In Walmarts case, free 2 day shipping above $35 is not the same as prime. That's a lot less compelling. Also the yearly membership locks people to amazon to an extent.
i buy a TV at a random retailer. the tv breaks. i need to take the TV there, they send it to the manufacturer for repairs, 6 weeks later i maybe get my tv back.
a tv ordered at amazon breaks, they collect it, bring a replacement and deal with the problem themselves.
for me, and a lot of other people, amazon has quit competing on price. we buy there for the convenience, not because its "cheap".
shopping at amazon is seamless. even when you order something and then dont want it. i dont have to accept the package and then send it back, i just tell the postal person that i dont want it, they return it, amazon accepts that as a return and ships the money back without asking questions. not probing questions. they just dont ask. they do the thing i expect them to do without even bothering me with an email. it doesnt bother me at all. thats whats so good about it.
i get that thats first world problems. but hackernews IS about spoiled software engineers being spoiled.
amazon has this weird concierge service built in. it just works for me.
What sort of concierge service is Amazon providing you?
True, but I see that as a strike against Amazon. I was really pissed off recently when I found Amazon were selling the DVD/BD of a popular recent movie as a Prime exclusive; non-Prime customers can't buy it from them at all, unless they want to roll the dice on that wretched hive of scum and piracy which is the Amazon thirdparty market.
If Prime becomes effectively unavoidable, and Amazon's sticker prices get to amortize the Prime fee as "discounts", then they no longer have much of an incentive to compete on true price. As a customer, that's not even a tiny bit compelling.
Doesn't Amazon use shared inventory between first party and fulfilled-by-Amazon third party sellers, so that the first party market is potentially as much a hive of scum and piracy as the third party market. I'm quite sure that's been raised as an issue many times with regard to counterfeits.
For a good example of this, look up reviews on CR2032 coin cell batteries sometime. In a nutshell, regardless of which brand you pick or who you buy from on Amazon, it seems you're very likely to get re-packaged and possibly counterfeit goods.
Look at the do a search for amazon comingling and look at the FBA forums
In recent years I've found myself swinging back towards buying things in brick-and-mortar shops, mostly because the delivery experience can be so horrible. Maybe things are better in the US, but in the UK getting things delivered is non-trivial when you work during the day, and even if you're at home, it's very common for UK postmen to not bother even bringing your parcel with them; they just leave a "while you were out" card forcing you to arrange redelivery. Delivery woes of various kinds have been a staple of /r/britishproblems since the start.