirm my shipping address (no response from me and that order would not move) and an example of a seller waiting two days to tell me that the stuff I'd bought wasn't in stock and telling me to apply for a refund: https://twitter.com/briandonovan/status/1125353433110700032 https://twitter.com/briandonovan/status/1125353433110700032
- creato 7y agoThis is presumably for things shipped by Amazon, which seems really rare (for me) on Amazon.
- ec109685 7y agoReally? It seems like most sellers use “fulfilled by amazon” so they can take part of Prime.
- tracer4201 7y agoI own a decent number of Amazon shares. I’m sure they can ship most places, but to any Amazon management folks reading this - is the longer term plan to kill Amazon.com the store? The experience has gotten somewhat akin to EBay. It seems like it’s intentional, but I can’t tell. There are any number of shady sellers selling the item I want to buy. I have to manually click often times to ensure I’m buying from Amazon. Even then, a few times I’ve received the wrong item in the wrong box. I digress but despite your earnings call and all the financial disclosures, I still have no idea what you guys are doing.
- gcb0 7y agothey are doing what everyone do at wildly successful silicon valley companies: building silos/fiefdoms to be the leader behind their money burning next-big-thing-nobody-asked-for project, such as cashierless store or 1984 listening device or whatever.
- tracer4201 7y agoCashier less store is a great idea. I’ve been to it in Seattle. I have concerns as an investor about the long term prospects of Amazon.com, but I do think they’re an innovative company. The cashierless stuff will shift all kinds of retail businesses and it’s a win for consumers IMO.
- cameronbrown 7y agoI wonder if they'll license the tech to other companies. They could just take a percentage fee of all transactions by customer purchases. I reckon the cost savings in staff would be enough for most businesses to justify it. Has anyone had any luck with cloning this technology yet? I suppose the devil's in the details (and the hardware) with this one.
- lsc 7y agoI don't own amazon (except through the indices) but I am a customer who buys almost all of my consumer goods through amazon. You are absolutely right. Amazon is a luxury brand, and amazon doesn't seem to know this. I mean... it really is a pretty great luxury brand? There's a lot of crap I don't have to own if I know I can order it the day before, and I'm willing to pay extra for that convenience. I mean, there's three tiers of amazon stuff. 1. "Shipped from and sold by Amazon.com" amazon amazon 2. "Sold by X, fulfilled by Amazon" - like ebay, but with fast shipping and reliable returns and 3. "Shipped and sold by X" - like ebay, except you use the amazon interface. I mean, really, for me, someone who buys everything on amazon, these markings are clear enough for situations where it's a common item that I don't need to read reviews. If I had ownership of amazon, though, I'd be pissed, 'cause they are pissing on their own brand by not making it super clear when they are actually selling the thing and when they are just acting as ebay for some maybe super shady third party. (I mean, it may seem like the prime check solves the problem, but this is what I mean by it being a luxury brand. I don't want to have to deal with shiping something back when it wasn't quite exactly the right item or whatever; shipping stuff back is a pain But amazon has a massive problem of mixing reviews for products in those three categories, and quite often, you end up with reviews for product X which are actually reviews for product Y or product Z that users got when trying to buy product X from a seller that was not amazon, because the reviews are mixed. It makes amazon a lot less useful for stuff where I need reviews; things like generic brand stuff. There's just no way to reliably line up the review to the version of the product being sold. I mean, right now? when amazon is willing to do all this shit for near cost? It doesn't really matter, 'cause they are naturally going to be better than most of the competition that has to keep their P/E below 20; It's easy to run a business if you don't have to make money. But at some point, investors will demand returns.
- ENOTTY 7y agoHonestly I think this map shows just how empty the rest of the country is.
- ec109685 7y agoThis assumes each of their distribution centers has 100% of Amazon’s catalog available.
- tyopiuy 7y agoHaha, except their last mile delivery which is really flaky because they use their own logistics and drivers
- whoisjuan 7y agoLast mile, in general, is shit. Not only Amazon's. That's where most innovation is needed.
- benbristow 7y agoAmazon's 'last mile' has definitely gotten better recently. Started showing you a live map when the driver is getting nearby. What they need to fix is the crazy estimates and deliveries that may turn up from anytime from early morning to "up to 9PM".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- EADGBE 7y agoTheir last mile coverage is quite impressive. I'll get notifications on my phone letting me know my menial package is 9 stops away and to expect it soon. When I open up the alert (usually after it's delivered), I get a picture of the package on my stoop. It's a way more transparent notification system than I've gotten with the other "Big Three".
- passwerd678 7y agoAlready? I'm surprised they aren't at 100%.
- tanilama 7y agoI mean Alaska would be tough, also Hawaii
- wtmt 7y agoWhile this discussion is about Amazon's shipping coverage, surely I cannot be the only one concerned that Amazon is going to destroy (more than it has already done) many other competitors and that consumers would be left with one large store that can exploit them any way it wishes to! This is increasingly scary to me, since Amazon is now the largest online retailer (in my knowledge) in India too. Walmart's purchase of Flipkart (which is a local online store that started like Amazon did and grew big) doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
- cameronbrown 7y agoThere's plenty of room for competitors to breathe on the niche end of e-commerce. Etsy, for example is doing great, and I don't see how Amazon could take their market at all. Also, physical stores clearly have some value for Amazon themselves to be opening them, and at that point they're going to have a much tougher time competing - cool tech notwithstanding.
- detaro 7y agoAmazon has actually tried getting in there ("Amazon Handmade"), but not with much success as far as I can tell. But Etsy also has some of the problems that Amazon has: They've not done a great job at enforcing their "handmade" standard, and you'll find resellers of off-the-shelf mass.produced stuff there too.
- esilver 7y agoThere are substantial margins to be had in over-the-road freight. The launch of the Amazon Freight platform last week is a clear indication Amazon knows this. Managing an enormous seller marketplace is almost as fraught as shopping on one. I can understand why Amazon wants to act as the broker in every aspect of the retail transaction. As a third-party broker you’re shielded from much of the liability while reaping much of the benefit. Unfortunately, third-party brokers are limited in the kinds of interventions that first-parties can bring to bear during a service failure. Walmart, Target, et al., can fix a wayward transaction much more quickly and cheaply than Amazon can by virtue of maintaining many well-staffed warehouses, i.e., stores.