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I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly

• munificent 5y ago
  > So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? As far as I can see, there are only two forces potentially big enough to fight a big corporation today: 1. Another equally big corporation. 2. The federal government. The fact that US anti-trust enforcement has been essentially non-existent means that #1 is almost gone these days. Citizens United allowed corporations to buy politicians, so it seems that #2 is dead too. It sucks.
  • lupire 5y ago
    3. Don't buy junk you don't need. Pay people to create real value.
  • jacobr1 5y ago
    Walmart is starting to become more competitive again re #1
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• tvirosi 5y ago
  Stop being a slave to your addictions and form some principles. Come on.
  • bobthechef 5y ago
    You got downvoted but there’s something to be said for this. If you are “torn” over this, if it’s so bad that you’re “torn”, how is this a difficult decision? Convenience trumps being “torn”. I mean, really.
    • lordnacho 5y ago
      Any situation that has a plus and a minus is hard to decide. Typically it's also a private plus versus a public minus. If you remove yourself, you lose the benefits but the beast goes on without you. If it's going to survive regardless of your actions anyway, why not throw another drop in the ocean? Goes for employees and customers.
• fridif 5y ago
  >"So aside from just stop buying from Amazon, what can we do?" Lower the barriers to entry for business. It is not easy to comply with regulations and reporting. A scrappy startup can replace Amazon if they can focus on things that are not burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax reporting + legal.
  • shakezula 5y ago
    Lol, no a startup can't replace Amazon without themselves having all of those rents, and insurances, and reporting accountants and lawyers. Amazon has a logistics network that rivals the U.S. military's right now. You can't just "displace & disrupt" that with a trendy San Francisco office.
    • jefftk 5y ago
      Why wouldn't you have said the same about Amazon and B&N in 1994?
      • fridif 5y ago
        I second this comment 1000x. Amazon beat Barnes, and then Walmart, and then Jet tried to beat Amazon. If the average Joe was able to give it a shot instead of just the Harvard elite, then we'd have many more chances
      • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Amazon wasn't competing with B&N in 1994. B&N however (and Borders, and so many others) were. Amazon in the 90s wasn't about "getting a book" but "getting a book via a computer, from a place with "all the books" and I don't have to drive". B&N could have competed with that if they had understand what was happening, but I don't think they did. bookshop.org appears to do so, but may be 20 years too late.
      • tshaddox 5y ago
        I don’t think the previous commenter was saying that no startup could disrupt Amazon, but that no startup could disrupt Amazon simply by spending less time on tax paperwork. Amazon didn’t disrupt B&N by spending less time on tax paperwork. They disrupted them by changing essentially every fundamental piece of how they conducted their business.
• missedthecue 5y ago
  Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying congress to raise the federal minimum wage? https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobbying-offers-new-advantage-against-walmart-2021-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...
  • underseacables 5y ago
    That’s a fair point. I see them as suppressing wages because they open warehouses in small towns, pay $15/hr and then work the person to death so they become dependent on that job. Amazon can totally dominate an area’s workforce and use that to drive wages and benefits down.
    • jaredklewis 5y ago
      This argument sounds entirely theoretical. Do you have an example of even one small town where average or median wages or benefits were decreased as a result of Amazon? I frequently encounter armchair economists on the Internet making sweeping claims about various, but it is frustrating. It takes basically no effort to think up something plausible. But to take even the first step towards empirically verifying a given hypothesis is an enormous amount of work. Without even a rough empirical foundation, how valuable are these armchair theories? A little dated now but the Economist had a little mini-article about Amazon and wages. Really highlights how difficult it is to draw any definitive causal links, as well as trade offs (like benefits and unemployment): https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amazon-does-to-wages https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amaz...
      • jfim 5y ago
        > Do you have an example of even one small town where average or median wages or benefits were decreased as a result of Amazon? A couple of quotes from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-wages-alabama-union.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w... In making the case against a union at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., Amazon has touted its compensation package. The company notes that base pay at the facility, around $15.50 an hour for most rank-and-file workers, is more than twice the local minimum wage, and that it offers comprehensive health insurance and retirement benefits. But to many of Amazon’s Bessemer employees, who are voting this month on whether to unionize, the claims to generosity can ring hollow alongside the demands of the job and local wage rates. The most recent figure for the median wage in greater Birmingham, a metropolitan area of roughly one million people that includes Bessemer, was nearly $3 above Amazon’s pay there, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But other workers emphasize that pay at Amazon isn’t particularly high for the Birmingham area, even if the pandemic has reduced their job options. The retail workers’ union said it represented employees at nearby warehouses where pay is $18 to $21 an hour, including an ice cream facility and a grocery warehouse not far from Amazon.
• jdavis703 5y ago
  Aren’t size 14 shoes on the long side of the tail? Amazon will always be better at that than a brick and mortar retailer.
  • underseacables 5y ago
    For YEARS I bought Merrills in 13W from Dicks or REI. I made do but I hoped PayLess were still around. Shoes are really expensive, but fair point, I got big feet.
