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It’s not that people are wanting them to fail, just that they are being so anti everything whilst their competitors amass. I’ve got friends who’ve moved from A

It’s not that people are wanting them to fail, just that they are being so anti everything whilst their competitors amass. I’ve got friends who’ve moved from AWS-centric roles to Azure-centric, prime is a dead product walking, twitch is unprofitable, Alexa is dead, and their original business is squeezing users, drivers, and employees. A strong viable Amazon.com alternative and they are done.

amadeuspagel 2y ago
Sure, a store where you can buy literally everything and have it delivered in days, and they're done.
- ActionHank 2y ago
  You've just described a whole slew of online stores, their logistics aren't on par yet, but they will be.
  - jdiez17 2y ago
    Logistics is definitely Amazon's biggest moat. Second biggest would probably be their customer service.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      Customer service is just a bot, and anyone can have one of those
      - jdiez17 2y ago
        What I mean by their customer service moat is that they can afford to give full refunds at the slightest inconvenience to the customer.
        dylan604 2y ago
        I've never looked at the market place terms vendors agree to, but I can imagine return claw backs are a thing. Very similar to credit card merchant agreements for charge backs. A very lax return policy on Amazon doesn't have to be expensive to Amazon.
        jdiez17 2y ago
        I'm not just talking about money. They can set whatever terms they like with vendors because selling on Amazon is a very attractive business for independent dropshippers etc.
        dylan604 2y ago
        How about you describe what your thinking here is, because as of now all your doing is trying to counter my comments by saying "no". You're adding nothing to why you think the moat exists and no other online vendor can compete with it.
        jdiez17 2y ago
        I don't have the inclination to hunt for evidence for you. I'm not saying other companies can't do it. But it will be hard because of the capital/scaling/network effect requirements that Amazon has today. This is my opinion and I'm not trying to convince you of it. Have a nice day.
    - abofh 2y ago
      Which, to be honest, has been downhill - amazon used to be super focused on customer satisfaction, but these days pretty much every interaction I've had with amazon makes me sad - pages of promoted products before I hit the product I'm actually searching for, account execs that don't seem to understand that they're their to fix problems not create them, and honestly AWS is lagging -- too many teams fighting for promotion by creating new services, nobody supporting or maintaining the plumbing. I make most of my money supporting companies on AWS, but I've stopped recommending it to new shops largely for the same reasons - if you're not big enough for them to knock on your door, they won't answer when you knock on theirs.
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      What customer service? It's impossible to get a human
      - jdiez17 2y ago
        Where are you based? I just talked to a rep on the phone last week about a missing package (EU/DE). I've also had pretty frictionless interactions with CS over chat.
- Shikadi 2y ago
  I mean, they probably don't need their feet to continue making money and selling things online. IBM still makes money after all
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  *in hours, for certain product/location combos.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Yep. I remember one move I made to a new city. I'd downsized a bunch of my stuff and got settled in pretty quickly. Everything was right with the world except my Harmony remote didn't survive the move and my guitar hanger got left behind. So I looked at Amazon to at least get a baseline price for these two things, and they offered to deliver both of them to my door in a couple of hours. I sanity-checked the prices and they were fine. "What is this wizardry," I thought to myself, when I had both items at my door in a couple of hours.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  How'd that work out for the Sears Catalog?
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Sears was destroyed by standard corporate raider tactics. I don't think that they serve as the example that you may think they do.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      I remember my last time walking into a Sears. I figured I'd give it a shot to see if they had anything different than HD/Lowes in the category I was looking at (shop vac attachments). A clerk pointed me to a computer saying "If we don't have it in the store you can order it from our catalog". The computer catalog was literally just searching Amazon listings. That basically confirmed to me that Sears was in a death spiral.
