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Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

Like most Americans I order a shitload from Amazon. However the last item I bought from Best Buy was a TV (my old LG just ... died).

Ordered online, chose to pick up in store.

Drive 35 min to store

Pickup process takes 10-15 min

Drive 35 min home.

Left after dinner, was watching it that evening.

The only condition that would have prevented me from using this model would be traffic, as it could extend the trip by 60-90 minutes and would also increase my stress significantly.

Whereas Amazon would take 2-3 days (maybe more) and I'd be shitting bricks worrying about it getting damaged and being forced through the horrors of shipping a return.

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I ordered a TV from Amazon. They use a third party service that schedules delivery with you. Two dudes came out with TV, unboxed and set it up (put on stand, plugged in power to verify its working).

A few days after delivery I noticed a red line running along the top of the screen. Contacted Amazon about replacement. There was some issue with doing a direct replacement so they had me purchase another TV and then refunded the cost.

Dude comes out and picks up busted TV, puts it in box. New dudes come out a few days later with new TV.

All of that is to say - it really wasn't a big deal to order it online. Shipping was still free. Also they took packaging material with them, so it was nice not having to deal with disposing of a gigantic box.

Same experience for me. The first time, I bought TV from Amazon I was a bit nervous. But the experience was so great. No need to drive to store, find parking, fit huge box in my tiny car, park car in loading area, unload, move car.... so on.

Since then I have bought more TVs for myself and helped friends and family who were reluctant to order online. No bad experience so far.

Did you pay extra to have it unboxed and turned on? How much was the TV? I'm wondering at what level, or price they offer this service? The TV I purchased was not expensive, and the Amazon alternative was one of their "house brands" with Alexa integrated so I wonder if they'd provide the same level of service.

Did they schedule the delivery with you or did they just show up?

It was a 65 inch Samsung KS8000, I think about 1500 at the time. The delivery, unboxing, etc, was all free (prime). I scheduled the delivery on checkout, you picked the day and from several 2 hour windows.

> The delivery, unboxing, etc, was all free (prime)

"Free" in that it came with your Prime membership which you paid for ;)

your parent comment got more than 120$ of benefit in a single order; if you amortize the cost of that prime membership across a year and use it like this it certainly seems closer to free.

I was in similar situation not long time ago, and they wanted to charge me some money (around $100) for TV setup, even I am prime member.

That parent comment is now also locked-in and will justify Amazon's extortion to themselves by buying more things from them without bothering to check other stores.

They end up paying quite a bit beyond that $100/year fee.

I wonder what size TV you have to buy before that is how it works. I bought a 55 inch TV from them and it arrived shattered, shipped by UPS. The return was painless enough and the replacement was undamaged, but still, UPS and not a couple guys with the TV on a truck.

Interesting. We ordered one from Amazon, I think a 50inch, and it was put on our front doorstep in the tv box. It was undamaged thankfully, but it looked like a normal Fedex(or w/e) driver, not a special delivery at all.

I can second that. I’ve ordered 3 TVs from Amazon over the past two years - all relatively cheap TCL Roku TVs ( < $350), a 32, 49, and 55. One was lost in transit and I ended up cancelling the order. Another didn’t arrive when they said it should so I ended up picking it up from UPS. I had to unbox it to get it in my car. I probably wouldn’t trust Amazon for a more expensive purchase.

Ordered a TV from Amazon the same way. The dudes said it was not their job to actually put it on the stand despite paying for and ordering white glove delivery. Had to do it myself with a friend later as it was too big to put up alone. This was about ten years ago. In retrospect, I should have known better who I was dealing with, but like most people here, I was ignorant of what Amazon was really like. This is minor compared to all their other shit.

I can't tell whether you're happy with Amazon's service. It sounds to me like you waited for delivery, got a bad TV, waited for delivery again... but at least you don't have to deal with the box?

No thanks.

He could have gone to Best Buy, drove the TV home himself if he had a car a 65-inch TV would fit in, dealt with the packaging and setup himself, and then found out it was defective.

It sounds to me like he got pretty good service and avoided a lot of hassle by doing it through Amazon.

One reason Best Buy is still alive is that they effectively price discriminate between online buyers and in-store buyers.

I saw a deal for a 48” Vizio TV on bestbuy.com for $206 (in 2016, this was a screaming deal). I ordered for in-store pickup. When I went to the store, I saw the TV was listed for sale at $400 or so, with no indication of a better price online.

So Best Buy makes tons of money off folks who wander in, while doing good volume on online sales with lower margins.

I mean, convenience has a cost/value. Moseying to your local retailer and walking out with a thing has value. Now, whether that's ~$194 of value, IDK.

But like the original commenter, the thing I love about Best Buy (and other mortar and brick retailers) is the "I dont have to wait on shipping and lost orders" thing.