  • dsr_ 5y ago
    The rule of, er, foot, is that any shoe store will carry up to 12 in just about anything, and 13 in some. 14 and 15 are sometimes available. Anything larger is a specialty store... except New Balance will always have up to 18 in some styles. Now, width is another matter entirely.
• shakezula 5y ago
  > So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are suppressed because it's _legal enough_ to suppress them. Labor fines basically become a cost of doing business. After the union busting that went on during the Alabama Amazon unionization votes, after all of these labor complaints against Amazon coming under media attention and not a single thing being done about it, it's clear that there is truly nothing that will stop it except a general strike.
  • dstick 5y ago
    And it’s a negative cycle. Those already budget stretched people are getting paid poorly by Amazon, so they too will shop at Amazon. We’re not there yet but the cycle is reminiscent of the factory owners with factory stores and pubs where the workers spend all their money during the industrial revolution. Unions and worker laws stem from that era. So who knows - maybe we’re on the cusp of another revolution that’s similar, but in our current digital revolution!
    • shakezula 5y ago
      There was an article on the front page about how Amazon does this in some places already. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • marcusverus 5y ago
      > We’re not there yet but the cycle is reminiscent of the factory owners with factory stores and pubs where the workers spend all their money during the industrial revolution. Is it? Amazon employees (presumably) have the same options as everyone else. Many of those options are, generally speaking, cheaper than Amazon. Whatever your feelings about Amazon in general, fact that Amazon’s supposedly cash-strapped employees choose to pay a premium for convenience is not evidence of Amazon’s malevolence.
• ethbr0 5y ago
  Amazon is Amazon because they didn't let size dull their edge. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways. There are a lot of ways to be exploitive, to your and your customers' benefits, when you're a $113 B revenue/quarter company, that simply aren't available when you're a startup. Hell, Walmart pioneered the "How'd you like to sell in our stores?" + "You need to reduce prices, or it'd be a shame if we, your biggest customer, had to drop you" two step. And Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies. Both of which only work if you're giant. If we want a return to competition of yore, I think it's only going to happen if we (a) prevent "extra-large" companies from having in-house logistics & (b) prevent predatory contracts and pricing when a size disparity exists (e.g. Walmart/supplier). And given both of these are pretty fundamental to the way many companies work, I'm not even sure they'd be feasible.
  • TheSoftwareGuy 5y ago
    > Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies Actually, I believe that was Walmart as well: >TIMMER: I used to ask my class, I’m talking 1985, “Where is the world’s largest supercomputer?” And the correct answer was, “It’s at the Pentagon.” Okay. “Where is the world’s second largest supercomputer?” Bentonville, Ark. Home of Walmart. They used that computer to track every single item on every single Walmart shelf. That information technology is what revolutionized food marketing. And it was pretty much invented by Walmart. Source: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/#:%7E:text=where%20is%20the%20world%E2%80%99s%20second%20largest%20supercomputer%3F https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/#:%7E:text=where...
    • chubot 5y ago
      Ironically Barnes And Noble was also a significant computer user in the 80’s and 90’s. They put a lot of local bookstores out of business with superior inventory, prices, and generally being data driven. Then they were one of Amazon’s first casualties!
      • echelon 5y ago
        The pattern is that efficiency increases and hyperscale fell the previous incumbent. If the pace of innovation doesn't slow, Amazon may fall to the same forces. Imagine a virtualized army of engineers that the AI or brain upload future may bring. Maybe that won't happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen at some point if we don't manage to nuke ourselves. There are probably a handful of other trends that will cause instability and salients to develop in the fitness gradient.
• TheSoftwareGuy 5y ago
  > Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices We need to make those things illegal and we need to make sure those laws are enforced. This is the greatest downfall of capitalism, morals cannot be enforced by consumers because business operations are completely opaque to them. No company should be able to outcompete another by using such terrible, exploitative practices.
• chubot 5y ago
  For diversity, I buy from target.com. They don’t have the selection but sometimes that’s what you want. I don’t need to look through 20 brands of tissue. Their prices and shipping are generally on par with Amazon (I assume they are forgoing profit to get loyal customers) So basically I would try going to target first, then Amazon. Or Newegg or B&H first, then Amazon. There are other retailers of course but those tend to have operational competence, which is hard because Amazon raised the bar.
  • r00fus 5y ago
    This is a good point. I've found stuff on Target I wouldn't have considered on Amazon. I also like Target's pickup option - it's even better than Amazon sometimes because it'll often be ready for me in like 15-30m and driving/biking over there is like a 10m exercise.
• nixpulvis 5y ago
  Fact is, a lot of times that extra 50% you pay will come back in lifetime of the product, if you know how to shop for it. And shopping in person often makes it a lot easier to assess quality. Especially when Amazon orders turn out to be straight up forgeries.
• r00fus 5y ago
  There are other megastores with options other than Amazon. Target, Walmart, etc. I have found Amazon to be not the best with clothing/shoes unless you're buying the same shoes over and over - the pricing in that case is often not competitive either.
• ransom1538 5y ago
  "So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ?" IMHO, the system is [china builds things] -> [middle man sells it on amazon] -> [consumer buys it on amazon]. Amazon needs these middle man people and has starting cutting them out by producing their own lines to create even more profit. The only way Amazon will die is if the graph turns into: [china builds things] -> [consumer buys it]. I know, I know, i hear everyone saying: that is impossible. But I don't think it is and I think that is coming.
