I've noticed that Amazon has totally changed my shopping habits from 3-5 years ago. Clothes and household expendable items are almost entirely purchased on Amazon (even if I just want to try on a pair of boots). Prime Subscription or Pantry takes care of most of the rest. I don't need to drive to Costco anymore or spend time walking around Wal-Mart. I look forward to the day when my Whole Foods order can be delivered fresh to my house every week.
In the UK supermarket deliveries are well established. My family gets 2 or 3 Ocado deliveries a week (they have a Prime equivalent where you pay £11 a month to get free deliveries on orders over £40, within a one-hour time slot, usually available at about 24 hours' notice).
Add that to Amazon, and I basically now only shop in shops when size/fit or feel are crucial — clothes, shoes, etc. And I really resent this — I'm trying to figure out the brands and sizes of jeans and so on that I can just reorder online as necessary, but shops screw this up by changing their ranges all the damn time. I feel like there must be a market opportunity there ...
I love my Ocado deliveries, especially because they auto-populate the delivery based on our past orders + some light guidance (list of stuff to never add automatically + list of stuff to always add) and it's generally "close enough" that I often can't even be bothered to log in to check or modify the order...
Like you, I really resent the clothes shopping as the last bastion...
There are options there too, though, I just haven't gotten around to testing them.
E.g. ASOS offers a premier type subscription for a tenner that gives you free next day delivery and one free returns pickup per order, so you actually can order stuff, try it on and send it back as much as you like. They focused on women first but apparently have a large range for men too. I think you also can hand in returns at local corner shops many places if it's not convenient to have them pick it up...
So many places have great return policies, so it doesn't really matter anymore. There are places that specifically encourage you to buy like 2-3 pairs of shoes for example and ship back the ones that don't fit. If you are normally a size 10.5 shoe you can happily order 10/10.5/11 and then send the 2 that don't fit back for free. http://www.zappos.com/ is a good example. free shipping both ways.
Good point, but I find there are 3 obstacles to this.
1) Many shoes (and most jeans too) don't fit me in whatever size — either the fit is more complicated than a simple scalar, and/or sometimes I'd need a size somewhere between two of the sizes offered.
2) Returns on the scale needed are thus generally a bit of a pain.
3) I suspect that the overhead of paying for lots of returns makes these services rather dear, and since I find jeans and shoes way overpriced anyway this puts me off. (This one is probably all in my head, but it's no less real for that).
What I'd really like is a service where I could identify to it some clothes/shoes that fit me really well, and it could offer me a wide range of other clothes/shoes with a very similar fit. And isn't outrageously dear. (By all means, tell me this exists!).
For me your #2 is the deal breaker. If I have to box a bunch of stuff back up and drop it off somewhere it's more hassle than shopping at a brick & mortar shoe store. There would have to be a huge price advantage to make it worthwhile.
There are so many delivery services... there should really be an inverse. "We'll pick things up for you." I bet Shyp could branch out into this, though it's clearly not their target scenario http://www.shyp.com/
Most of the shippers happily pick up boxes from you. I have ups pick things up at my house all the time. Just put it in the box and stick the pre printed return label on the side.
It's a shame that their cheapest pair of jeans is over $100. While I'm definitely a fan of getting something quality that lasts a while (rather than just buying new pairs of shitty $20 jeans every year) it would be great if there was something in the $50-80 range. Doesn't have to be the fanciest raw selvedge denim or whatever but just some solid, well constructed jeans made from good fabric would be my ideal.
We chose Men's jeans and the higher price point as a way to constrain the problem, and test our algorithms and technology. It turns out they work very well, but usability is not close to what it needs to be. We also have plans to use this for simple basics too. For example, am I a Medium or Large for that T-Shirt? Or, I liked that shirt at the Gap, but the one I just bought from J Crew fits totally differently. We also can use the phone to get measurements from, say, a foot so that we can then get the right shoes. These are all easily solvable with data and we can use image technology to capture a lot of it. But, we need more data. If anyone on the thread would help and go through the Find Your Fit process (again, we know it is not the best experience), we can add a coupon HACKERNEWS and take 40% off to get the price into the zone your talking about.
Oh wow, I just happened to see this reply and I appreciate the feedback. I was mostly venting about the state of nice jeans in general. I've found there isn't usually a massive difference between $20 jeans and $50 jeans (quality-wise) but outside of the crowdfund-model stuff like Gustin (which has really been upping prices lately), it's hard to find something that fits in the gap between $50 Levis and $150-250 designer stuff.
When I get home later I will try to remember to give this a shot. The concept is awesome and it really is a "value add" worth some markup if you can shop online with some realistic expectation of fit.
And I understand the issue with less expensive stuff. The tolerances on cheap clothing (and plenty of not so cheap clothing) must make it hard. I've bought multiple pairs of the same "number" Levis and they fit completely differently due to how they cut the fabric I guess.
I'm surprised - is this a real problem? I thought 99% of all blue jeans in the world are made at the same Korean factory. Maybe they construct them to different standards? That makes sense I guess.
So many places have great return policies, so it doesn't really matter anymore …. http://www.zappos.com/ is a good example.
Of course it doesn't undermine your point, but it's worth noting that this is not a fundamentally different example to Amazon; Zappos is, at least in a sense, part of the Amazon empire (http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter). To be fair, they did have the same great return policies before the acquisition / merger / whatever.
