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I find even the larger businesses have much poorer shopping experiences than Amazon. I wanted to buy a book last year. I found it on a major, non-amazon booksel

I find even the larger businesses have much poorer shopping experiences than Amazon. I wanted to buy a book last year. I found it on a major, non-amazon bookseller's website. However, no "Look-inside", not even a description, no reviews, no real information about it aside from the title and [very short] description. I ended up going to Amazon to find all this info and having a look at the "Look inside" first few pages, and then buying it from the other retailer. It worked, but not exactly great, people going to a competitor's website to research the product. It sucks, because I want to support businesses other than Amazon and the like, ones that pay corporation tax and don't abuse their market position, but the other stores really have to raise their game. For better or worse, Amazon has definitely been a game-changer in retail and it's not enough to trade like it's the year 2000 any more. You have to be innovative and see software as a way to improve your offering.

harikb 5y ago
Talking from the perspective of local business owner - it isn’t possible to compete with Amazon on ”online” features. This needs two efforts - people have to be Ok with an inferior shopping experience to a certain extent. Can’t have cake and eat it. Second, Software powered world needs a different kind of monopoly control - we shouldn’t talking about “breaking up Amazon” - that just creates busy work from yet another set of programmers to work on duplicating everything Amazon has. That is a waste of resources. Instead regulation should force Amazon to share its “retail infra” and may be allow local business to relicense/partner with some of it.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  As a software guy, rebuilding many of the features of Amazon that users love isn't awfully hard or expensive. I think it's a unique combination of logistics and tech which few companies manage to successfully pursue. Things like hooking up the cash register system to the website so the website doesn't say "in stock" when someone has bought the last one. It's pretty easy for someone techy to do that, but there is rarely a sufficiently techy person on staff in a typical small business.
- smichel17 5y ago
  "Breaking up Amazon so that fulfilment is a separate business, which other companies besides may do business with" seems isomorphic to "force Amazon to share its infrastructure" to me.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > it isn’t possible to compete with Amazon on ”online” features. I'm not sure that's a true statement. I've completely ceased buying computing equipment from Amazon because their search is so goddamned useless. Newegg's power search actually works and lets me find what I'm looking for.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    I've been really curious why Amazon can't implement sort by exact price.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    For computer hardware, I use PCPartPicker to find what I want, and follow their link. Yes, I know that those will definitely be referral links, but I'm fine with that.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      I'm ok paying NewEgg's (sometimes) slightly higher prices because they took the time to put together a good search.
      - efreak 5y ago
        I stopped buying from Newegg. Firstly when I made two identical orders once (I intended to get two hard drives, only got one, so ordered the second a few hours later when I noticed), they _silently_ deleted one of them with no indication of what happened, leaving no record of it in my account. This was _after_ I had a purchase confirmation email for both orders. CS was unwilling to apply the now-expired sale price to a new order when I contacted them. Secondly, when someone bought a $3000 camera on my account (had no credit cards attached, they used a gift card) Newegg closed my account when I reported it, and I now cannot use my primary email account with them, as there's an existing closed account with that address. I consider both of these to be their fault--yes, I could have checked my account more often, but I generally rely on email communications for online purchases; and my account could have been restored by resetting password and logging out existing sessions.
perryizgr8 5y ago
> It sucks, because I want to support businesses other than Amazon and the like, ones that pay corporation tax and don't abuse their market position, but the other stores really have to raise their game. Amazon uses that money it saves from not paying tax to improve its website and service. That's why others aren't able to compete.

harikb 5y ago

Talking from the perspective of local business owner - it isn’t possible to compete with Amazon on ”online” features. This needs two efforts - people have to be Ok with an inferior shopping experience to a certain extent. Can’t have cake and eat it. Second, Software powered world needs a different kind of monopoly control - we shouldn’t talking about “breaking up Amazon” - that just creates busy work from yet another set of programmers to work on duplicating everything Amazon has. That is a waste of resources. Instead regulation should force Amazon to share its “retail infra” and may be allow local business to relicense/partner with some of it.

londons_explore 5y ago
As a software guy, rebuilding many of the features of Amazon that users love isn't awfully hard or expensive. I think it's a unique combination of logistics and tech which few companies manage to successfully pursue. Things like hooking up the cash register system to the website so the website doesn't say "in stock" when someone has bought the last one. It's pretty easy for someone techy to do that, but there is rarely a sufficiently techy person on staff in a typical small business.
smichel17 5y ago
"Breaking up Amazon so that fulfilment is a separate business, which other companies besides may do business with" seems isomorphic to "force Amazon to share its infrastructure" to me.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> it isn’t possible to compete with Amazon on ”online” features. I'm not sure that's a true statement. I've completely ceased buying computing equipment from Amazon because their search is so goddamned useless. Newegg's power search actually works and lets me find what I'm looking for.
- fomine3 5y ago
  I've been really curious why Amazon can't implement sort by exact price.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  For computer hardware, I use PCPartPicker to find what I want, and follow their link. Yes, I know that those will definitely be referral links, but I'm fine with that.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I'm ok paying NewEgg's (sometimes) slightly higher prices because they took the time to put together a good search.
    - efreak 5y ago
      I stopped buying from Newegg. Firstly when I made two identical orders once (I intended to get two hard drives, only got one, so ordered the second a few hours later when I noticed), they _silently_ deleted one of them with no indication of what happened, leaving no record of it in my account. This was _after_ I had a purchase confirmation email for both orders. CS was unwilling to apply the now-expired sale price to a new order when I contacted them. Secondly, when someone bought a $3000 camera on my account (had no credit cards attached, they used a gift card) Newegg closed my account when I reported it, and I now cannot use my primary email account with them, as there's an existing closed account with that address. I consider both of these to be their fault--yes, I could have checked my account more often, but I generally rely on email communications for online purchases; and my account could have been restored by resetting password and logging out existing sessions.

perryizgr8 5y ago

> It sucks, because I want to support businesses other than Amazon and the like, ones that pay corporation tax and don't abuse their market position, but the other stores really have to raise their game. Amazon uses that money it saves from not paying tax to improve its website and service. That's why others aren't able to compete.