• hogFeast 5y ago
  I come at this from the other point of view: I used to work as an equity analyst (analysing companies), and I ended up gravitating towards retail. The issue, as you imply, isn't only that Amazon is very good but the experience at many physical retailers is very poor. It is difficult to simplify this down to one thing imo. Managers in physical retail are unusually bad. Retail used to be ludicrously profitable, so most companies have a dense layer of MBAs who have no real idea how to adapt or innovate. I recently read The Secret Life of Groceries (not great tbh, but did cover some useful themes) and towards the end of the book (paraphrasing), it is framed as grocers all "compete" to be the best version of the same thing. They strip all the difference out of their product, usually compete solely on price, and (ofc) someone eventually comes in and undercuts them. That is a failure of incentives and management. This varies by industry, and is not limited to incentives/management. One reason for the lack of innovation in sports apparel is that there are basically two suppliers, and one of them is moving heavily into DTC. Every sportswear shop is just a Nike distributor, so there is no real differentiation there (the only innovation in the sector has been distributors moving up the chain like Sports Direct and Decathlon in Europe). So the reason why you can't find shoes cheaper is actually because of Nike, not distributors (and those distributors lack any capacity to innovate, management is mostly composed of MBAs who likely have worked at Nike or Adidas at some point). But the solution is counter-intuitive: keep buying from Amazon. There is nothing structural or inevitable about Amazon's success (compare them with the large Chinese retailers, they actually look quite blundering and incompetent, they have made mistakes in distribution already that are going to choke them). Physical retail needs more innovation which can only come through firms dying, and entrepreneurs thinking about what consumers want (this happened with WMT, there was consolidation then competition as WMT got overrun by MBAs and they lost their edge...Tesco in the UK is a very extreme example of this too). I wouldn't be pessimistic either: the distinction between online and offline retail really doesn't exist. Look at restaurants like CMG, they are taking most of their orders online...but that doesn't change the product. It is the same with retail: taking an order online doesn't change the fact that the retailer is holding some product somewhere, and is distributing that to you (this is the mistake that Nike is making, they are going into DTC thinking they just can just cut everyone out, and jam up prices...it is MBA, day one strategy, and idiotically wrong). The real difference with offline retail is actually the cost of property, which is going to narrow over time. Ofc, this isn't universal...some verticals like hardware stores are ready-to-go already, others like clothing probably aren't (there isn't much value-add at consumer contact, and they pay v high rents)...but the innovation will come. I don't think physical retail is dead at all though. If anything the weakness of physical retail is that MBAs stripped all the life out of it which left them open to competition from online. Online is just delivering the message that consumers have had enough. EDIT: I will add that personally I think a lot of the stuff on Amazon is terrible. A lot of retailers in the 2000s were just innovating by going deeper into China, and closer to factories. Amazon just took that to it's logical conclusion. It works for some products, not for everything. Branded stuff also tends to be fake.
• hosh 5y ago
  That is the heart of “Aggregation Theory” from the stratechary blog. That these companies amass their market power by making their product so easy to use, they aggregate demand and are able to squeeze suppliers. They hold monopolistic power, but it is hard to argue that they “harm consumers”. Unlike old school monopolies, consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not because they are forced to.
  • quantum_magpie 5y ago
    >consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not because they are forced to. Recently I wanted to buy 10-ish dead tree books in English and get them shipped to an eastern EU country. Going through the first 20~ DDG results of online stores exactly zero would ship them here. Also, the local bookstores would have only few books in English, mostly the 'bestseller'-type stuff. Amazon was the only place that would have them available and would ship them here..
    • kelnos 5y ago
      I think the statement you're replying to is more talking about staple items, not long-tail items. Things like toilet paper, toothpaste, shoes, etc. should be widely-available from local stores (both online and brick-and-mortar), and yet people still go to the aggregators for them, because it's easier and gives them predictable pricing, delivery, and quality.
      • 8note 5y ago
        Do you have a local toilet paper store? I only have local aggregators, who also sell toothpaste and painkillers
  • nonbirithm 5y ago
    This articulates exactly what I've been thinking about technological progress for a long time. When Discord stopped marketing itself as a chat service "for gamers," suddenly huge swathes of chat groups from high schools to electrical engineering projects moved their discussions there. It was giving me a strange feeling, maybe because Discord was a product instead of a protocol, and also because it means that all the domain-specific knowledge produced in those chat rooms becomes siloed inside the servers of a single proprietary company, unable to be indexed publicly. But that was a point in time where a company improving the quality of its product and its market reach gave me hesitation for some reason. Improving your service and having more people talking about it and using it is supposed to be a good thing, right? The notion of a baseline of satisfaction required for consentual opting-in to monopolies seems to have produced this perpetual equilibrium where even if people don't like a service they still throw up their hands and use it because everyone else happens to use it since it is the one and only place that this one crucial discussion about X or Y is taking place in the entire world, and the subject matter has nothing to do with the platform itself, but that platform was the one that happened to win out, because it was superior. It's caused me to think that just because you are fixing bugs or legitimately making improvements to a product, or have big dreams and an idea that actually does change the world, it doesn't mean that you are necessarily mean that you are doing the world a favor overall. The people in control or the incentives could rule what actually happens. And the scariest thing is, people don't want to outlaw or regulate innovation or growth. People are fine with Amazon improving its marketplace to the point where there are no other marketplaces left offering a comparable set of products. A lot of people seem to be fine with letting social media grow to dominate our lives if it's reframed as "making it easier to keep in touch with your distant relatives." Now it really is easier to keep in touch with your relatives than ever. And now, social media is also starting to dominate our lives.