(Another example of a fantastic return policy, in a rather different domain, is REI's (http://www.rei.com/help/return-policy.html). It used to be even better—lifetime, or maybe just 10 years?—but my understanding is that people would take ridiculous advantage of it.)
Zappos is a great example, a lot of retailers have good return policies too. However, usually the brands themselves don't have great return policies. Unlike Amazon/Zappos the return policies for each brand are different and the shopper has to keep track of them/figure out individually which is a big pain.
To add to this, Tesco does unlimited Tues-Thurs deliveries for £3/month or £6/month for any day. Minimum order size £25 for hour slots.
I hardly ever go to the grocery store now, because with such a low minimum order I can order very frequently. The prices are generally better than Ocado too.
> (they have a Prime equivalent where you pay £11 a month to get free deliveries on orders over £40, within a one-hour time slot, usually available at about 24 hours' notice)
This is great. The last time I looked (admittedly not too recently), delivery in my area of the US was just too expensive to bother, living around the corner from a supermarket and all. If it got cheaper, I'd be on that in a second.
As for the market opportunity, I'm almost positive I saw a site that "translated" sizes between brands, but I can't find the thing anymore. It's worth searching for though.
In my experience, you sort of need to be in a situation where either 1.) You're price-insensitive and really don't like going to the grocery store or 2.) It's inconvenient to go to the store (no car, young kids, not very mobile). The one time I used grocery delivery was when I was on crutches. Peapod was "OK" but the selection was less than the store, they'd be out of things and either didn't substitute or would substitute something I didn't want, and required a bit of planning. I last looked at their site a month or so ago and it looks exactly like it did those 10 years ago.
Instacart, on the other hand, I might use given that there's no Whole Foods especially convenient but--doubtless for exactly that reason--it's not available in my area.
> It's inconvenient to go to the store (no car, young kids, not very mobile).
Or... "have a job and don't like to waste time shopping". Seriously it's much faster to order it online, and delivery is like £2 or something. Plus there is usually a better range online, and you can see how much you are spending before you get to the checkout.
Personally, I prefer to look at the produce, meat, and fish. That said, if there were better delivery options available in my area, I'd probably use them at least some of the time. But Peapod is my only option and it's not great IMO; it certainly doesn't have the selection that the B&M grocery stores do. (And if I'm going to have to go to the store anyway for some things, I don't find much of a win in having some of my groceries delivered.)
> As for the market opportunity, I'm almost positive I saw a site that "translated" sizes between brands, but I can't find the thing anymore. It's worth searching for though.
Small world I guess. I'm working on a project that is aiming to solve this exact issue - http://shopolette.com. Very early days though.
Growing up and going to university in Montreal most grocery stores would deliver within a certain radius for 2-3 bucks extra. You could walk/bus to the store, buy as much food as you need, regardless of being able to carry it, leave your address with them and they'd deliver it later that day. Better yet you could phone in your order in the morning and pay an extra $2 (this is less than 5 years ago by the way), someone would pick out your order for you, and then it would be delivered that afternoon.
Regarding size/fit, I can't wait until even that is solved. I just pre-ordered a pair of D2 Ultrawired orthotic cycling shoes. It's a long lead time to get your shoes, 4-5 months, and the first step is getting a measurement kit to precisely measure your feet and create molds of your feet. These are then used to create custom lasts upon which each shoe is based.
There is a lot of room for technology to greatly improve the process of getting a great fit for many types of products.
I've found a lot of / increasing variation amongst units of the same clothing item, here in the U.S. For jeans and casual slacks, for example, I've become accustomed to taking several units of the same measure to the dressing room and selecting those that fit best. Individual units often vary quite significantly, even when from the same stack in the same store.
I'm not much of a clothes hog nor shopper, but LL Bean has had the most regular cuts that I've found, in my quite limited experience. I used to be able to order an item and, if the same size in that item had previously fit me, count on the new item fitting. Although more recently, while using one of their stores, I found more variation in their jeans. I'm glad I didn't order my last batch by mail and have to return 1 or 2 out of 5.
For many clothing products, Amazon displays a histogram of how previous purchasers have found the fit (too small,..,fits perfectly,..,too large) and a summary (51% of customers say this runs large).
A 2D scan, though probably not what the parent comment intended, implies a size via a fixed DPI. A 3D scan, similarly, can measure actual dimensions without requiring a reference object.
Interesting. It looks like a much harder problem to solve in the United States because of the sheer size of this country. http://www.sarmonster.net/UK.htm
Many Amazon clothing related items have a great no-questions return policy. So, you can order things you want to try and then return them if they aren't what you want. No return shipping costs charged (directly).
You have to iterate a bit to find what measurements actually work for you, and I got the style really wrong a couple of times. But once you have it figured out, you're set.
...unless you care about price. Staples (detergent, drinks, etc) on Amazon easily cost 30% more than the comparable Costco purchase. I'm as lazy as the next guy, but I can't fill up that Pantry box without cringing at the prices, so off to Costco I go.
Subscribe and save isn't too bad, but I agree, costco is definitely cheaper. Unfortunately in the metropolitan area without a car it's extremely difficult to get there. Have you guys checked out Boxed Wholesale? The prices are pretty comparable.
