Amazon may have actually tried hard to prevent Walmart gain a foothold in online retail. Flipkart is reported as the largest or 2nd largest online retailer in India, to prevent that volume going to Walmart Amazon may have tried hard and pushed price in the process.
I think Walmart's stinginess is also an important point here. At this price, plus the additional money they put in, a good ROI gets harder. Bezos has never really cared about short-term ROI, but I wonder if Walmart will be inclined to be impatient or under-invest later because of the high price now.
Walmart is getting help.
I’m guessing they wanted Softbank out for control in general and since Softbank loves to control, otherwise they could’ve saved another $4B and let Softbank keep 20% control.
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-s...
People love Amazon now, but I think it's time to fear it. They're already in bed with governments for multi-billion contracts, and are aiming for monopoly power. They won't behave well for much longer, and I'd argue they've already started behaving badly (raising prices on consumers, lowering commissions on affiliates, and so on).
as a consumer, i agree. but so do a lot of companies.
Run down the list of private sectors that spend the most on information technology -- health care, banking, retail, insurance -- and all of them worry Amazon is coming for them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-02-15/worried...
I may be incorrect, but my understanding is that while Amazon pays a discounted rate, this is the same as any other bulk shipper for USPS, and in fact, without Amazon, many routes would not be profitable for USPS without Amazon.
> [Amazons] rates are kept under wraps. That said, we do know the Amazon deal is at least a break-even venture.
> That’s because the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act made it illegal for USPS to price parcel delivery below its cost.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/apr/...
I live three blocks from the post office, my grandma lives 25 miles and down a dirt road from her nearest post office. It's hard to argue that my deliveries cost the same as hers, yet we pay the same price for postage.
--edit: I hold no opinion either way on the subject, just clarifying based on what I understood from reading it.
Amazon is quite often not the lowest price. And, while they do still seem to be quite liberal with "send it back and we'll refund plus <mumble>", that doesn't matter if you can't get a genuine product because of all the counterfeits.
I'm pretty sure most of these comments are about Amazon India since that's what this discussion is about.
I buy everything on Amazon, and I've never had this problem. Do you have any data to back up this claim?
If you buy something used, or something with a lot of knockoffs (Xiaomi) or old tech (GameCube Controllers) there is a chance you will get a counterfeit.
I switched to buying all that stuff from eBay and it's much better. Untrusted-by-default makes eBay a very healthy marketplace to buy and sell in.
From a quick search (says “Apple Computer”, but tell me if that’s really made by Apple or not): https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0787CFNRQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=...
Another example from another quick search: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B075CTVSVB/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?ie...
Then within the last year I've started receiving probably one out of five products being very blatant fakes. I only order Prime items and only sold from the manufacturer and only brand name, but I still get counterfeit items. It's actually driven me back to retail stores for items where I 100% need to get the real thing.
I just can't believe that Flipkart still doesn't have filter and sort by ratings. There can be arguments about how effective ratings are but this is one feature I definitely need for buying or booking anything - from my stationary to hotels and buses.
PS. I just logged in to Flipkart to check whether they have added that feature yet. I guess my last login was a year ago or more. Last purchase was on July 29, 2015.
So many things are out of stock, or not available for purchase.
The few things that are available for purchase are sometimes only offered by third-parties, who jack up the price by an exorbitant amount.
In India, Amazon is so good its hard to imagine how it will be sustainable. I paid $8/year for prime (yes a year) and they're now selling it at $16/year for free 24 hours delivery.
However, I can foresee how it may not be as good in the near future. Try buying a pair of Apple Airpods and one soon figures AMZN is not best place to make the purchase, it's so hard to tell which seller / product is genuine!
I ended up paying $30 extra for my backpack I bought recently because I didn't trust the Amazon items were real after reviews saying they were counterfeit. And these are Prime items, sold by the manufacturer, but they're stilling coming counterfeit.
Part of this sentence isn't true.
And in the meantime, I already used the cable and it burned my house down and now half my family is dead. But yeah, I can get a quick refund no problem.
Why do I care? What kind of ridiculous question is that?
Sure, you might want to exercise caution with some product categories and time sensitive things.