• eplanit 5y ago
  I have the same feelings. I'm really fine with Amazon -- but I'd be much more fine by seeing them reduced via antitrust actions, with the goal of seeing more competition. First, I'd like to separate AWS from Amazon the Bazaar. It's just too much control over _both_ the Internet (including all other e-commerce) and retail merchandise commerce. It's like they own the railroads, the ports, the trucks, and the stores -- we've seen the Robber Baron movie already.
  • AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
    I understand if we hoped antitrust action on Kindle (since they fought dirty and illegal against Barnes and Noble.) But both AMZN "bazaar" and AWS are novel concepts invented by AMZN, and they have worked really hard to make them reality on such unbelievable scales. Nobody thought of AWS for decades, until AMZN faced the systems problem and came up with cloud computing via AWS. I understand taking action on AMZN acquisitions since they are reducing competition illegally. But AWS is an absolutely novel idea by them, and in my opinion, we have no right to take any action there. Also there is a LOT of competition in cloud computing by AZURE and GCP
    • fakedang 5y ago
      So what's the damage for AMZN if it were split? The shareholders are going to be massively rewarded by that (including Bezos).
• tacocataco 5y ago
  I was under the impression that Amazon's web hosting drove it's profitability.
• macintux 5y ago
  FWIW, when I wanted a specific pair of shoes, I ordered them directly from the brand. It's very convenient to buy from Amazon, but it's hardly a hardship to not do so.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    No reputable brand is going to sell even half decent shoes for $35. This is a good example where you can see how much people are really willing (or able) to spend on “local” or “quality” goods that can help pay for a store’s staffing needs and other expenses.
    • zzleeper 5y ago
      I was in the same dilemma a month ago. Went to the closest outlet and got a great pair of Nike running shoes for about $55 (which I could try before buying). I think a KEY benefit of amazon is that you know it has everything. Sure, you might get better Foo at another store, but that's not the same store that sells you the better Bar. So you just default to amzn
    • abawany 5y ago
      I've gotten a few pairs from Adidas (adidas.com or their eBay store) and they have been great for my light needs. One can find Alphabounce-soled sneakers and etc. for around that price, including shipping.
    • mattmcknight 5y ago
      https://www.everlane.com/products/womens-forever-platform-sneaker-seaglass?collection=womens-shoes https://www.everlane.com/products/womens-forever-platform-sn... Everlane shoe on sale for $35, with the actual cost breakdown at the bottom for info. $7.02 materials, $2.16 hardware, $6.35 labor, $3.11 duties, $3.00 transport. (true cost, $21.64) They even give you a description of the factory. https://www.everlane.com/factories/forever-sneaker https://www.everlane.com/factories/forever-sneaker
      • 55555 5y ago
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  > So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do? Motivate other retailers to not be such lazy louts about technology?
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I am quite impressed with all the other retailers websites, much more than Amazon’s actually. I can see which aisle things are in the store, what can be picked up today, what can be ordered to the store, etc.
• allturtles 5y ago
  I'm increasingly put out by Amazon and am trying to stop the habit of shopping there. I like books, and Amazon was founded on books, but the way they ship books now (typically loose in a soft envelope or mostly empty box) means that >50% of the books I've ordered recently have arrived damaged and had to be returned. They used to shrinkwrap books to a cardboard plate inside the box. There are other problems: 1) Search is just terrible. Often I have to search in Google to find the product I'm looking for at Amazon. The "other people bought/looked at these items" functionality which partially made up for bad search has been pushed out in favor of sponsored products (i.e. ads). 2) Shipping is only fast and cheap if you get Prime, which basically means paying for your shipping in advance and buying constantly at Amazon to amortize your initial investment. 3) Because Amazon no longer actually controls its own catalog, duplicate listings, misleading listings, merged listings that amalgamate multiple different editions of the same book, etc. abound. e.g. search for "Norton Anthology of English Literature". Instead of a neatly sorted list by volume/edition/condition, you get a whole mess of duplicate/overlapping listings, and also misleading garbage like this (shows 3 books but you only get 1 of them): https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-English-Literature-Package/dp/039360313X https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-English-Literature-P.... I'm shifting towards just using Amazon as a 'wishlist' shopping cart and then finding the actual thing to buy elsewhere.
  • phatfish 5y ago
    I have also been annoyed by damaged books and is one reason I avoid Amazon. I've had them arrive damaged from specialist online book stores as well, but not as often. The only way to avoid that is to go to the book store and inspect the product first (which I do on occasion). They don't seem to be damaged in transit, usually it looks like they have been dropped or badly stored. I always price check Amazon too, quite often it is not the cheapest, and you can get caught out on shipping costs as you say.
