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No customer loyalty? Have you ever met anyone who uses Prime? I and many others I know go straight there and will pay a premium to make sure it comes from Amazo

by ericd 14y ago

No customer loyalty? Have you ever met anyone who uses Prime? I and many others I know go straight there and will pay a premium to make sure it comes from Amazon, because I know if something goes wrong, it won't be a pain in my ass. This industry is consolidating because there's a great option that is essentially a no-brainer in almost every way.

codexon 14y ago
I don't have Prime but I have shopped at Amazon a few times. However, I don't think I will be a "loyal" customer due to a recent incident. There was a sale going on for a particular item, so I logged in and bought it. However I didn't see the order in my account. After waiting for an hour and refreshing a few times, I got locked out saying that my account was potentially compromised (it wasn't, I just hadn't logged in for several months, and I was on a different IP). I immediately restored access by verifying my email again, however it canceled my order and cleared my entire order history. I spent the next hour talking to a customer service representative who seemed to be from India, and kept asking me for the order number when my entire ordering history was wiped by their system. By the time I got this point through his thick skull, he said they couldn't do anything about it, and by that time the sale was over. This seems like a pain in the ass to me.
rdl 14y ago
I mainly buy from Amazon, but largely as a "default fail-through" option for random goods (and books/kindle of course). I'd probably buy camera gear from B&H preferentially if they added a few features to their buying process (tracking all my equipment whether bought there or elsewhere, checking compatibility, maintenance, etc.). I'd buy computer equipment, car accessories, etc. from other vertical vendors who do the same thing (and generally do buy from Tirerack for that purpose) There's loyalty to Amazon, but it's not absolute. I could start a new retailer in a given niche today and probably defeat Amazon in that niche.
- ericd 14y ago
  Yeah, I just haven't put the effort into scoping out exceptional vertical vendors with the exception of electronics, so Amazon gets a very large percentage of my purchases, and I'd imagine that most people are the same way - buy from niche retailers in the things they understand well and buy a lot of, otherwise, Amazon.

by ericd 14y ago

codexon 14y ago

I don't have Prime but I have shopped at Amazon a few times. However, I don't think I will be a "loyal" customer due to a recent incident. There was a sale going on for a particular item, so I logged in and bought it. However I didn't see the order in my account. After waiting for an hour and refreshing a few times, I got locked out saying that my account was potentially compromised (it wasn't, I just hadn't logged in for several months, and I was on a different IP). I immediately restored access by verifying my email again, however it canceled my order and cleared my entire order history. I spent the next hour talking to a customer service representative who seemed to be from India, and kept asking me for the order number when my entire ordering history was wiped by their system. By the time I got this point through his thick skull, he said they couldn't do anything about it, and by that time the sale was over. This seems like a pain in the ass to me.

rdl 14y ago

I mainly buy from Amazon, but largely as a "default fail-through" option for random goods (and books/kindle of course). I'd probably buy camera gear from B&H preferentially if they added a few features to their buying process (tracking all my equipment whether bought there or elsewhere, checking compatibility, maintenance, etc.). I'd buy computer equipment, car accessories, etc. from other vertical vendors who do the same thing (and generally do buy from Tirerack for that purpose) There's loyalty to Amazon, but it's not absolute. I could start a new retailer in a given niche today and probably defeat Amazon in that niche.

ericd 14y ago
Yeah, I just haven't put the effort into scoping out exceptional vertical vendors with the exception of electronics, so Amazon gets a very large percentage of my purchases, and I'd imagine that most people are the same way - buy from niche retailers in the things they understand well and buy a lot of, otherwise, Amazon.