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        Yep. They were already dead by that point (again, due to standard corporate raider tactics) -- a zombie just awaiting its coup de grâce. There was a time before that when they had a better web presence for selling regular hardgoods than Amazon (which was still mostly known as just an online book store), and the Sears Parts website was the very first place to look online for manuals, diagrams, parts, and standard accessories for any random household thing (including shop vac attachments). They also co-founded the Prodigy network back in the 80s when home computers were still very novel and people weren't broadly sure if the concept would ever catch on.
    - dh2022 2y ago
      I used to work at Starbucks in their corporate office building in South Downtown Seattle. The building used to be a Sears warehouse ago [1]. The walls next to the elevator in the ground floor still had printed some sort of "Sears customer contract". It had clauses like "you can return the merchandise if you are not satisfied with no questions asked. We will refund you for any shipping charges when returning merchandise". Or "if you cannot find it in our warehouse you can have delivered from our catalog to your home". These slogans reminded me of Amazon and their customer obsession. Sears could have been Amazon if they kept their customer obsession. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears,_Roebuck_%26_Company_Mail_Order_Building_(Los_Angeles,_California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears,_Roebuck_%26_Company_Mai... and https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm4RCM_Sears_Tower_Seattle_WA https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm4RCM_Sears_Tower_Seatt...
- ben_w 2y ago
  "Delivered in days", my experience is that most deliveries get a "we couldn't find you" notice in my letter box, get bounced to a collection point, and that the collection point is often further away than the physical shop selling the same item. And two days after scheduled delivery. Unless I want to buy something weird, in which case there's also a good chance delivery fails entirely for some reason and the order gets cancelled on the other side.
  - dleink 2y ago
    I wonder what country you're in?
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Germany. Berlin in particular. Also didn't have very good experiences in the UK (Cambridge and Portsmouth).
      - jdiez17 2y ago
        Also in Berlin (Wedding, previously Moabit) and Amazon has been very reliable except in some odd cases where it’s delayed by a day. DHL on the other hand is a crapshoot.
  - criddell 2y ago
    Your experience is unusual. In 2023 I placed exactly 100 orders and this year I'm probably going to hit the same number. I've had very few problems over the years (my first order was March 29, 2000). During that time, I've lived in a bunch of different cities across three states.
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    My experience living in an apartment building is that delivered packages are just stolen, so I either have them sent to an Amazon Locker or collection point (a local Whole Foods has a counter for this). Our apartment building has a package room with a camera and my packages have never been stolen from it, and the delivery instructions in my Amazon profile say to use that package room including how to get there and that Amazon can tap into the room. Often times delivery drivers don't do that and just leave the package on a shelf out in the open next to the mailboxes. I cannot even count the number of times someone has ripped into the package to see if it contained something interesting only to leave it behind when it's boring like pencils or cleaning supplies. Amazon refuses to take any responsibility for packages stolen and has in the past denied refund requests without a police report on the incident (which I have filed multiple for just to get a refund though the package thefts are never investigated so I'm not sure what filing a police report is meant to do here). Their delivery is inconsistent so I just don't bother. Though that does mean that I don't order as often from them as perhaps they'd like - if I can pick it up locally after work then I'll do that rather than order it and wait for it to be present and unopened only to be disappointed yet again at the Amazon driver who didn't read the delivery instructions which state multiple times not to leave the package next to the mailboxes because it will be destroyed or stolen.
- silisili 2y ago
  WalMart is like 90% of the way there. They'll bring it right this second, for a fee, or tomorrow for free, for anything in its store. 1 day shipping on anything in its warehouses. The only thing they're missing is the random do-dads I seem to need quite often. I don't think they have the best name reputation. At least people my age, WalMart is synonymous with cheap and poor quality. But that was before the age of dropshipping and Amazon, where now Walmart's offerings are probably actually better quality than a lot of stuff. IMO they probably should have leveraged Jet there instead, but it is what it is.