  • 8note 5y ago
    You couldn't read these books? Or you couldn't show off that you owned them? How do you lose a page from inside of a box/envelope?
• unchocked 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that commodity retail has always, for my living memory at least, been a pretty stressful, insecure, and low-wage position. Amazon's scale brings welcome visibility to the problem, and offers employees the chance to unionize, but I'm puzzled by upper-class culture's seemingly new discovery that commodity retail is a shitty job.
  • mchem 5y ago
    Exactly this. Having worked such jobs in my youth; you don’t do it for the prospects… As you say, it’s a matter of scale. Shitty jobs have always existed, they will continue to do so. Is a job in home removals - a gruelling, backbreaking task - truly better than that of an Amazon courier, engineer, or warehouse employee? If we want to be particularly extreme, we can swap removals for mining, farm work, or heavy manufacturing. In the long run, damaged joints n’all, I expect that the average ‘shitty job’ of today - in developed nations - is still an improvement on what came before. Yes, a lot of this comes down to outsourcing risk and danger (e.g. from manufacturing). I’m interested in hearing opinions on this - it’s a working idea.
• jareklupinski 5y ago
  try ordering Allbirds directly from their website or in their stores, I'm a 14-15 too, they're in the $100 range but they're pretty stylish imo and last a while
• mywacaday 5y ago
  Lots of options, little will power, consumer and political. Unions, monopoly legislation, tie CEO salary to a multiple of employee salary and probably 100 other smarter ideas than those.
• hombre_fatal 5y ago
  > I bought then for $35. They will arrive tomorrow. Shouldn't you wait to see what kind of cheapo $35 shoe arrives tomorrow, one you never got to try on, before you celebrate?
  • BrissyCoder 5y ago
    Sounds like he did due-diligence on reviews.
    • learc83 5y ago
      Still a bit early to celebrate. You really can’t trust aggregate review scores these days—even if you scan them with a 3rd party tool.
      • tharkun__ 5y ago
        Not only that. Amazon also seems to have no idea what they sell shoe wise. Bought winter boots from them. So not sure on what size to get, because you should buy those larger. I also have wide feet too but they only offer them in M not E or wider. I don't know the brand yet, so no knowledge on how they fit vs size listed. Finally ordered after research online. Instead of the size I ordered, a 10 M, I get a 10 AA. It doesn't fit obviously as it's too narrow. Contact support and ask them what to do. They assure me I should get them exchanged and they will add a note to the warehouse to make extra sure I get the 10 M and not accidentally a 10 AA again. Days later I get 10 AAs again... Same chat with support who probably laugh to themselves at the stupid customer 'note to the warehouse haha' (do they actually do this? Would any overworked/underpaid warehouse worker even look at that?). I have to cancel the order and order a new pair in 11 M, which if I actually get that means they're gonna be too large. Luckily an 11 AA arrived. Go figure.
        • JimDabell 5y ago
          A friend of mine once received four disco balls in a row from Amazon when he ordered a set of speakers. Every time he would send the disco ball back, and every time they would apologise, tell him they would send him the replacement speakers, and then send him another disco ball. It was clearly an incorrect SKU somewhere, but I don’t think there’s any point in the chain where a person looks at whether what is being sent matches the product description.
• pyrale 5y ago
  Amazon is a poster child for antitrust litigation. They're publicly known for using their dominant position to compete with their suppliers, and drive their competitors out of business with price dumping. There is little chance you'll find alternatives to Amazon if they're allowed to destroy competition. Regulation can only go so far, it can help build and stabilize a healthy ecosystem but it can't help with a fully consolidated business like with a decade of experience in killing competition. There's a good case to be made that they should get the standard oil treatment.
• monksy 5y ago
  This is the same reason why we still have terrible economy experiences on airplanes. All of the airlines are focused on trying to maximimize revenue by forcing you to upgrade (if you want anything remotely non-terrible), and they all do it because they're all desperate to complete for the bottom. (Well except for the MEA Carriers)
  • 8note 5y ago
    There's basically no profit from economy seats. The first/second class seats subsidize the economy ones. They're terrible because they're only there to fill a public good
• Buttons840 5y ago
  Half the reason I use Amazon is there web app doesn't suck. If I go to Walmart's website it will be ugly and slow and I'm not confident it will work well on my phone. Why can't Walmart get this right? I'm fine buying from Walmart and having them store my CC info like Amazon does, it's only that poor web app experience holding me back. Maybe someone can make an Amazon competitor that is just a decent shopping app. I don't care if your store only has shoes, if I see it and think "oh, this is another one of those non-shitty-web-app stores" I'm likely to come back.
  • kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    walmart.com is rebadged jet.com. It isn't a clusterfuck with a tech debt extending back to the 00's like the old walmart site.