I did a comparison to Walmart a while back and Amazon was definitely pricier for bulk goods/detergent/etc. And I have one close by that I can easily drive to. If I lived in a city without a car, the savings in hassle might be worth it but otherwise doing a few runs to a local big box store each year is pretty low on my list of tasks to eliminate.
At least in San Francisco, Costco offers Google delivery for a subscription fee. I don't remember what it cost, but it didn't seem absurdly out of line.
I don't use that because I live three blocks from Costco and can just drop in for a couple of things, so I do usually just walk instead. Once every few months I rent a Zipcar to get huge bags of whatever home.
Legitimate question - do they pay their employees a living wage? What is the executive:average employee wage? Even if Costco were more expensive, I like to believe I'm helping our country out just by supporting a company that doesn't pay such a shit wage everyone collects welfare just to get by.
For some this may be a concern. I'd make more money working for 2 hours than the money I'd save from driving to Costco. Substantially more. It's worth it to me.
If you own your own company or are really bringing in real tangible money for every hour you work that's true. Otherwise it's just a way to justify spending more money.
No it should be true for everybody. You might spend a little extra by buying on Amazon, but it is money well spent if it allows you to spend 2 extra hours of quality time with your family or on a hobby, instead of wasting 2 hours driving & shopping at Costco.
"If you don't shop at Amazon, you just don't value your family that much." Someone call the marketing department....
Amazon used to beat competitors on both price and convenience. To imply those unwilling to compromise on price have screwed up priorities is spurious, glossing over how Amazon either cant or wont compete on price.
You mean add in. By the time I'm old enough to be experiencing heart problems, I'm sure mechanical, less-failure-prone hearts are going to be commonplace, which means far less expenditure on maintenance costs and longer estimated longevity.
I can't find a link now, but I once saw a scan of a magazine article from the late 19th or early 20th century century that said pretty much exactly the same thing.
While this holds true for many here, frankly I would just rather turn my brain off on occasion or should I say exercise it, by going out amongst others.
There are enough shut ins in this world we don't need to add the entirety of the tech sector to it. I know far too many who use work as an excuse to avoid public encounters.
I've used Instacart in Seattle and Chicago and they've been fantastic. Although, I somewhat preferred Amazon Fresh in Seattle for the pre-6am delivery.
The one thing I like about Costco, is the lack of choice and the Kirkland Signature Private Label. Kirkland Signature is on par, if not better, than their name brand counter parts.
Because they generally carry on SKU per category, the quality is generally very high.
The KS Bacon is hit and miss. I'll get a package that is 75% great and then a package of razor thin bacon slices. We also had a quality issue with their Italian Style Meatballs, one batch had way more filler than usual, the kids wouldn't even eat them, it was like mush.
I would like to say the same, because it sure sounds "convenient," but I have noticed that in most cases price comparisons work out in favor of physical stores. I know that a return trip to the shopping area of my town costs less than $3, and this is usually an activity that my family does together.
We plan ahead to minimize time and effort spent shopping. I think Amazon is benefiting from the fact that most consumers are not conditioned to do this. Last year we bought a lot online from Amazon because they offered favorable pricing and transportation costs, but this year their share of our online purchases has been zero. We are not a big consumer of media and in fact many of the items I buy online now are not available from Amazon!
For me, subscribing to Prime meant that I would feel obligated to buy more from Amazon, which does not make sense because of their pricing shenanigans. I never choose express transportation when shopping online anyway. I also don't see the point when a 10 minute trip to Dollar General will get me a household item for $2.50 that Amazon sold for almost $9 when I checked.
Amazon still doesn't have the selection that Costco does for some items. We mostly just buy frozen meats at Costco and then hit the local produce stand for fresh stuff to add for meals.
I would love if Costco got onto the local delivery bandwagon for households.
> I've noticed that Amazon has totally changed my shopping habits from 3-5 years ago.
Same here, especially with Amazon Fresh. In the 9 months since getting a Prime account, I spent 36% more overall than I did on Amazon from 2003-2013 combined.
They haven't started charging yet--there's just a $50 minimum, which had been $30. They are rumored to start charging the fee this summer, but they were also rumored to start charging earlier in the year.
Even if they do I'll keep paying. Because the cost of Prime is subtracted from that fee, plus I personally live in a grocery deadspot. I'm about a mile away from anything but a bodega or a high-end grocery store ($6 for half a gallon of milk type of place).
Amazon Fresh has completely changed how I eat and how I often I cook.
Fresh in Seattle was originally included in regular Prime (when purchasing >$50), so the habits of Seattle-ites may change after the price goes up to $299.
I'm in NYC, and I love Fresh Direct. I use Fresh Direct for the food, and Amazon for everything else.
I feel guilty for not patronizing my local retail establishments, but the cumulative advantages of 1) huge inventory, b) rapid delivery, and c) competitive prices, makes the decision to prefer the online giants a no-brainer.
Have you tried Amazon Fresh? I use FreshDirect for work, but for my own personal groceries I've been using Amazon Fresh and I love it.
I've done a price comparison between Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, Freshdirect. Seems Trader Joes still has the cheapest prices, but Amazon Fresh seems to beat FreshDirect. They delivery in person with 1 hr time slots and 3 hour windows for unattended delivery.
