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This seems kind of doomed to fail. Amazon is appealing because it provides a good customer experience: good prices, fast shipping, wide variety of products, res

This seems kind of doomed to fail. Amazon is appealing because it provides a good customer experience: good prices, fast shipping, wide variety of products, responsive customer service, etc. More local businesses fail to compete because they mostly offer the same things with worse prices and experience. It's one thing to appeal to people's sense of civic responsibility for the environment, another thing entirely for commerce. Most people just wanna get their stuff easily and at a low price. Now, there are some weaknesses Amazon has, like having to sift through a lot of cheap crap or copycat items while searching/browsing, as well as fake reviews. Maybe a website that offered most of Amazon's strengths while tackling its real flaws could be successful, but this doesn't look like that. It just looks like a half-hearted feel good measure to make it look like they're doing something.

mgbmtl 7y ago
As you mention, shopping on Amazon has become pretty horrible. I often shop local (faster, more convenient), but discoverability is a big problem, and I hate having to phone to enquire about their open hours, because their Google listing is never up to date.
- andreilys 7y ago
  I’m confused as to how local is faster/more convenient, yet it requires you to pick up a phone due to an outdated listing? With Amazon, if I see I’m running low on rice, I can say “Alexa order rice” and I get rice on my doorstep in 3 days based on my previous rice order history. Doesn’t get more convenient than that.
  - rcthompson 7y ago
    You can't imagine how one could possibly acquire rice in less than 3 days?
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      You can't imagine how they were referring to effort rather than response time?
  - creato 7y ago
    I cannot imagine trusting food ordered off of Amazon, let alone trusting it to fill an order without verifying what it actually ordered (listing, quantity, etc.).
user5994461 7y ago
>>> it provides a good customer experience: good prices Amazon had not offered better prices than the main brick-and-mortar shops for a long long time. Try comparing the items you see in shops with the same on Amazon and be Amazed. The best are small household items. Sellers buy from Ikea and resell on Amazon. Sometimes customers find out and they post reviews you can imagine, "OMG this is the £4 cutlery pack from Ikea. Go to Ikea don't buy here."
- jfk13 7y ago
  They do the same on eBay, too. I've had to warn friends that finding the cheapest seller for a given item on eBay may still be substantially more expensive than buying the same item directly from Ikea. (Sometimes it does make sense to buy from the eBay or Amazon marketplace reseller, if it's a small item where their markup + shipping is less than Ikea's per-order delivery charge.)
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Agreed. Just because you can get it from Amazon doesn't mean it's the cheapest way to get it because even though the provide free shipping, the price is substantially higher to compensate that. Buying at a brick and mortar store reduce that need for individualized shipping, and the economies of scale of buying and delivering a large amount of product from the manufacturers by the retailer which is physically close to the customers help reducing costs.
    - Spivak 7y ago
      What are you guys buying on Amazon? Seriously I genuinely try to find stuff I want at a lower price than Amazon but it’s so rare. It’s almost always cheaper before you count the free shipping.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  That seems like kind of a cherry pick. Of course small cheap household goods like basic cutlery aren't gonna be much better on Amazon, if ever, but plenty of other categories are still better on Amazon than most B&M stores. Like, good luck finding decent USB batteries/chargers locally, they're usually 50-100% more expensive while being substantially worse than the Anker/Aukey/Ravpower brand items popular on Amazon.
p2t2p 7y ago
So last week in Australia I wanted to stock pile some number of my favorite pens. Amazon - yeah, you'll get it some 3 weeks later. Local Officeworks - no problem, we'll bring 'em pens tomorrow. And they did. So I dunno, I usually buy stuff on Amazon that I can't get locally.
- mcbain 7y ago
  My experience buying a couple of things from amazon.com.au recently has been "will be delivered in 3 weeks" => arrives in next 2-3 days. They ended up being Flex deliveries to a residential address, not courier/AusPost. No guarantee of course, but it seems they are setting low expectations they can beat.

mgbmtl 7y ago

As you mention, shopping on Amazon has become pretty horrible. I often shop local (faster, more convenient), but discoverability is a big problem, and I hate having to phone to enquire about their open hours, because their Google listing is never up to date.

andreilys 7y ago
I’m confused as to how local is faster/more convenient, yet it requires you to pick up a phone due to an outdated listing? With Amazon, if I see I’m running low on rice, I can say “Alexa order rice” and I get rice on my doorstep in 3 days based on my previous rice order history. Doesn’t get more convenient than that.
- rcthompson 7y ago
  You can't imagine how one could possibly acquire rice in less than 3 days?
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    You can't imagine how they were referring to effort rather than response time?
- creato 7y ago
  I cannot imagine trusting food ordered off of Amazon, let alone trusting it to fill an order without verifying what it actually ordered (listing, quantity, etc.).

user5994461 7y ago

>>> it provides a good customer experience: good prices Amazon had not offered better prices than the main brick-and-mortar shops for a long long time. Try comparing the items you see in shops with the same on Amazon and be Amazed. The best are small household items. Sellers buy from Ikea and resell on Amazon. Sometimes customers find out and they post reviews you can imagine, "OMG this is the £4 cutlery pack from Ikea. Go to Ikea don't buy here."

jfk13 7y ago
They do the same on eBay, too. I've had to warn friends that finding the cheapest seller for a given item on eBay may still be substantially more expensive than buying the same item directly from Ikea. (Sometimes it does make sense to buy from the eBay or Amazon marketplace reseller, if it's a small item where their markup + shipping is less than Ikea's per-order delivery charge.)
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Agreed. Just because you can get it from Amazon doesn't mean it's the cheapest way to get it because even though the provide free shipping, the price is substantially higher to compensate that. Buying at a brick and mortar store reduce that need for individualized shipping, and the economies of scale of buying and delivering a large amount of product from the manufacturers by the retailer which is physically close to the customers help reducing costs.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    What are you guys buying on Amazon? Seriously I genuinely try to find stuff I want at a lower price than Amazon but it’s so rare. It’s almost always cheaper before you count the free shipping.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
That seems like kind of a cherry pick. Of course small cheap household goods like basic cutlery aren't gonna be much better on Amazon, if ever, but plenty of other categories are still better on Amazon than most B&M stores. Like, good luck finding decent USB batteries/chargers locally, they're usually 50-100% more expensive while being substantially worse than the Anker/Aukey/Ravpower brand items popular on Amazon.

p2t2p 7y ago

So last week in Australia I wanted to stock pile some number of my favorite pens. Amazon - yeah, you'll get it some 3 weeks later. Local Officeworks - no problem, we'll bring 'em pens tomorrow. And they did. So I dunno, I usually buy stuff on Amazon that I can't get locally.

mcbain 7y ago
My experience buying a couple of things from amazon.com.au recently has been "will be delivered in 3 weeks" => arrives in next 2-3 days. They ended up being Flex deliveries to a residential address, not courier/AusPost. No guarantee of course, but it seems they are setting low expectations they can beat.