Though it is impressive that Amazon has turned a delivery fee - that most people don't like paying - into an exclusive subscription service. A service that customers fall over themselves to sign up for when it's offered at a discount.
I've been an Amazon customer for 13 years. I was rather annoyed to see them go with the anti-Wikileaks and try to be "sensitive" by banning certain cultural items. But this shows they've zero commitment to selling products customers want.
Edit: And it really hurts. Some times I buy stuff from Amazon every day of the week. I've tried Jet.com, which is just a poor experience. I hate to cry antitrust but Amazon really dominates in any usable online sales env, it seems.
I thought that was obvious, and a charitable interpretation of his post would've made this clear, I think.
I asked about the Apple TV. After other lame "stocking" issues, a supervisor said "oh, we don't have licenses to sell Apple TV" and went on about how there's all sorts of legal issues.
It's vile for a company that's supposedly pro-consumer.
Amazon and Apple have had a long patchy history when it comes to selling Apple products.
Primarily it comes down to Apple's need to control the pricing of their products and Amazon's desire to drop prices far into the realms of lossmaking, which in part is due to their customer centricity. I cannot comment on this specific case but it is not always necessarily as clear cut as you think.
As an aside, the customer obsession is not fluff. It is deeply engrained within the business and is taken very seriously. Any decision that is not customer centric (e.g. Halting the sale of Harper Collins titles) is usually escalated to Diego (head of Retail) if not to Jeff himself. Any business is well within their rights to make money and preserve their self interests, and occasionally strategic decisions may well clash with the culture so not every decision Amazon makes will be perfectly customer centric. With that said, from both the inside and outside I've witnessed really great customer obsession on the whole especially when compared to other businesses.
A truly customer-focused company would sell the products its customers wanted, even if they competed with the company's own-brand products. And demand for these competing products would be seen as a spur to improve their own.
I personally don't think the Amazon's talk of customer-focus is entirely marketing fluff, but I do think it's unevenly applied. Petty, anti-customer, monopolistic business practices have been a mainstay of the tech industry for years, and it's inevitable that they would infect Amazon to some extent.
Context: I'll admit to being a fairly rabid Amazon fan (no other conflicts, other than as a retail shareholder). I still cross-shop NewEgg (to support anti-patent-trolling), Ebay, Aliexpress and others, but Amazon wins more than its share of my purchase traffic.
Amazon's customer centric nature is generally pretty good, but they toss it aside at times. AIV on Android is one of those times (took them years to release the app and when they did it required a completely screwy install)
They're just shitstains
If you take that as the intent behind the quote then it's kinda parallel to the issue of whether to sell chromecast or not.
But let's be honest - Amazon devices push more people into Prime, Amazon Instant Prime Video, and their other digital services. Maybe it had something to do with Prime Video not yet being on those devices, but we'd need to see them support Prime on Chromecast or AppleTV and then re-list those products on Amazon.
Case in point - they sell iPads. Why don't they just sell Kindles? The inconsistency comes off as sleezy.
Amazon gets the criticism but they all do it.
Remember, we had a store that was willing to sell all these products, it's called Best Buy and it's on the way out. As consumers we choose to boost Amazon into the leading online position.
Obviously a store is under no obligation to carry every product ever, but this argument that an apple or android tablet is equivalent to a store brand is just silly.
I also ask you to provide an example of where Walmart sells competitor branded products (Target etc). Walmart's brand products, Basics (I believe) are not sold in any other store. Targets brand products (Archer Farms) are not available in any other store.
It's like if eBay banned Kindle sales.
Selling surplus stock.
Just because they are Wal-Mart of the online world doesn't mean they must sell everything everyone wants.
The devices they don't sell are in a heavily contested field, no wonder they don't carry them, that's smart business. It's a bit silly to get self-righteous about it otherwise.
It's life if Microsoft had used its market position with Windows to push IE.
The real reason I cancelled it; the prices went up. It was slight at first, but after reading feedback, I noticed a trend. They all bought their item at a lower cost than Me.
This is kind of like expecting a Ford dealer to sell Chevys.
Your example misses the point. People reasonably expect Amazon to carry electronics. Amazon is abusing their position as the largest retailer in world to suppress competition. That's illegal.
But with your example, Ford does not control 90% of car dealers in the US, so they are not in a position of power. Now, if Ford owned 90% of car mechanics in the US and they refused to repair Chevys, that would be abusing their position of power to suppress competition.
Apple Google and Amazon are even larger companies who manufacture and sell the competing products mentioned by this guy.
It's a direct comparison.
