8 ms·

I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. I find their delivery t

by wolco2 6y ago

I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. I find their delivery times dropping.. Last order, I ordered and paided more for same day rush.. that came by the end of the next day instead. They gave a $10 coupon but I literally picked the product based on it arriving that day and would have made a different purchasing choose if I knew it was coming tomorrow.

moooo99 6y ago
Had the same experience here. Same day shipping has very limited availability here in Germany with a fairly limited inventory, most items are next day shipping. I ordered a product at 3AM with a huge text claiming "same day delivery when ordering within the next 5h". The order arrived at 8PM the next day, which was relatively annoying considering the same day arrival heavily influenced my purchasing decision.
greggturkington 6y ago
The majority of my "next-day" and "2-day" orders have been late (often cancelled) for months.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Well, Amazon did say this would occur for non necessity items months ago because of the huge demand strain put on their system, which is exactly what this article is about.
  - greggturkington 6y ago
    Who cares? It's a competitive advantage they no longer have and less value for my expensive Prime subscription
crazygringo 6y ago
> Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. If you ignore shipping, maybe sometimes. But I still find that 99% of the time, for items on Amazon.com that are sold by Amazon.com, it's cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping, while most others site charge $7-10 shipping or have a minimum of $75-100 for free shipping. And even if you don't have Prime, the minimum for free shipping is just $25, and you can pretty much always add in stuff that you need to buy soon anyways (shampoo, paper towels, whatever). And delivery times usually has zero to do with Amazon, obviously, they're best in class. With the pandemic and all, UPS and USPS are obviously straining in general. It's not like Wal-Mart, Kohl's, or any other online stores are any better. Despite their advertising, everyone knows you shouldn't be expecting UPS/USPS packages to be reliably arriving on time since March.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  The low minimum is what makes Amazon work, plus the same day shipping. Assuming that I do not take work time off to go get something, Amazon will deliver something faster than I can go get it if I order it in the morning.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Target is always underplayed here. In many cases, you can have product pulled in 20-30m. I was on my way to a meeting in Manhattan last year and it was pouring rain. I ordered an umbrella from the highway just north of the city, and had it in hand within 15m.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    They makes me sad because Manhattan used to be a place where you could get an umbrella on very street corner without the bother of ordering ahead or entering a store
    - greatjack613 6y ago
      Same here, very depressing to see how extreme, fake liberal policies have destroyed the city. No more street vendors, everything boarded up, no high class people paying tax anymore. We need new leadership in NYC to fix this up!!
      - Spooky23 6y ago
        My comment wasn’t complaining about the lack of umbrellas in NYC. It was pointing out the really cool capability of Target. I had to show up onsite in Midtown with a few hours notice, and was able to roll off the highway somewhere in Rockland county and pick something up rather than look around.
    - sib 6y ago
      When I lived there, I thought that they sprouted from the sidewalks like mushrooms when it rained... Magical & a bit eerie!
wdb 6y ago
Yeah, that's true. I also have send more things back, all the things they left in the rain or go back straight away. Lately also more and more books are dented or damaged when they arrive so they get send back too. If I want a book that looks like second hand copies I would buy one of those.
jasonv 6y ago
I end up ordering from Amazon the things that Whole Foods, OfficeMax and BestBuy won't keep in stock. I moved recently, so we've been ordering 2-4x /week while getting the new place in order. I buy locally what I can, but retail offerings are so anemic (even for, say, granola bars) that online options massively eclipse what stores carry. I don't want to order from Amazon, but I don't want to get by with the meager brick-and-mortar offerings. Another example: Recently I went to Best Buy to grab an HDMI-DisplayPort cable. They had it priced at $38. Amazon had it for $12. I'd have paid up to $20 for the retail stock surcharge, but that overage was obscene.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Cables have been this way for years for some reason, and it's not just Best Buy, it's the same here in the UK. Brick-and-mortar stores charge several times what you'd pay online. edit I've heard they make more selling you a USB cable than selling you a printer.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Cables have been that way when I worked as a bestbuy black shirt 20 years ago
- pixl97 6y ago
  Cables is how best buy makes their money. They don't make anything on the TV you buy, its the 400% markup on the cable where the profit is.
- jfim 6y ago
  FYI, in the US, monoprice.com is usually the place to go online for cables, as long as you don't need them quickly.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Good if you need a lot of cables, if you just need one or two then amazon is still cheaper and you get it faster.
manigandham 6y ago
I find Amazon to usually have the best price, or quickly price match in case of sales. Even if higher, the I prefer the speed, convenience and reliability of Amazon. I know I get it quickly and any problems are sorted easily. If it was that easy to beat them with just pricing then other retailers would've done it already. The only other company that gets close is Target which has vastly improved its online and digital experience.
cowmoo728 6y ago
Amazon also has clear quality and counterfeiting issues. I now purchase durable goods from the retailer's website rather than through amazon. My recent amazon purchase history is mostly consumables like snack foods and rice. Clothing, electronics, cookware, and almost everything else valuable gets purchased from somewhere else. This is also because the experience of shopping on amazon is extremely frustrating - they keep trying to force lower quality products on me instead of the things I want. It feels more and more like a digital walmart with fake brand names, sketchy products, and even sketchier fake reviews. For example, a search for "snow pants" turns up products by Arctix and Outdoor Ventures. Outdoor Ventures is presumably a knockoff of Outdoor Research, a reputable cold-weather clothing brand. Outdoor Ventures seller page says their actual company name is "FUJIANSHENG SHANGFEI ZHIYI YOUXIANGONGSI". And Arctix is presumably a knockoff of Arcteryx, and seems to be owned by a very small financial services company in NY. I rarely feel like I'm being presented with accurate or meaningful information when I look for things on amazon.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Interesting, with the counterfeit problems the last things I would buy on Amazon are food items.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Are those really counterfeit? I understand they're knockoffs, and it's a shitty practice, but Arctix / Arcteryx is not a hidden difference in name - especially if you're searching for "snow pants" rather than the brand you want explicitly.
  - cowmoo728 6y ago
    These specific examples aren't counterfeit. But wirecutter had a good breakdown of the breadth of counterfeit products sold on amazon. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-f...
that_guy_iain 6y ago
> I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. For me, I found this not to be true. I've been ordering gifts for people fleeing the company I work due to a merger and the changes, so there has been a lot. Literally everything I found on niche sites I found on Amazon for cheaper and at a faster delivery rate aswell.