    • abawany 5y ago
      Agree. While Walmart's search can be a little silly still and selecting the retailer as Walmart.com every time gets old (esp. since it moves around), the search is light years better than the trashfire that Amazon.com serves me. Also, it is nice that Walmart.com emails actually list the items that I ordered instead of just the total order amount: the latter ensures that I must go to the site or app to determine what I ordered vs. searching my emails. Ordering from Amazon.com has been a pain for me for a long time, from the prompting to join Prime on every checkout, the reqd. selection of non-prime free shipping on every checkout, the content-free order emails, and etc. I contacted them specifically about the email issue but they pretty much replied with 'thanks for the info.' Most of my orders are now local, Target, or Walmart. If the latter 3 don't have it, then I reluctantly fire up Amazon and hate my life a little bit for it.
• godot 5y ago
  This is only tangentially related to your post at all, but as a budget-conscious shopper, I've come to realize that in America, there is usually a retail shop or two locally that consistently has the best deal for a category of things. Don't get me wrong, I still have to buy from Amazon for a lot of really miscellaneous things, but I think I manage to find good local deals (better than Amazon in most cases) for most category of items I buy, more so than most people. You just have to put in the work to do the research to find where those are (a lot of times that's about going to all these stores often enough that you get an understanding). In your example of sneakers, Adidas/Footlocker/Dicks are not the places to go for me. Here in California there is a store called Big5 Sporting Goods that consistently has incredible prices (on sale or not). In the past decade I've pretty much never bought shoes anywhere else; most sneakers or hiking shoes I've bought are under $35 and they are the most comfortable shoes I've tried anywhere. There may be a similar store in whatever state you're in. For clothes and some home goods items, similarly I wouldn't go to brand name stores at the malls; Ross and Marshall always have the best deals. For random home goods, Daiso (an Asian/Japanese brand store) which, fortunately for myself, has a lot of stores in California, has tons of super affordable options, as it's basically a Japanese dollar store. Then there are random things that Target has the best deals for; and other random things that Walmart has the best deals for (I know, buying from Walmart is not much better than buying on Amazon). My main point is, you don't always have to resort to Amazon for budget, you just have to do enough research work to find out where else to go.
  • hellotomyrars 5y ago
    It always pays to shop around, and I've actually shifted more of my business to ebay for items that are quite clearly the same cheap chinese product with X name stuck on it. Amazon doesn't reliably hit its two-day shipping mandate for me, and USPS can often beat them for smaller items. One thing I have noticed and don't really understand: Sellers who's products are more expensive on their own site than on their Amazon page. I could understand parity, but I don't understand it being more expensive to purchase from them directly.
    • dannyw 5y ago
      Amazon is a marketing channel. They want more sales on Amazon, which in turn drives more volume, even if their take is lower.
• TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Buy directly from the manufacturer's website whenever possible. It's not hard, especially for big-label names like those who make sneakers.
• vmception 5y ago
  > So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do There are two issues here: One is that you want to boycott a company that treats its employees bad, and two is that you buying local makes money circulate in the local economy. Make sure to decouple those. I like to play a game of "how is this retail employee going to lie to me today" when I walk in any brick and mortar establishment. Its entertainment.
  • wyre 5y ago
    > "how is this retail employee going to lie to me today" That’s easy. Just ask them how their day is going.
• ravenstine 5y ago
  I'd buy more often from smaller businesses if it didn't take most of them 3 days to merely put the shipping label on the box, let alone actually ship it. Amazon is top dog because they know people want a shot at getting items on the same day or next day. Almost no other online business can match that besides maybe Walmart, but they're vastly inferior and their fast shipping rarely pans out.
• JoeQuery 5y ago
  All you can do is do your best to not contribute to the problems you've identified. No one wants to be the bad guy in their own story. That's why excuses exist. Good luck. I understand where you're coming from.
• indigochill 5y ago
  > That kind of convenience is terribly addicting. Cigarettes are terrible addicting too and people quit them all the time. As far as I can see, the low cost of the American lifestyle is largely subsidized by shifting the price onto others. Whether that's Amazon keeping prices low by exploiting labor in the west or Chinese manufacturers keeping prices low by exploiting labor in China or meat manufacturers keeping prices low by running factory farms, at the end of the day, the ethical choice is always going to have a higher price attached because you're eating the cost so others don't have to. The only solution is to put your money where your mouth is. Others say legislation, but that's a transient solution at best. If the lobbyists don't get to twist the legislation in the first place, they'll just keep lobbying until they get their way. They have the money and organization to make it happen.
• jliptzin 5y ago
  We can start by taxing enormous corporations more, not less, and direct that tax revenue to the benefit of local communities, not the military or some general federal slush fund. If we’re not going to go after monopolies then least we could do is separate companies with >$50 billion in quarterly revenue and tax them differently than everyone else. Obviously they wield a ton of power to get to that point.
• orangegreen 5y ago
  You can use eBay if you don't want to use Amazon. Plus, you can even sell your stuff on eBay when you're done using it. I've never been an Amazon customer and don't plan on ever being one. I buy most things used too, saving lots of money along the way.
