I had a long held belief that Amazon is a principled and trust worthy company... sadly that vision is crumbling before my eyes.
They crushed all the technical bookstores because they didn't have to pay sales tax. Their customer service beyond cheap refunds is abysmal. They understand how hard it is to distinguish between stuff that is only serviced through them, but choose not to fix it. And Bezos is famous for being both an asshole and micromanager.
One-stop? Sure. Efficient? Maybe. Trustworthy? Pardon me for laughing.
Um, no, they crushed all the technical bookstores because they could always get you the book you wanted very quickly and at a good price, unlike any other bookstore on the planet. Every one of those bookstores could have done the same thing in the Internet age, but the thing is, they didn't.
I do miss bookstores like Computer Literacy but that's pure nostalgia -- I'd never want to go back. I couldn't give a crap about sales tax one way or the other.
Their customer service beyond cheap refunds is abysmal.
What other kind of customer service is there, for a retailer? When something goes wrong with an Amazon order, I don't have pay for it. End of story.
They understand how hard it is to distinguish between stuff that is only serviced through them, but choose not to fix it.
That much is true... their UX is a dog's breakfast, and always has been. Best thing you can say about it is that it could be worse.
And Bezos is famous for being both an asshole and micromanager.
Well, I don't report to him, so... good. Retail is not a good business for dilettante CEOs.
One-stop? Sure. Efficient? Maybe. Trustworthy? Pardon me for laughing.
They've seldom put a foot wrong where I'm concerned. This does sound like a pretty dumb move, though. What's good for the customer is good for Amazon, and this isn't good for the customer.
First, Amazon had a built-in advantage on sales tax for a LONG time. That's 8% off the top where I live.
Second, Amazon leveraged its volume in the popular bestsellers to strong-arm the publishers on the technical area. So, while my local bookstore would have to eat the inventory if I ordered a book and didn't want it, Amazon could return the inventory. This was HUGE.
Third, Amazon often WASN'T any faster than my local bookstore, but they would always claim they were. A couple times I ordered a technical book overnight from Amazon that claimed it was "in stock" and it would appear 2 weeks later--just like my local bookstore said it would take to get it from the publisher.
Fourth, my local technical bookstore was really good about ordering online and jumped immediately. It still didn't help.
The combination of no sales tax, monopoly position to get better terms from publishers, and outright lying about stock simply crushed the technical bookstores.
Well, jokes on Amazon and the publishers, since I can't browse technical books any more, I don't buy technical books anymore. And those had huge profit margins.