by wolco2 6y ago

moooo99 6y ago

Had the same experience here. Same day shipping has very limited availability here in Germany with a fairly limited inventory, most items are next day shipping. I ordered a product at 3AM with a huge text claiming "same day delivery when ordering within the next 5h". The order arrived at 8PM the next day, which was relatively annoying considering the same day arrival heavily influenced my purchasing decision.

greggturkington 6y ago

The majority of my "next-day" and "2-day" orders have been late (often cancelled) for months.

pixl97 6y ago
Well, Amazon did say this would occur for non necessity items months ago because of the huge demand strain put on their system, which is exactly what this article is about.
- greggturkington 6y ago
  Who cares? It's a competitive advantage they no longer have and less value for my expensive Prime subscription

crazygringo 6y ago

> Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. If you ignore shipping, maybe sometimes. But I still find that 99% of the time, for items on Amazon.com that are sold by Amazon.com, it's cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping, while most others site charge $7-10 shipping or have a minimum of $75-100 for free shipping. And even if you don't have Prime, the minimum for free shipping is just $25, and you can pretty much always add in stuff that you need to buy soon anyways (shampoo, paper towels, whatever). And delivery times usually has zero to do with Amazon, obviously, they're best in class. With the pandemic and all, UPS and USPS are obviously straining in general. It's not like Wal-Mart, Kohl's, or any other online stores are any better. Despite their advertising, everyone knows you shouldn't be expecting UPS/USPS packages to be reliably arriving on time since March.