Fresh Direct is in South Jersey/Philly too, and I'm sure other area's, but it is so much more expensive than a normal supermarket. They're basically giving us NYC prices, and it's not worth the convenience. Also, a localish franchise ShopRite delivers with normal prices, and a $10-$20 fee.
This is anecdotal and not 100% related, but I had Prime for awhile for the fast shipments. When I signed up, Prime was substantially faster than the average standard ship times. When the cost of Prime went up, I cancelled because it wasn't worth it to me anymore. However, I noticed my stuff was still arriving fast. It wasn't marked as "Prime", and it wasn't guaranteed 2-day delivery, but it was much faster than I remember the average standard shipping to be.
I am wondering if the Prime shipping infrastructure is the cause of this...everything is faster now, and it would cost money to artificially slow non-Prime shipments down, so they get the ancillary benefit of Prime-ish speed.
Prime really doesn't have anything to do with 2-day delivery. They wouldn't be able to afford to ship everything by air for free.
The advantage of Prime is really that you can have everything shipped for free without worrying about minimums. Well that and all the other perks, like streaming video, photos, etc.
They now have warehouses located within 1 day ground shipping distance of everywhere in the continental US. It's not that hard, I doubt they need more than a dozen locations.
That said, and I have run into this, if your item isn't commonly ordered and is in one of the warehouses that isn't close to you ... they will adjust the delivery date and still ship it to you over Ground. I have called to complain and they said that Prime 2 Day guarantee only applies to Prime items that are geographically close to you. If it it's a Prime item and for whatever reason it has to travel pretty far to you, no 2 day delivery. I've had items arrive a week after order and they still considered that OK and quoted some legalese. Now, this happens rarely, but it does happen.
There's nothing in there about it being different if it's not close to you. The only exception to "two days" is the typical "it's business days, not actual days" exception, and an exception for stuff that can't be sent right away.
If they are indeed behaving as you say then it's a flat-out lie. The advantage of Prime is, as stated, that you can have everything shipped for free without worrying about minimums and get it fast.
The first line is very important: "Items sold by Amazon.com that are marked on the product page and at checkout."
Emphasis mine. As an example, I ordered a Logitech Mouse. The item was listed as Prime. It was shown in stock. It showed a guaranteed delivery date within 2 days in the item page. I simply ordered and didn't pay attention to anything else.
It showed up a week later. When I called, it was pointed out to me that the "guaranteed delivery date" that matters is NOT on the item page. It's on the checkout page and those emails they send you after you order. They were correct, the email I got said a week later ... of course, I didn't pay attention, because most things come in 2 days and the item page did say it'll come within 2 days time before I ordered.
Is that false advertising? Sure. I forgive them.
I've also ordered Prime items that were listed in stock and had a guaranteed delivery date on the item page, but then mysteriously went out of stock later and simply weren't shipped at all.
I order a lot. Maybe 2-3 items every week. This has happened only a few times. With the breadth of their operations, these hiccups are understandable. I did manage to get a few 10 dollar credits once in a while, but sometimes they just refuse to own up to it and tell you to get lost.
I think you are falling victim to an admittedly sub-par UI rather than false advertising. If they clearly indicated that an item was not 2-day eligible and you clicked through too fast to notice or somehow ended up on a non-Amazon seller, that's really not false advertising. I also order a ton, and have never had such an issue. (I have shipped items to the wrong address, however, since like you it can become a habit not to read the order checkout carefully.)
I've have the same issue as maratd where on the product page it has said:
* Prime
* "Want it $DayOfWeek, $Month $Day? Order within XX hrs XX mins and choose..."
where "$DayOfWeek, $Month $Day" is 2 days away and I've bought it and it didn't show up until 4,5,6,7 days later. Same thing with the email. It's not "sub-par UI" it's very clearly designed to make you think... no fuck that, it's not just "thinking" they TELL YOU when you will get it and even give you a countdown to "lock in". It's not even deserving of "shitty UI" if they can't honor that text they shouldn't show it. Period. You can't lie on your product page then turn around and point to emails no one reads confirming my purchase. I buy prime because I know it will get here within 2 days and if I can wait (which I normally can) then waiting is worth not having to deal with more shit traffic and going to the store. If it's not going to be here in 2 days I need that in FLASHING RED LETTERS, sometimes I will still be fine. Sometimes, like when it's medicine, I need to know it's not coming when I expect it.
I've had times I've ordered something with the text from above, it not showed up after 2 days and then Amazon telling me it won't be here for another 3-4 days when ON THEIR WEBSITE it still say's "Want it $nowPlus2Days? Order within...". That's bullshit.
All of that said I love Amazon and this inconvenience is minor compared to the value they provide. I just wish they would be a little more honest on the product page. They KNOW this is happening but are choosing to do nothing about it, that really disappoints me. I expected better from Amazon.
"I've had times I've ordered something with the text from above, it not showed up after 2 days and then Amazon telling me it won't be here for another 3-4 days when ON THEIR WEBSITE it still say's "Want it $nowPlus2Days? Order within..."."
I suppose I could be wrong here, so I apologize for doubting you, but next time that occurs double check that you bought from the same seller as the Prime seller that's listed when you go back to check. I still suspect you are getting lost in the UI. Specifically, I think you may have bought from Seller Y, which when you checked out specified was not Prime, and then when you went back to the same exact product page you saw Seller Z offering 2-day prime. I've seen lots of people get tripped up by the way Amazon displays multiple vendors selling the same product on the same page. Vendors will go back and forth competing on pricing, so often the "main" seller that's listed on a product page will continuously switch among several sellers.