Oddly, I've had the opposite experience (in Canada): the online price would be the same as on Amazon. I wanted it now, so I went to the store (even though I hate driving to the suburbs/shopping mall), only to see that the item was 10% cheaper in the store.

(we always pay taxes for online purchases, so taxes are a non-issue)

How strange! I’d think that anyone who caught onto this pattern would check the in-store price before completing the pickup. If the price is lower in-store, you could just cancel the online order and purchase off the shelf!

Ah, to clarify: I would not bother ordering online, so it was a pleasant surprise to find the lower price in-store.

I think the line that they use is that bestbuy.com is a different business then best buy. something like that.

A lot of stores have that model- effectively putting online in competition with brick and mortar. I heard the founder of Staples (Stemberg) speak to this early in e-retail. Somebody asked how they were handling the upcoming online pressure, and he said they made it a separate unit with their own strategies, etc.

You think it is free to have that building, that staff, the parking lot, the electricity??

You need all that even if you're just running a warehouse.

Bought a TV from Amazon about 10 years ago. UPS couldn't deliver on the scheduled delivery day because the box was too big, and was stuck at the back of the truck. So I had to skip a day of work for no reason. They delivered it the next day in the early morning.

Sometimes, shipping issues are truly not Amazon's fault. Yet still they can impact us.

Why is Best Buy's shipping from DC to store less worrysome than Amazon's from DC to your house?

Good point. The difference being that "last mile", where I feel the transport has many more variables than a massive Best Buy truck moving merchandise from warehouse to store. It's also in Best Buy's interest to not damage the shit they're going to sell, whereas once the package is bought, and handed off to UPS/USPS/FedEx responsibility gets murky and easier to shirk.

The other major difference is my "return anxiety". If I get home and my TV doesn't work, I hop back in the car and swap it for a new one (round trip maybe 2 hours).

I bought two TVs from Best Buy and one from Amazon.

For both of the TVs, Best Buy tried to sell me insurance. They used the "refuse to take no for an answer" tactic. In both cases I had to say, "if you say another word about the insurance I'm going to walk out." I really meant it, too.

Amazon's shipper lugged my TV up two flights of stairs to a 3rd floor apartment.

> Like most Americans I order a shitload from Amazon.

I do too but can we say "most" Americans? Are there any stats available on their customers?

I wonder, how many Americans have purchased at least one thing on Amazon? How many have in the past year? What's the average spend per customer per year?

Here you go: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2017/06/17/sixty-four...

tl;dr: As of June 2017, 64% of American households had Amazon Prime. 43% of all American dollars spent online are spent at Amazon.

Hate to be that guy, but I have Amazon Prime in my household because my wife uses it just enough to be worthwhile. She makes only a small percentage of her purchases there, and the others in our household make none.

The 43% figure is more relevant, and that's 43% of a relatively small share of all consumer spending, with much of it being done by a small group of large Amazon customers.

So I don't think it's accurate to say most people buy a shitload of stuff from Amazon.

Amazon’s US retail revenue was $318B for 2017 [0]. There are 126M households in the US in census’ 2017 data [1]. Thats $2,500/household. That’s definitely a shitload bought by most people.

Comically shitloads are pretty cheap and are $210/ton (a big pickup kid) if you’re in New Hampshire [2]. So pedantically, we’re all buying 10 shitloads.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/15/amazons-us-sales-to-match-wa... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-househo... [2] https://www.milessmithfarm.com/farming-products.html

> [2] https://www.milessmithfarm.com/farming-products.html

"From Our Farm to Your Table" ... hopefully not the composted manure!

From your link it says,"Though Walmart remains king of sales with $495.8 billion in annual revenue and U.S. sales of $318.5 billion (a 3.5 percent increase year over year) for the fiscal year ended in January, Amazon is growing at a faster pace in the United States."

You are claiming that Walmart's revenue is Amazon's. You misquoted.

Oh wow, thanks for the correction. I misread the link and Amazon’s 2017 US sales are only $186M, not $318.5B.

Still a literal and figurative shitload for the average American household, but Acosta half as much as my original calculations.

Okay...here's more statistics for you. 75% of American online shoppers use Amazon for most of their online shopping [1]. 80% of Americans shop online [2]. So approximately 60% of all Americans frequently shop at Amazon.

_________

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/19/more-than-75-percent-of-us-o...

2. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/19/online-shopping-and-e-...

It was a casual remark, based on generalizations about my audience, not necessarily meant to stand up to scrutiny - however there's also this: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-...

> I do too but can we say "most" Americans? Are there any stats available on their customers?

"Most" is almost true if you only look at ecommerce.

"This year, the online shopping juggernaut will capture 49.1% of the market, according to eMarketer's latest forecast on the top 10 US ecommerce retailers, up from a 43.5% share last year. Amazon now controls nearly 5% of the total US retail market (online and offline)."[1]

[1] https://retail.emarketer.com/article/amazon-now-has-nearly-5...

49% of sales might be very different from being used by 49% of people, though.

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