MattGaiser 6y ago
The low minimum is what makes Amazon work, plus the same day shipping. Assuming that I do not take work time off to go get something, Amazon will deliver something faster than I can go get it if I order it in the morning.
Spooky23 6y ago
Target is always underplayed here. In many cases, you can have product pulled in 20-30m. I was on my way to a meeting in Manhattan last year and it was pouring rain. I ordered an umbrella from the highway just north of the city, and had it in hand within 15m.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  They makes me sad because Manhattan used to be a place where you could get an umbrella on very street corner without the bother of ordering ahead or entering a store
  - greatjack613 6y ago
    Same here, very depressing to see how extreme, fake liberal policies have destroyed the city. No more street vendors, everything boarded up, no high class people paying tax anymore. We need new leadership in NYC to fix this up!!
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      My comment wasn’t complaining about the lack of umbrellas in NYC. It was pointing out the really cool capability of Target. I had to show up onsite in Midtown with a few hours notice, and was able to roll off the highway somewhere in Rockland county and pick something up rather than look around.
  - sib 6y ago
    When I lived there, I thought that they sprouted from the sidewalks like mushrooms when it rained... Magical & a bit eerie!

wdb 6y ago

Yeah, that's true. I also have send more things back, all the things they left in the rain or go back straight away. Lately also more and more books are dented or damaged when they arrive so they get send back too. If I want a book that looks like second hand copies I would buy one of those.

jasonv 6y ago

I end up ordering from Amazon the things that Whole Foods, OfficeMax and BestBuy won't keep in stock. I moved recently, so we've been ordering 2-4x /week while getting the new place in order. I buy locally what I can, but retail offerings are so anemic (even for, say, granola bars) that online options massively eclipse what stores carry. I don't want to order from Amazon, but I don't want to get by with the meager brick-and-mortar offerings. Another example: Recently I went to Best Buy to grab an HDMI-DisplayPort cable. They had it priced at $38. Amazon had it for $12. I'd have paid up to $20 for the retail stock surcharge, but that overage was obscene.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Cables have been this way for years for some reason, and it's not just Best Buy, it's the same here in the UK. Brick-and-mortar stores charge several times what you'd pay online. edit I've heard they make more selling you a USB cable than selling you a printer.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Cables have been that way when I worked as a bestbuy black shirt 20 years ago
pixl97 6y ago
Cables is how best buy makes their money. They don't make anything on the TV you buy, its the 400% markup on the cable where the profit is.
jfim 6y ago
FYI, in the US, monoprice.com is usually the place to go online for cables, as long as you don't need them quickly.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Good if you need a lot of cables, if you just need one or two then amazon is still cheaper and you get it faster.

manigandham 6y ago

I find Amazon to usually have the best price, or quickly price match in case of sales. Even if higher, the I prefer the speed, convenience and reliability of Amazon. I know I get it quickly and any problems are sorted easily. If it was that easy to beat them with just pricing then other retailers would've done it already. The only other company that gets close is Target which has vastly improved its online and digital experience.

cowmoo728 6y ago

Amazon also has clear quality and counterfeiting issues. I now purchase durable goods from the retailer's website rather than through amazon. My recent amazon purchase history is mostly consumables like snack foods and rice. Clothing, electronics, cookware, and almost everything else valuable gets purchased from somewhere else. This is also because the experience of shopping on amazon is extremely frustrating - they keep trying to force lower quality products on me instead of the things I want. It feels more and more like a digital walmart with fake brand names, sketchy products, and even sketchier fake reviews. For example, a search for "snow pants" turns up products by Arctix and Outdoor Ventures. Outdoor Ventures is presumably a knockoff of Outdoor Research, a reputable cold-weather clothing brand. Outdoor Ventures seller page says their actual company name is "FUJIANSHENG SHANGFEI ZHIYI YOUXIANGONGSI". And Arctix is presumably a knockoff of Arcteryx, and seems to be owned by a very small financial services company in NY. I rarely feel like I'm being presented with accurate or meaningful information when I look for things on amazon.

throwaway201103 6y ago
Interesting, with the counterfeit problems the last things I would buy on Amazon are food items.
viraptor 6y ago
Are those really counterfeit? I understand they're knockoffs, and it's a shitty practice, but Arctix / Arcteryx is not a hidden difference in name - especially if you're searching for "snow pants" rather than the brand you want explicitly.
- cowmoo728 6y ago
  These specific examples aren't counterfeit. But wirecutter had a good breakdown of the breadth of counterfeit products sold on amazon. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-f...

that_guy_iain 6y ago

> I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. For me, I found this not to be true. I've been ordering gifts for people fleeing the company I work due to a merger and the changes, so there has been a lot. Literally everything I found on niche sites I found on Amazon for cheaper and at a faster delivery rate aswell.