Hacker News Reader

Comment by ourmandave | Hacker News Reader

Lately I've heard a lot of radio spots pushing Target's free shipping and pick-it-up at your local store.

Which is competing / catching up with WalMart.

I’ve used both Target and a Walmart’s pickup options and the former is superior.

Walmart makes you go to the back of the store. The walk alone takes a few minutes. Then you wait for an employee to show up, then you wait for them to lookup your order, then they go into the back room to get it. Then walk all the way back out.

For Target the pickup spot is right by the entrance and there’s already a person waiting there. They just scan your barcode, show your ID, and hand you your item.

Walmart is totally revamping the store pickup and putting a huge emphasis on it with lots of branding. My store has already switched over to the new system but they may still be in the process of rolling it out. They moved it to the front of the store next to the entrance and you check yourself in on a touch screen kiosk, either scanning a barcode or looking up your order by name or order number. Then an employee gets a notification on a smartphone and they grab your order. There is a status bar on a monitor letting you know what's going on.

When it works it works really, really, really well. I mean, in and out in less than two minutes. However, there was a time the employee didn't get a notification, so it might still need to get the kinks ironed out.

I agree that previously the store pickup was an afterthought and not always run very well.

Yup.

I did an in-store pickup at Walmart last night. I got a text message with the pickup # and when I went there (Walmart's on my way home and I stop there most days), the greeter at the door was the person who got my order. Pickup station was right by the door and I was done in under 2 minutes.

It's improved a lot in the last year!

My walmart in Miami has store pickup right at the front, next to the door and its always staffed by at least three people.

They also have this huge digital tablet thing where you can type in your order id and someone can grab it for you quicker.

At mine, it's at the back of the store near the bathrooms. =(

There's never anyone there and you generally wait several minutes after you've hit the pager on the card reader.

The GP is talking about the new store pickup ("huge digital tablet") but you're talking about the old one ("pager on the card reader").

Your store should switch over to the new system sometime soon.

I honestly don't know why it takes Walmart so long to switch over. I live in Atlanta and I've seen one that has it... And another a few miles away not. I've never used the new layout, but the old one sucks.

I was there to pick up photos (thus store has online pickup and photos at the same place)... They screwed up my order and I waited 45 minutes and left empty handed because no one there knew how to make a photo calendar and doesn't k know where mine went. But I digress.

I basically witnessed 45 minutes of a train wreck of people trying to pick up orders (probably Christmas presents) from a disorganized and understaffed center. No one was happy...

This is the experience we get in our local Walmart as well. The way the local store is run, I would be surprised if there is an upgrade coming for pickups. This is certainly not a commentary on Walmart - it is however a commentary on my area at large as far as retail is concerned.

That's a different experience from my local Walmart. I find their pick-up to be an excellent experience.

It almost always has employees in the pick-up room. If not, you can tap a screen at the counter that alerts an employee for you.

You show your license. It takes very little time to look up the order, they just punch in your order number or look your order up by name.

The pick-up items are all stored right in that pick-up room, so there's zero wait for them to go into another storage room to get your item.

Usually takes a few minutes total. I've used them to do an item pick-up in store maybe a dozen times in three years, zero bad experiences so far.

Don't forget when you can't find an employee or they tell you someone is coming and 20 minutes later no one remembers you even existed.

Exactly, Target's pick up in store is really fast and simple. I had ordered a gift for my friend half way across the states and he was able to go and just pick it up himself the next day

>The walk alone takes a few minutes.

Yet you likely brag about how many "steps" you had on your Health app on your iphone.

Fucking walk.

I've had a lot of issues with Amazon recently so I'm happy that these retailers are doing more e-commerce

Agreed. I've been considering dropping Prime, since something like 8 out of 8 deliveries didn't arrive within the 2 business days promised - often with delays of up to a week. Customer service would waste an hour of my time each time I called to ask and verify just so I could know whether I needed to go to a brick and mortar store to buy the item in time. Really, really unpleasant.

>Customer service would waste an hour of my time each time I called to ask and verify just so I could know whether I needed to go to a brick and mortar store to buy the item

Amazon customer service is just the worse. They seem to only know how to press two buttons: "refund order" or "ship item." Or maybe "cancel order" and "return" too. If you need something that doesn't get solved by one of those buttons you're going to have a really, really frustrating experience. Every person I ever talked to has a fundamental lack of understanding of the English language, way worse than your typical Indian call center. You ask a question and they just don't understand what you're asking, they get confused, and tell you some irrelevant information. It's a frustrating, time consuming, back and forth to ask a simple question and sometimes you don't even get an answer and your issue is literally never addressed.

It just astounds me that it's that bad.

But because they reflexively just press "refund order" most of the time the average person thinks they are getting good customer service...

In contrast, Walmart's free two day delivery has been on point.

Agreed. Sometimes, you may not even be able to get the a refund. Amazon seems to be incurring a growing cost for refunds and its reneging on them whenever the chance arises. That's what happens when an entity becomes a monopoly.

I've been experiencing this as well- seemingly with increasing frequency as they use their own "AMZL" delivery service.

It's rapidly discouraging me from ordering things from Amazon if I'm going to rely on the delivery date. Or casually ordering things (i.e. via Alexa) that I might not be paying attention to the delivery of.

I've had prime since it became available, and this is a very disappointing turn for Amazon from my point of view.

Yes, I've also had similar experiences. I rarely get 2 business day delivery! Such a scam. The service is amazing only if it works nearly 100% of the time. Otherwise, you don't know if your Prime item will come in 2 days or 6 and it gets really hard to order some things with that uncertainty.

Curious where you guys live to have these experiences? I split my time between Minneapolis and Chicago, and have yet to have a (noticed at least) delayed Prime package.

Prime Now is even more insane. Last item I ordered arrived in 18 minutes from pressing the button.

I'm sure this happens, I just am wondering where one must live for it to be a common occurrence.

My experience is that things still mostly take two days to ship/deliver, but that they often don't get shipped for random period of time (I just ordered something, for example, that looked like a regular Prime shipping product, but the ship date won't be until the 25th, though it of course notified me of such during checkout, though it's an extreme example). (Tangentially, I only have Prime when they offer a free month and then I cancel near the end of it.)

My wife and I have noticed this lately. If seems like they're trying to play a numbers game by setting too many items as prime and too aggressively setting delivery dates.

Just give me a date that you can hit 99% of the time. I don't mind a missed delivery every now and then, but lately 9 out of 10 deliveries are late.

Yeah I've had two packages lost and one package stolen in the last month.

My kids figured out that the online target.com prices are much lower than the local store, so they still shop there but price-match everything at the register.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com