> I suppose I could be wrong here, so I apologize for doubting you, but next time that occurs double check that you bought from the same seller as the Prime seller that's listed when you go back to check.
When I had this happen to me, the orders were NOT from a 3rd party seller. They were directly from Amazon proper. This is not a UI issue.
Yeah, I've had what you describe happen - the third party seller UI is a bit wonky, especially when you're filtering by prime. Whenever I've specifically grabbed the prime version, I've gotten it within two days.
I would read "marked on the product page and at checkout" as saying that products just happen to be marked in both places, not saying that it might be marked in only one place and thus not be eligible.
I accept that it happens, but if it does then they are outright lying when they talk about what they offer, and because they are offering two-day shipping then Prime definitely does have everything to do with it, even if they might try to back out of it sometimes.
> They now have warehouses located within 1 day ground shipping distance of everywhere in the continental US.
Amazon does not have a warehouse within 1 day ground shipping of me in Minneapolis, MN. I think the closest is Indiana which is 2 day ground shipping. There is a lot of the continental US that is not New York or California. Amazon still has more work to do cover all of if they want 1 day shipping everywhere. Now, they are planning on building a warehouse about 90 minutes of the Twin Cities so we will be within 1 day shipping in a couple years, but how many other metropolitan areas are outside of 1 day?
Here is nice little map from UPS to figure out shipping times. If you put in 55414 as the zip code (Minneapolis), UPS only considers Minnesota and Wisconsin as 1 day. Hell, If I am reading these maps right, Chicago is just at the border of 1 day and 2 day ground shipping from Indiana, the closest warehouse.
They can also line-haul trucks from the warehouse to a UPS hub every evening to extend their "one day delivery" reach. McMaster-Carr is one distributor that has been doing this successfully for years.
I think that Amazon is already doing some transportation, some of my purchases during the last winter holiday came from the west coast but did not appear at UPS until Kentucky.
I see the opposite from Amazon - some stuff ends up being shipped to me across the entire country in giant boxes, clearly at a loss, just to make the 2-day deadline.
Only couple of times, I think, the packages got held up for weather or errors, and I just sent them back without a hitch (they were too late to be useful).
They're definitely way faster now. The last time I ordered a non-Prime item, the estimated delivery time was 7-10 days shipping from an Amazon warehouse somewhere. Following the tracking information, it looked like they just delayed the processing for 7 days. Because the package was transferred to UPS 7 days after I placed the order, and it arrived at my door in less than 2 days after that.
Same here. And it's not a matter of the actual shipping taking longer. I noticed that once I stopped subscribing to Prime, my orders would wait a few days to a week before shipping and then get to me the next day.
It feels like, since I'm so close to a distribution center they can only make Prime worth my while by sitting on the packages longer unless I pay them. And probably the only time I paid extra to have something next day they botched it.
As longtime Prime member and a resident of a metro area that doesn't make the cut (and is almost certainly not in the next round), I can't help feeling like I'm subsidizing this service for those who live in the right place.
In fact, every time Amazon adds a new benefit for Prime members that I can't use or don't want, it reminds me that I must be overpaying for Prime if I'm only using the two day shipping.
Despite being a Prime member for years the only thing I've used it for is the two-day shipping but I don't mind the existence of the other perks because just in real dollar terms Prime still saves me a boatload of money versus shipping costs I'd have to pay for similar quick (and in a way more importantly: consistently arriving on the correct day) shipping when buying on other sites.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm in San Diego so this new thing does actually benefit me... and I'm pretty excited about it. Sorry.
"In fact, every time Amazon adds a new benefit for Prime members that I can't use or don't want, it reminds me that I must be overpaying for Prime if I'm only using the two day shipping."
That might be your loss aversion demon talking into your ear.
Meh, that seems a bit like complaining the guy who lives next to the post office gets his mail earlier. Amazon already had to build distribution centers near major markets - might as well deliver faster if it's possible anyways.
Over 225,000 people (which is destined to grow as the job market continues to expand; Tesla's Gigafactory is one of several potential sources of employment within the next half-decade), and they already hire a boatload of Reno residents for the distribution center there; hiring a handful of delivery people and picking up a few more delivery trucks would be a drop in the bucket for them.
Oh well. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before drone deliveries become the norm.
I'm no accountant, but I imagine they can classify various Prime customers into buckets based on what services they use and see that the average usage of any one bucket of customers matches up with the cost of Amazon Prime. If a customer were to use ALL the features then Amazon loses, but if that became the new average then they'd raise the price.
The cleverness of this idea is that each Amazon Prime customer perceives the overall value of the service as higher for the potential to use those extra features, even if s/he doesn't use them much if at all.
You aren't paying the full price of same day delivery, when you order something same day, even as a Prime subscriber, they recommend a tip of at least $5.
That doesn't match my experience at all. The Prime same-day delivery here on the SF Peninsula almost always comes via OnTrac. They drop stuff off and run, and don't wait for or expect a tip.
What kind of infrastructure does it take to be able to offer this kind of service in the chosen metropolitan areas? Do they have warehouses and delivery trucks located nearby that are ready to go at a moment's notice?
