Jet.com Runs into Turbulence with Retailers | Hacker News Reader

Jet.com Runs into Turbulence with Retailers

wsj.com

28 pointsr0h1n32 comments

I wouldn't associate with them either when they can't mitigate basic SQL injection:

https://jet.com/search?term=%27%20OR%201*1=1*1%27

OK that's hilarious.

pretty sure this is because they use ElasticSearch and have Groovy extensions enabled. Doubtful that any website trying to reach scale would use a sql db for search.

Having logical URLs for your search results isn't SQL injection:

https://jet.com/search?term=Sony%20OR%20Samsung

Look, it even guessed the product category based on my search term.

Back in the day search engines used to have these things called logical operators, then basically Google deprecated them.

except that they use EventStore as their main db..

[1]https://qconnewyork.com/ny2014/presentation/event-driven-ser...

Wouldn't https://jet.com/search?term=%27%20AND%203*1=2*1%27 be false if that were true?

Jet is trying to save its customers money by not making a profit on the items they sell and offering all kinds of discounts from the commission they would have made all the way to the supply chain cost and passing all of that to the customer.

It's not surprising that this model clashes with retailers they are not in the business of saving people money and they certainly see the disruption this will cause and the efficiencies it will force on them. They will have to get efficient to compete if this takes off.

From what I understand Jet is just giving people the money from their affiliate links which is against the terms of most if not all affiliate programs.

But with most affiliate programs, customers would be buying through the retailers directly (which is how the affiliate sales are tracked) and receiving the items from those retailers. Does Jet have its own inventory like Amazon or are they just sending orders out to a variety of different online retailers?

I've been using jet extensively for a few months, whenever it's cheaper than amazon. A lot of the time it's cheaper than the in-store price at walmart.

They definitely have their own inventory. Things like cereal and diapers ship in completely purple jet.com boxes (http://i.imgur.com/WUisXzH.jpg). It's only more obscure stuff that ships from other retailers.

I think the idea is that they want to have a long tail of inventory and are willing to take a loss on those items for now, but for high-volume items they are already doing them in-house.

Jet doesn't own the inventory, it's simply a marketplace model (similar to Amazon FBA, or most of Alibaba's business in Asia)

Jet has a few warehouses now.

That is false.

Jet has warehouses to cover the whole U.S. With two day shipping on core items. As well as a marketplace like the other businesses you mentioned.

That is false.

Jet is giving its customers all the commission they would have made, all of the supply chain savings they can get out of not having physical stores, paying with certain credit cards like Costco does, as well as any other savings the technology can squeeze out. They are giving all of that back to the customer.

For the Affiliate portion of their business they are giving jet cash to customers. That is a small portion of their business 15%, they are doing that as a value add for people who pay for the membership.

It is not false.

At the risk of pasting the entire content of the article here...

>Many of the companies whose brands were removed from the Jet Anywhere program appeared to be unaware that they were listed on the site when contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

>Spokespeople for Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target Corp., Staples Inc., and Estée Lauder Cos.—who all had their links removed from Jet Anywhere—said Jet isn’t a partner.

>A spokeswoman for skin care company Kiehl’s, a unit of L’Oréal, said Kiehl’s had “requested to end the direct affiliate relationship as procedures outlined in our current affiliate program weren't being followed.”

>Online fashion marketplace Bluefly Inc. was surprised to see its brand had been added to Jet Anywhere, said Chief Marketing Officer Carly Rosenberg, a program Bluefly was never told about even though it had been in discussions with Jet since last year to sell products directly on its site. “I felt a little blindsided by it,” said Ms. Rosenberg, “I just think they went about it the wrong way.”

Yes, Jet has their own retail operation, but they are also breaking the terms of many affiliate programs with "Jet Anywhere" by paying people to use affiliate links.

As a retailer myself, I wouldn't be thrilled with the model where the customer pays with their credit card on jet.com, then jet.com pays me with their own credit card and contact info. Not because I don't want the customer saving money, but because I am now not clear on who the customer actually is.

What happens if there are customer service issues, an out of stock situation, returns, refunds, chargebacks, etc? Is Jet.com prepared to deal with all of that in this middle-man setup?

they don't pay you with their credit card, they use ACH like every other marketplace.

"When a Jet customer buys items that aren’t in its inventory or available from partner merchants, a Jet employee buys the items from another website and has them shipped directly to the customer."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/frenzy-around-shopping-site-jet-...

Edit: The context is that the article at the top of this thread is showing one way they are sort of "faking" partners. The concierge model I'm referencing is another. Hopefully, it's a temporary thing, because it's messy.

There was a service a few years ago called NetPlenish which would basically find you the best deal on the cart of items you were looking for from various online retailers like walgreens.com, soap.com, walmart.com, etc...

I used it a few times, but it was confusing who I was supposed to get customer service from when there were problems with the order. You would pay NetPlenish, who would process the order because the item was listed in stock. But if the item was out of stock and your order was messed up, who do you call? Who refunds you? NetPlenish or Walgreens? or in this case Jet?

> I wouldn't be thrilled with the model where the customer pays with their credit card on jet.com, then jet.com pays me with their own credit card and contact info.

While not retail, this isn't uncommon. When I book a hotel through HotelTonight's app, the last 4 of their corporate mastercard shows up on the receipt I'm given by the front desk.

It's not a new concept, in the UK, Quidco[0] has been doing this for a decade[1], the only difference here seems to be the paid membership system whereas quidco shave a fraction off for themselves.

[0] http://www.quidco.com/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quidco

Jet's major value proposition was that it was supposed to be an attractive alternative option to Amazon for the Retailers and CPG companies. In the short run, that customer is probably more important than the end customer (similar to Airbnb initially with hosts vs. end users) because if they don't have the faith of the Retailers/CPGers, than this model fails very quickly

That particular link has a paywall.

Go here: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0...

Then click the (probably) first link.

thank you!

It failed for me because I'd already clicked the link and they set a cookie.

Solution: open the search in an ncognito window or privacy window, and then click through to WSJ.

Chrome: COMMAND-SHIFT-N Firefox: COMMAND-SHIFT-P

You could install refspoof plugin and set your referrer to https://news.google.com for site wsj.com

"Wait Google Sent Me" plugin also works.

Do you still have that installed? It seems to have been removed from the Chrome store shortly after it trended on HN as far as I can tell.

I do - I was unaware that it was removed.

On one hand, it seems odd to complain about people driving sales of your stuff. On the other, is this really Jet's grand strategy?

So they are giving out cashback rewards for purchases on unaffiliated online shops?

Sounds like selling at a loss but making it up on volume is back.

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