So far, I've found eBay to be in many ways better than Amazon was. Amazon has gotten to the point where you're often buying from some unknown vendor anyways, so in many ways it's already similar to eBay. However, eBay was built from the start to be a simple middleman, so I find its reputation system and expectations for sellers and buyers to be superior in many ways. Of course, I still have to be careful when evaluating sellers, but if I stick to the high-volume 99.5%+-positive sellers, there's rarely an issue.
I mainly only do this for small purchases—rechargeable batteries, game system controllers, cables, etc. For larger items, I try to find a niche vendor that offers more specialized customer service—ideally a local brick-and-mortar, but often an online seller.
Amazon has far stricter requirements for sellers. What specifically do you find better at eBay?
I wouldn't notice. The site is filled with dishonest merchants peddling their misrepresented wares. I've had far more issues with merchants on Amazon than on ebay.
However, by purchasing 'shipping insurance' one can normalize the cost of shipping similar to the way one normalizes the cost of car accidents through car insurance.
There is a virtuous circle too that is the opposite of moral hazard typically incurred by insurance companies as having certainty of cost makes risk taking less costly. Similarly, if shipping is free, then people order more things, creating economies of scale that reduce shipping costs, enabling amazon to make more profit, or price prime cheaper.
Typically anything shipped Prime is a no-fee/no-hassle return. Great for when you're buying clothes. After accidentally buying something NOT shipped prime, then getting hit with a bunch of fees from the seller to return it I've gotten much more careful about it.
We also get discounts on our monthly recurring purchases that make it cheaper than going to the store to replenish, not even factoring for saved time.
There's also the Prime video- which has a surprisingly good catalog of shows and movies (in the US at least). I still watch Netflix more, but I use prime video at least once a week.
My wife and I double-bought a gift for our daughter and the return shipping fee was going to be $6.99 as it was our mistake. That's fair enough, IMO, but it's not free.
Returns are often free on clothing/shoes and around Christmas.
Prime Video is indeed a bigger benefit than I originally thought. The kids watch it several times a week and I probably once a week.
The whole thing makes going to a brick and mortar store feel like going to the DMV.
When I know I will need batteries in a week, I'll buy a box on Amazon and get it in a few days. If I need batteries now, I'll have them within an hour. It's certainly not "like going to the DMV."
From what I can see, Amazon sells very little that isn't Prime eligible. There are lots of "Marketplace" offerings that aren't Prime eligible, but you can filter those out by clicking the "Prime" checkbox that pops up on the left whenever you're in a search or category view.
In fact I buy all kinds of things now on Amazon because I can get them in 2 days with no shipping fee.
I get that I'm paying upfront for shipping, of course, which really only incentivizes me to shop more on Amazon. After a certain number of orders I'm beating the system, and that's fun.
Plus you get a lot of freebies, like movies.
That's only true if you would have bought those items anyway. If you wouldn't have then the system is beating you.
And if you would have insisted on 2-day shipping for everything you buy, which seems unlikely. Some purchases, sure, but everything?
> The company loses an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion on Prime shipping annually
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-free-shipping-killing-am...
Amazon wants market share enough to absorb a loss on shipping costs. It's part of why Amazon is still not profitable.
There might be some truth to that, but the better explanation for why Amazon isn't profitable is that it's simply plowing all of its profits back into the business. This link is older, but it does a pretty good job of going through the numbers and Jeff Bezo's thinking: http://a16z.com/2014/09/05/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why...
It's a cost of operation or cost of sales, IMO, and you have to look at it in the context of overall profitability and revenue growth, not as a standalone line item. Otherwise, you might argue for those other three to close all their retail outlets or charge admission in order to "stem the losses".
Not sure I understand the distinction you're attempting to make. It's a function of their model that can affect their competitiveness and may well argue for (or against) closures.
The point I was trying to make is that Prime (and any associated losses) is part of Amazon's go-to-market strategy, just as opening retail stores is part of HD, WMT, and BBY's strategy. Saying that Amazon is "losing money on Prime" but that the others aren't "losing money on stores" seems a double-standard to me.
Like retail stores, they are also part of the required infrastructure to fulfill customer orders.
Prime, OTOH is more a marketing expense. I would compare it to coupons, store savings cards, etc.
So, the double-standard doesn't exist in my view; unless you were to count retail store costs without counting Amazon fulfillment costs.
A profit margin of 0.57% [0]. That's so close to zero that I'm comfortable saying they're not profitable.
> Though it is impressive that Amazon has turned a delivery fee - that most people don't like paying - into an exclusive subscription service.
Where Amazon has convinced people to prepay $100 per year for shipping on select items similar to how Apple has convinced customers to overpay on hardware and accessories to be part of the same style club. Community was probably the wrong word, but exclusive/elite membership maybe? And yes I hear people all the time talk about their prime memberships, especially at work.