In any case, this is super cool of Amazon, they are really stepping up their game.
I think this is basically the case. Here in indianapolis there is a local Amazon warehouse and I got notification that this service is now available. I think they've been working on this for a while w/ various strategies.
For example: I order diapers via Subscribe-and-Save. Sometimes the diapers come in the standard amazon boxes from UPS/Fedex/USPS. Sometimes a guy in an unmarked pick-up truck filled with diaper boxes drops off the diapers(with an amazon shipping label adhered directly to the pampers box).
Could be. I haven't done it in a while. Diapers are weird though, some kinds only go up to size 2, then you have to switch to a different kind and its not really just changing sizes.
They've been building out warehouses for a long time.
In the UK they have multiple local depots just to cover London alone, and their own delivery company (Amazon Logistics) as well as new deals both with a newspaper/magazine delivery business that will deliver packages to your local newsagent for pickup (~12h hour delivery times) as well as the Post Office.
Going to see those delivery times keep coming down.
In the UK they're facing increasing competition on delivery times from companies like Argos - a large retailer that operates a catalogue plus online coupled with retail presences that are basically warehouses with pickup desks. Argos bought a courier delivery company a while back, and now offers 2 hour delivery as a (relatively expensive) option for online purchases in many locations...
In NYC they bought a huge property in a super busy area (Herald Square) next to the Macys building. I believe there were reports that stated it wasn't a warehouse, but people have seen Amazon carriers go in and out of it.
They've been doing Amazon Now / Amazon Fresh in the metropolitan areas for a while. They can accomplish the 1 day delivery basically by piggy backing off these services.
It's a warehouse. Place a Prime Now order for Manhattan delivery and they show you where it's originating, and it's the Herald Square building. (on 34th across from the ESB.)
Thanks for the recommendation chubot, I always appreciate being able to see/read behind the scenes. Sometimes logistics can end up being more interesting than the end result.
It doesn't really have to be ready at a moment's notice. The time available is relatively short, but not absurdly so. The deal is order by noon, get it by 9PM, so that's (at least) nine hours to get it to you. Certainly the warehouse has to be close, but aside from that they should be able to follow the traditional model of packing orders as they go, sorting them into trucks after the cutoff time, generating routes, and having each truck deliver a full day's load in one trip.
> Do they have warehouses and delivery trucks located nearby that are ready to go at a moment's notice?
Likely this. I noticed when I got my last Amazon Fresh purchase that there was a number of regular Amazon boxes along with the groceries, so at least in Fresh markets they piggyback off that.
That's a horrible url. Why not use something like http://amazon.com/news/free-prime-same-day-delivery? Is there some significant advantage to identifying the page with non-human readable identifiers in the query string that I'm not aware of?
Otherwise, very cool. I just wish it was in more areas.
> Is there some significant advantage to identifying the page with non-human readable identifiers in the query string that I'm not aware of?
Sure. When your organization uses a custom CMS and creating pretty URLs requires approval from multiple departments and takes days (or weeks) and you want to throw up a page all quick-like.
Not sure why you would need approval for a pretty URL and wouldn't need approval for the design and content in general. Couldn't those be lumped together for approval at the same time? It just seems subpar for a company of Amazon's size, especially when most CMS platforms have support for pretty urls.
Not sure that the design for this page went through any sort of approval process though :)
At a big company, you're getting multiple approvals from multiple people in different areas of the company. If it was as simple as "Get the approval from the President" that'd be one thing, but there's most like a team in charge of just URLs and another team designing the app who would need to go to the URL team for approvals. Another team will most likely be the gatekeeper for whether it goes to production or not, and there's probably at least a half dozen other infrastructure teams I haven't mentioned also involved in the process. I haven't worked for Amazon, but I've worked for another large company, so I know what it's like.
Most of the other teams involved that I've seen at places are usually other development teams who are consulted not because they have any specific reason but because as you go up the chain they want to make sure that nobody is already planning to use that same name/pretty url for something to avoid conflicts where one team all the sudden has two days notice to change their branding/url.
Interesting that they have a pretty url already generated for the page and then redirect to something that's completely unreadable. It seems like you'd want to have a single, readable url to have people sharing with others, if they copy and paste the url from their browser.
Why do that when they can create a unique URL And data mine who you share the link with or where you post it? People call it "dark social" where there are no referrers such as IM, Text, or chat services like Slack, Hipchat, etc.
They do exactly this for their products, if you look in the URL you'll see /dp/something if you do Amazon.TLD/dp/something it takes you to the product. Someone mentioned dark social and that's exactly what it's for according to one of the Edinburgh Amazon devs. :-)
Posted this below:
Why do that when they can create a unique URL and data mine who you share the link with or where you post it? Publishers call it "dark social" where there are no referrers such as IM, Text, or chat services like Slack, Hipchat, etc.
Amazon's had the same garbage URLs for years. They must be consciously insensitive to the URL experience--and/or it's so deeply embedded they don't care enough to change.
I have a love hate relationship with amazon and this is just making it worse.
As a customer, this is amazing service. Sometimes I pay a bit more at amazon just for speedy delivery (it is a trade off you need to balance). And for a lot of things the selection is amazing.