  • nunez 5y ago
    LOL. eBay is even worse! Zeroth, lots of eBay resellers drop-ship from or resell directly from Amazon. There are plenty of bots looking for arbitrage opportunities between Amazon, brick-and-mortar, and OEM. First, there's absolutely zero guarantee that you'll get what you bought. The chances of you getting a box of rocks is significantly greater on eBay than on Amazon (unless you use Amazon Marketplace, in which the chances of this happening are _still_ lower). Second, returns and disputes are generally settled C2C (consumer-to-consumer). Which means you're completely at the mercy of the seller (or the buyer, if you're selling). PayPal acts as a mediator, but they are really easy to game. Ever heard of the US Postal Investigations Service? Or the FBI IC3? Well, you'll get to know those departments _real_ well once you start using eBay enough. Third, PayPal has a Buyer Protection guarantee, but it only applies in a handful of specific situations and is, again, very easy to game. Hard contrast to Amazon's return policy, which is, basically, "if you still have it, and it's in the return window, you can return it, unless you abuse it."
    • wyre 5y ago
      Lol. Have you used eBay significantly or so you avoid it because of the reasons you just posted? I’ve replaced Amazon completely with eBay and have been using eBay for the past 4 years. I have never received a product I didn’t order using eBay. I wish I could say the same for Amazon.
      • nunez 5y ago
        I use eBay as a buyer and a seller. I do not use them often, largely because the reasons specified above. Example. Several years ago, I purchased a pair of Lucky Brand jeans. Same cut as what I already had, in the same size. Seller provided dimensions; I thought they would fit because I already had those pants. They arrived three days later. They did not fit. Seller would not honor a return. PayPal sided with the seller. I was out $35. I’m actually still pissed that that happened, five years ago, and it was only over $35! On Amazon, I would’ve returned them in three taps and a drive to Whole Foods. Should I have looked at the item more carefully? Sure. But the point here is that this transaction would have been significantly easier on Amazon _and_ I would have just bought a different pair of pants right after that.
• prostoalex 5y ago
  > Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed I never saw the definitive source on this, but around the time when the unionization vote was happening, people claiming experience in the logistics industry described Amazon as a place with low starting wages, but aggressive bonus structure for high performers. They also offered health benefits on day 1, which is unheard of in logistics. Other warehouses in the area might have different compensation schemes, and people would generally gravitate to the one that suited their work style better. The unionization vote seemed like it corroborated this thesis - it wasn’t even 52/48, but something definitive, like 70/30 against the union. Perhaps someone is aware of the data that incorporates take-home compensation with benefits and all, not the base rates advertised in job ads.
  • forz877 5y ago
    Rewarding a select group of high performers is a great way to underpay overall. You sell the idea of a bonus, but bonuses get easily taken away, and only go to a few select individuals. I don't think Amazon "underpays" per say - but the working conditions described seem quite poor.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • Hokusai 5y ago
    > high performers It could be random and it will still work. You want to pay a few people fairly so the others fight with them for that positions. Workers fighting workers is the goal of this incentives, it had nothing too do with performance.
• masterof0 5y ago
  > So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? Create a better service, sell cheaper and better quality products, etc. Is it easy? Of course not. But what do you want to do? Why would I buy product X more expensive at another store? The convenience is not addictive, is just good. People who don't have SDE salaries can afford the things they need at amazon, because are cheaper. Most people will find the best deals, unless you know a better place, I don't think you can do anything about it.
• nunez 5y ago
  The reason why I'm personally okay with buying stuff from the Everything Store is because [1] retail is a brutal business, [2] _everyone_ in retail (except perhaps the executive leadership) is treated like shit, and [3] Amazon, for all of their failings, is still absolutely obsessed with customer satisfaction. Amazon is still one of few companies that has a completely seamless, no-BS return policy, for example. The "sensible" alternative is to shop direct from small businesses, which I do sometimes, but see [2] from above.
  • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    >[3] Amazon, for all of their failings, is still absolutely obsessed with customer satisfaction. I recently had an AWS issue. Emailed our rep. Next day I was on the phone with like 8 Amazon people, high up enough to make things happen and low enough to make things happen. It was pretty wild and yes, for all their faults, the are the most customer focused company I’ve ever worked with.
    • bradknowles 5y ago
      AWS != Amazon. Amazon is famous for their fake returns that get put back into inventory without being inspected. Amazon is famous for their fly-by-night third party operators who do all sorts of crazy shit to the customer, but then Amazon claims it’s not their fault. And then Amazon also refuses to tell you who the actual third party was that did the crime. Amazon is famous for not giving you an adequate solution to a problem that they caused. Amazon could solve a lot of problems just by never co-mingling inventory from one seller with that from another seller — or with FBA inventory. Let each seller sink or swim on their own, and let their information be fully exposed to the customer.
  • katbyte 5y ago
    > no-BS return policy also no fee - the fact i can buy worry free knowing if its not as described/trash/broken i can just send it back at no cost is why i use them. don't know any other online store like that
    • 5y ago
• taurath 5y ago
  > So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? Lobby your congressperson to break up Amazon and all the other big tech companies. Prevent them from bundling, vertically integrating, and using loss leading products to make all competitors not competitive. Make their delivery network its own company who takes orders from other suppliers. Make their storefront and warehouses its own entity. Make their media organization stand on its own. People smarter than me can figure this out. Make policy that punishes national and international companies and favors local businesses, and keeps the taxbase local rather than in Delaware. Ultimately there's little that one can do with this hyper concentrated economy other than push for and join the political wave against concentration.
