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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the article?

> Jet’s founder Lore believes his company offers something different: A unique discounting structure that rewards shoppers when they put more items in their checkout basket. Orders that contain multiple items, ideally located in warehouses close to their delivery address, are more efficient and cost less to process. That allows Jet to pass along those savings to the customer.

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That's hardly a moat. It sounds like a great example of FNAC - feature not a company.

I'm sure Amazon could implement that in about 15 minutes if they wanted to.

So we have one person complaining that they have no distinguishing factor, and when one is pointed out, we have another who says that differences aren't important... K.

Amazon already has implemented it both with Amazon Pantry and with Amazon subscribe and save. Each of them rewards you with discounts that increase as you add more stuff.

I use Amazon Pantry and subscribe & save. And honestly it's nice but not a killer feature.

The trickiest thing is estimating what subscription frequency to use. I barely even think about optimizing for % discount.

Right, I think thats why people are baffled at the heavy investment in jet.com. They pivoted to a neat feature but it is hardly an Amazon-killer type of feature.

The weird thing about subscribe and save is that the item's price fluctuates and you can end up paying more for something than you anticipated. For example, if you subscribe to some Diapers at $16 a box, and then the next shipment automagically charges you $25, I'd imagine you wouldn't be too happy.

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