As someone who runs a small business that has to ship products, amazon continues to raise the bar to a level/place that we just cannot meet. Our timelines for delivery and shipping costs are "out in front" and I can assure you that in setting that expectation we are deterring some customers from purchasing.
To that end, we are investing in tools to be more high touch and high engagement, our margins are such that we are able to do that but a lot of other small player simply do not have that ability.
I wonder if there was any marketing analysis that went into choosing $35, in an effort to get people to pad out their orders with unneeded purchases, or if it was strictly chosen on the break-even point for their cost of same day shipping.
That's a story I'd love to read about. OnTrac seems to use basically junker cheaply painted white mid-90s minivans whenever I see them about. They simply slap a magnet with OnTrac on it and it becomes a fleet vehicle.
While FedEx/UPS have their own custom designed fleet, OnTrac seems to scour auto auctions for theirs.
I don't know if I'm just unlucky, but I'm in NYC and I rarely get my "free Prime next day deliveries!" the next day (but I am racking up a pile of "$1 off ebooks" vouchers because of it).
Does anyone have insights/guesses into the reasons behind the cities where this has been rolled out? It doesn't seem to correlate with market size. Is it:
What would make you say that? These are all large, urban places which are known to utilize Amazon.
Indianapolis is the only city that's confusing to me, but they have a warehouse there, and it is located close enough to ship to other locations within the 1 day timeframe.
Fair point. Seems to be Amazon strategy though, after looking at their distribution center map: https://scmmsublogs.wordpress.com/scm-strategies/amazon-com-...
Wouldn't be surprised to see Chicago added to the list of supported cities soon, but Houston, Minneapolis, and Kansas City are all pretty far from current/planned distribution centers.
Chicago might have a bit of a unique problem with traffic to and from warehouses as well. Real estate is very expensive in city limits and the infrastructure here doesn't support the model all that well. I bet they could manage, but it's got to be a significantly higher start cost here vs. other metros. This would be a city to invest in AFTER vetting out the model in cheaper cities.
I believe Indy has a big regional distribution center, so not that surprising to me. I would have expected Nashville on the list, as we also have some big warehouses located here. Hopefully soon.
My best and completely uneducated guess would be location to warehouses. Maybe even cross-referenced with typical orders in the area and Amazon's actual ability to get some amount of those typical orders to door-steps same-day.
I'm pretty sure this is the only answer. Those cities are where their warehouses are located, which is why they can offer same-day delivery from it. It's pretty unfeasible to offer the service for a city located 150mi away from a warehouse, for instance. The cost would be too high.
Note also that, at least with Boston although I assume it's the case with other cities, the area they cover with this is relatively small. Punching in a few zip codes, it looks like this covers Boston essentially inside of Route 128.
Meanwhile that laptop battery I ordered from Alibaba 2 months ago just shipped. They said it should arrive in 30 - 45 days. Yesterday I just got a new blade for my bandsaw, it was shipped 10 days ago.
Isn't it amazing what our expectations for shipping times are now.
I've come to enjoy this about Deal Extreme. As long as you know to expect several month long shipping times, it ends up being a happy surprise when an awesome little gift arrives at your door that you had completely forgotten about ordering.
They don't say that every single Prime item is available in the two day window - did it say it would be delivered on Tuesday when you ordered? Back ordering happens.
In LA, Amazon same day delivery didn't deliver on the same day in 2 of 3 orders. The order that was delivered same day came at 10pm, much too late.
Of course, I only ordered same day delivery because I actually needed the item that day. I was trying to save a car trip (an especially valuable feature in LA), but had to go out and buy the items anyway.
The people who deliver same day seem to be freelancers, who don't seem to have any delivery tracking technology.
I can't see choosing this option again. Ordering for next day delivery almost always meets the delivery commitment.
Same day delivery has always worked for me (4 of 4), but they do come late, always after 9pm, and it's always a private vehicle (white Chevy Astrovan). I live in Woodland Hills, if that makes a difference. The closest warehouse Amazon has is in San Bernardino, but 2 of my packages had tags that said Burbank, so they must have a smaller distribution center there.
I have noticed that if you add an item to your wish list and later buy it, with prime it will arrive the next day, not 2-3 days. I think Amazon ships items in your wish list to a warehouse close to you if they are not there already, but I can't prove my theory.
Amazon has two distribution warehouses (one near the big airport, the other at Alliance in north Fort Worth) in D/FW. They've been offering same-day here for a few months now.
I have a cousin who lives in Austin and he says he's ordered a Mountain Dew from Amazon and had it delivered two hours later by someone in a hatchback. This was about two months ago. YMMV.
When amazon was pressured into charging sales taxes in many states, I predicted that it would likely translate to same day delivery. They used it as an opportunity to bring the product closer to their customers. I know i'll be using amazon even more now.
Amazon's Prime 2-day delivery completely changed my ability to wait for gratification. For deliveries that take the normal 5 days, I'm finding myself checking Delivery app a couple of times every day, hoping that something is wrong with the details and I'll actually receive my box sooner.
A couple of examples:
1. I have bought a couple of things from Massdrop and because these were estimated to arrive in about 2 weeks, I was initially very annoyed and then totally forgot about them
2. I have chosen a product based on how soon it'll be delivered (I didn't actually need it urgently) instead of just considering the product qualities.