  • 8note 5y ago
    I think that is to say that Safeway is not allowed to own warehouses, and neither is Walmart? Also, apple isn't allowed to both make phones and software for phones?
• hattmall 5y ago
  Don't stop buying, keep buying, start returning. Buy things that are sold by Amazon and return them make accounts for free trials, buy things and return them, become unprofitable then figure out how to circumvent their bans!
  • alephnan 5y ago
    Seems like a massive waste of resources and hurting the planet, and also hurting the merchants
  • dannyw 5y ago
    If there's a physical business you don't like, do you go around causing nuisances under fake identities?
• magpi3 5y ago
  It is a difficult problem. There is a saying: ease is the disease. Seeking the easy path (which most of us do) generally leads to supporting institutions not for their moral worth, but for their ability to make our lives easier. And so companies focus on exactly that: making our lives easier. Taxes might help. If you tax a company for their immoral behavior, the cost of their goods go up and consumers might make different decisions. But in a democratic society the people who create taxes are elected by voters who want their lives to be easy. Maybe the best thing would be to throw out democracy and be ruled by philosopher kings who can make these decisions for us. I only say that half-jokingly.
• humaniania 5y ago
  Advocate to people that you know about joining the boycott. Stop choosing the cheaper and more convenient option, because you're supporting abuse.
• PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  Yeah. Amazon is disgusting and essentially criminal, stealing designs from people and reproducing them as their own (see the Peak Design story). But then you go to a brick-and-mortar store and they don't have shit. I'm talking middle-of-the road sizes and products... nothing. I can't feel sorry for businesses that can't learn basic inventory control.
• sathackr 5y ago
  Not sure why it's so hard for some people. When Amazon Prime was real 2-day shipping and they'd send something via overnight air just to get it to you in time, it was nice. And would have been hard to give up. Now that it just means free shipping, and you might get it tomorrow and you might get it in a week, it's much easier just to buy somewhere else. Walmart. Target. BH Photo. Adorama. Best Buy. Tons of options.
  • rejectedandsad 5y ago
    It still does mean 2 day for most things that aren’t huge items - my bed took a week, but most of my items show up next day or day after tomorrow.
• arbuge 5y ago
  I buy all my sneakers from Ebay (new, not used) and they never cost more than the price you mentioned. There are definitely alternatives.
• bookofsand 5y ago
  Unionize.
• jvanderbot 5y ago
  That store should have let you try on stock at your leisure, let you pick colors, styles, etc, then facilitated delivery overnight to your home with an in store return option with 1 year discounted upgrade / trade in. No more out of stock BS. It's a comedy of uncreative errors that leads us to zero in store competition with Amazon. Target isn't bad!
• hasmanean 5y ago
  Both of them pay low wages but retail stores have to pay rent for their facilities. Amazon doesn’t.
  • gruez 5y ago
    >Amazon doesn’t. They need warehouse space though.
    • hasmanean 5y ago
      I doubt they rent their warehouses. And they build them out in the middle of nowhere where land is cheap to buy.
• throw123123123 5y ago
  A company hiring near 1% of the workforce is not suppressing wages, it is a massive demand for wages.
• vadym909 5y ago
  You wait Product Makers will at some point realize they can sell direct and do it without AMZN. e.g. Nike, Apple Competitors- Dick's, Best Buy will give product makers ultimatums- if we get undercut by AMZn, we're not going to sell your stuff- so you decide. Its nice to be able to buy and pickup curbside same day Customers- I already find Amzn beating prices on eBay about 25% of the time. eBay shipping times are improving too
• wildrhythms 5y ago
  Consumer-side protest has never worked. Organized labor is the only way for workers to effect change at the workplace.
• asdffdsa 5y ago
  If you follow the link at the bottom of this comment it will lead you to $20 shoes from Target. They usually have the option to get it shipped to the store of your choice within several days. You can do a similar thing for other goods you need. There are also discount/used clothing stores like TJ Maxx which have cheaper clothes. Relatively speaking, it's not difficult to buy things not from Amazon. https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=mens+shoes+target https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=mens+shoes+target
• agumonkey 5y ago
  how much of amazon is causing the mortar stores to sell things higher than necessary ? it's common that when a competitor swipes the rug, the old guys have to increase prices to survive (a little longer)
• Zanneth 5y ago
  $15/hr, working indoors in an air conditioned building, in relatively safe conditions, is an absolutely amazing deal for low skilled workers in most parts of the country. Not to say we couldn't do better, but it always helps to see from the perspective of those who are less fortunate to understand why they choose to work at places like Amazon.
• giardini 5y ago
  As I understand it, Amazon is already internally organized in relatively independent groups, each focusing on a particular market. If so, one possibility would be to: a) break Amazon into many independent companies based on these already-established groups and b) bar forever (or for some time) these groups from merging with each other. The initial conditions (terms of the break-up: e.g., how much cash each entity would get) would determine whether, when cast out onto the street, each might survive.