amadeuspagel 2y ago

Sure, a store where you can buy literally everything and have it delivered in days, and they're done.

ActionHank 2y ago
You've just described a whole slew of online stores, their logistics aren't on par yet, but they will be.
- jdiez17 2y ago
  Logistics is definitely Amazon's biggest moat. Second biggest would probably be their customer service.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Customer service is just a bot, and anyone can have one of those
    - jdiez17 2y ago
      What I mean by their customer service moat is that they can afford to give full refunds at the slightest inconvenience to the customer.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        I've never looked at the market place terms vendors agree to, but I can imagine return claw backs are a thing. Very similar to credit card merchant agreements for charge backs. A very lax return policy on Amazon doesn't have to be expensive to Amazon.
        jdiez17 2y ago
        I'm not just talking about money. They can set whatever terms they like with vendors because selling on Amazon is a very attractive business for independent dropshippers etc.
        dylan604 2y ago
        How about you describe what your thinking here is, because as of now all your doing is trying to counter my comments by saying "no". You're adding nothing to why you think the moat exists and no other online vendor can compete with it.
        jdiez17 2y ago
        I don't have the inclination to hunt for evidence for you. I'm not saying other companies can't do it. But it will be hard because of the capital/scaling/network effect requirements that Amazon has today. This is my opinion and I'm not trying to convince you of it. Have a nice day.
  - abofh 2y ago
    Which, to be honest, has been downhill - amazon used to be super focused on customer satisfaction, but these days pretty much every interaction I've had with amazon makes me sad - pages of promoted products before I hit the product I'm actually searching for, account execs that don't seem to understand that they're their to fix problems not create them, and honestly AWS is lagging -- too many teams fighting for promotion by creating new services, nobody supporting or maintaining the plumbing. I make most of my money supporting companies on AWS, but I've stopped recommending it to new shops largely for the same reasons - if you're not big enough for them to knock on your door, they won't answer when you knock on theirs.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    What customer service? It's impossible to get a human
    - jdiez17 2y ago
      Where are you based? I just talked to a rep on the phone last week about a missing package (EU/DE). I've also had pretty frictionless interactions with CS over chat.
Shikadi 2y ago
I mean, they probably don't need their feet to continue making money and selling things online. IBM still makes money after all
Ajedi32 2y ago
*in hours, for certain product/location combos.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Yep. I remember one move I made to a new city. I'd downsized a bunch of my stuff and got settled in pretty quickly. Everything was right with the world except my Harmony remote didn't survive the move and my guitar hanger got left behind. So I looked at Amazon to at least get a baseline price for these two things, and they offered to deliver both of them to my door in a couple of hours. I sanity-checked the prices and they were fine. "What is this wizardry," I thought to myself, when I had both items at my door in a couple of hours.
DrillShopper 2y ago
How'd that work out for the Sears Catalog?
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Sears was destroyed by standard corporate raider tactics. I don't think that they serve as the example that you may think they do.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    I remember my last time walking into a Sears. I figured I'd give it a shot to see if they had anything different than HD/Lowes in the category I was looking at (shop vac attachments). A clerk pointed me to a computer saying "If we don't have it in the store you can order it from our catalog". The computer catalog was literally just searching Amazon listings. That basically confirmed to me that Sears was in a death spiral.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      Yep. They were already dead by that point (again, due to standard corporate raider tactics) -- a zombie just awaiting its coup de grâce. There was a time before that when they had a better web presence for selling regular hardgoods than Amazon (which was still mostly known as just an online book store), and the Sears Parts website was the very first place to look online for manuals, diagrams, parts, and standard accessories for any random household thing (including shop vac attachments). They also co-founded the Prodigy network back in the 80s when home computers were still very novel and people weren't broadly sure if the concept would ever catch on.
  - dh2022 2y ago
    I used to work at Starbucks in their corporate office building in South Downtown Seattle. The building used to be a Sears warehouse ago [1]. The walls next to the elevator in the ground floor still had printed some sort of "Sears customer contract". It had clauses like "you can return the merchandise if you are not satisfied with no questions asked. We will refund you for any shipping charges when returning merchandise". Or "if you cannot find it in our warehouse you can have delivered from our catalog to your home". These slogans reminded me of Amazon and their customer obsession. Sears could have been Amazon if they kept their customer obsession. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears,_Roebuck_%26_Company_Mail_Order_Building_(Los_Angeles,_California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears,_Roebuck_%26_Company_Mai... and https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm4RCM_Sears_Tower_Seattle_WA https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm4RCM_Sears_Tower_Seatt...
ben_w 2y ago
"Delivered in days", my experience is that most deliveries get a "we couldn't find you" notice in my letter box, get bounced to a collection point, and that the collection point is often further away than the physical shop selling the same item. And two days after scheduled delivery. Unless I want to buy something weird, in which case there's also a good chance delivery fails entirely for some reason and the order gets cancelled on the other side.
- dleink 2y ago
  I wonder what country you're in?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Germany. Berlin in particular. Also didn't have very good experiences in the UK (Cambridge and Portsmouth).
    - jdiez17 2y ago
      Also in Berlin (Wedding, previously Moabit) and Amazon has been very reliable except in some odd cases where it’s delayed by a day. DHL on the other hand is a crapshoot.
- criddell 2y ago
  Your experience is unusual. In 2023 I placed exactly 100 orders and this year I'm probably going to hit the same number. I've had very few problems over the years (my first order was March 29, 2000). During that time, I've lived in a bunch of different cities across three states.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  My experience living in an apartment building is that delivered packages are just stolen, so I either have them sent to an Amazon Locker or collection point (a local Whole Foods has a counter for this). Our apartment building has a package room with a camera and my packages have never been stolen from it, and the delivery instructions in my Amazon profile say to use that package room including how to get there and that Amazon can tap into the room. Often times delivery drivers don't do that and just leave the package on a shelf out in the open next to the mailboxes. I cannot even count the number of times someone has ripped into the package to see if it contained something interesting only to leave it behind when it's boring like pencils or cleaning supplies. Amazon refuses to take any responsibility for packages stolen and has in the past denied refund requests without a police report on the incident (which I have filed multiple for just to get a refund though the package thefts are never investigated so I'm not sure what filing a police report is meant to do here). Their delivery is inconsistent so I just don't bother. Though that does mean that I don't order as often from them as perhaps they'd like - if I can pick it up locally after work then I'll do that rather than order it and wait for it to be present and unopened only to be disappointed yet again at the Amazon driver who didn't read the delivery instructions which state multiple times not to leave the package next to the mailboxes because it will be destroyed or stolen.
silisili 2y ago
WalMart is like 90% of the way there. They'll bring it right this second, for a fee, or tomorrow for free, for anything in its store. 1 day shipping on anything in its warehouses. The only thing they're missing is the random do-dads I seem to need quite often. I don't think they have the best name reputation. At least people my age, WalMart is synonymous with cheap and poor quality. But that was before the age of dropshipping and Amazon, where now Walmart's offerings are probably actually better quality than a lot of stuff. IMO they probably should have leveraged Jet there instead, but it is what it is.