This is why Amazon gave in on state sales taxes. In order to pull this off they needed to expand their distribution network, which meant having a "presence" which would have put them on the hook for taxes anyway.
I'm curious to see if they'll pull it off. There's a lot of wreckage from previous attempts that failed.
I'm surprised (and disappointed) Reno isn't included, seeing as there's a major Amazon distribution center just on the outskirts (in the same area where Tesla's building their Gigafactory). That should be really easy to pull off.
Here in Menlo Park (CA), Locker deliveries are UPS and same-day is OnTrac. UPS doesn't offer same-day service, so I'm not surprised that it's not available for Locker.
Hahaha, you guys have it so good. Here in Bolivia there is literally one store, not a website, a store. A Sure PC store that has same day shipping but only for orders over $250.
It doesn't actually. The $35 minimum for for getting same-day delivery for free; you can get same-day for $5.99 for prime members and $9.98 for non-members.
So do the vast majority of other Prime shipments, the occasional <$35 item/order may quality for free 2day shipping depending on some undefined circumstances
Edit: Whoops, I was thinking non-prime 2day shipping
Huh? Sorry, but that's just wrong. They do have add-on items which have to be bought at the same time as other items to get the free shipping. But I assure you that I routinely get free Prime shipping for single items that are well under $35. It's the norm.
same day is ridiculous. what's next? are they going to have convenience stores disguised as trucks roaming the neighbourhood waiting for me to realize halfway through making tacos that I have no sour cream?
Would Amazon have done this years ago if it wasn't so bent on avoiding sales tax (and thus locating warehouses far from buyers)? Did potential Amazon competitors miss out on this opportunity?
I had feeling this was going to happen. While I don't live in one of the metro areas on the map, I recently had an order that I received the next day, although I chose 2-day shipping.
Recently, I've had that happen frequently—probably 50% of the time. Makes it difficult to time orders when I'm trying to receive something covertly on a day when I'm working from home (and my wife is not). I've ended up paying for overnight shipping just to ensure that I have the timing right.
It would be really nice if this type of information was listed in their API. I still don't know why when you look up an item it doesn't say whether its same day delivery or not.
Has anyone actually found a thing that is for sale on the same day? I live in SF and for any search the "Get it today" is grayed out (and has been since 8 am).
As a Amazon.com customer since the late nineties I don't get the "Prime" subscription model. I have a e-ink Kindle, I buy MP3s, electronics, many books there on their Market Place and I use AWS.
But why should I care about "Prime"? Either Amazon cares about long term customers or not, but don't try to force me to Prime by showing full screen "Prime" advertisement (with a little "no thanks" link) at every purchase. I don't need same-day delivery, but I don't want worse delivery times than before Prime has been introduced (which happened).
I would guess the slower shipping is a side-effect of shipping costs reduction at Amazon. I've seen them shift to using hybrid delivery services from FedEx+USPS in the US in many cases. I would assume the slower shipping and the introduction of Prime, while maybe marginally related, are mostly coincidental.
I suspect it was the introduction of Prime as all my shipments take at least a day longer than before. (in western Europe) It took 1-2 days, now it takes usually 2-7 days. I also found no correlation to the reoccurring strike problems at Amazon warehouses in Germany.
It's all anecdotal, but before Prime was introduced in Germany, Amazon always shipped very quickly after placing an order. Total time until delivery was reliably 2-3 days. After, it was taking them days to process an order, so that time went up to about a week.
I eventually gave in and signed up. Prime shipping isn't actually faster here, it's just what the old normal free shipping used to be.
Ugh. This is super annoying. You can only see this filter and the eligability if your default address is in the region. I live in a valid area, but often have things sent to work which is just outside the valid area.
I wish I could see the fast shipping option, and just know I have to send it home.
They actually do something like this: Amazon ships stuff to a logistic center close to you when their machine learning algorithms decide you're likely to buy a specific item shortly.
T
"We thought you may be running low on toilet paper, so we sent some for free. If you're not, then just tick no and we'll take it back, or [from a comment that was deleted shortly after it was posted] pass it to an Amazon neighbor for a $2 credit."
T+1
"We've noticed you appreciate our pre-emptive notifications, and hope we've been helping you out. We'd like to opt you in to our pre-emptive ordering system, so we can help you forget those small essentials. We've included some complementary, ripe, seedless avocados less than 1 day from the tree they were picked from as a sample of the power this feature can offer; this freshness can't be bought in shops."
T+2
"We've opted you in to our pre-emptive ordering system, where we will send you those daily essentials and special seasonal must-haves. There is no commitment. If we ever send you some thing you don't feel you need, we'll happily take it back at no charge and no effort from you."
The first option there is the same scam that record clubs used. In the UK, at least, any goods sent to you speculatively are yours to keep for free; any attempt to collect payment is illegal.
I predict that soon there will be Dash Button [0] like devices embedded in packaging (and/or appliances) so that they can estimate when you are likely to run out of something. First thing you know is more detergent arrives at your door and when you check the existing pack you find that you are indeed running low.
"We sent you a box of (commonly used item) because we though you might be out. Don't need it? Hold onto it and we'll credit your account $2 if you'll drop it off at a neighbor's house when they order it. Otherwise, let us know and we'll pick it up."
Or just make this process opt-in and let your customers volunteer to make some Amazon cash.
