Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town.
Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints about the 2-Day shipping never really being 2-Day shipping, the constant fakes that plague the Amazon inventory (with a seemingly blind-eye from Amazon itself on it), and so on.
These weren't really public goods introduced by Amazon, as plenty of stores handle the customer service side just fine in most cases, and the delivery stuff was mostly just investors subsidizing the costs for a time, which appears to no longer be a major focal point.
But to counter this trend: I am very, very happy that Amazon exists. It’s allowed me to discover and buy plenty of books that I otherwise would never read or sample. Not to mention dozens of everyday items I buy from them. Nail clippers, socks, alarm clock, router, resistance bands, headphones and many more I’m forgetting about.
It’s all under one roof, delivery is usually very fast (sometimes it’s just one day on two-day delivery; when there are some delays and it takes an extra day they always notify me by e-mail).
Amazon is great and I’m a more-than-satisfied consumer.
Many online retailers simply do not make efforts to deliver, quite apart from any cost consideration, and then they moan about Amazon.
In addition, it's also about creating trust. Buying something online requires more trust than buying from a store so convincing people that it's safe and that there won't be any issues with returns and refunds is a big part of getting people to place and order and to come back.
Amazon has "Amazon Lockers", which let me accept deliveries at a time convenient to me, with no human interaction. This is a real improvement over previous methods, and AFAIK no other retailer in my country has anything similar.
So, just like a post office box?
Not to mention that the raise of companies like Amazon and the "on demand" mentality is the one that forces people to not have more regular hours "convenient to them".
If you want to change those things start with changing the law, ending policies hurting the working class (limiting low skill migration would be the first step) and getting rid of ridiculous taxes like corporate income tax you claim Amazon dodged (while in fact it pays what the law requires it to pay).
Blaming the player for playing the game well while taking care of what they are legally obliged to do (shareholder value) is neither smart nor constructive.
No, it’s not. The corporation’s interests must align with the shareholders, but there’s no law that says short-term profit is the only legal goal. Companies can and have sacrificed in order to build the community.
Anyone who sees them acting suboptomally for the short term can buy in, pressure for more short term interests and lobby to get their way then jump off before it collapses with their gains. Even without that scheming continuous gains are demanded generally.
You can if the society and law demands that. E.g. throw them a few huge fines for using bad labor practices (e.g. workers not allowed to go to the toilet when they need to, firing pregnant women, other kinds of discrimination) and let's see what happens.
Otherwise they have no incentive to pay their employees a competitive wage.
Without competitive wages you have no free market, you just have a corporate welfare state, where the cost of paying workers is taken from the workers themselves thru taxation. That's basically what some UBI shills want. They want state taxation and welfare to replace the onus of corporations to pay competitive wages to employees.
No enterprise-size company should get any tax break, period. Only small companies or enterprises that can show they had a bad run (and e.g. might otherwise need to close).
Add to that a rule that if they then just go and take their offices/factories abroad (where they get a big tax break) they get hit with the equivalent savings in import tax is they want to sell in the domestic market.
Combine that with tiny or no tax for individuals (like it has been before the 20th century and is still in several places).
"Why dont we get rid of the foxes, we have the power to do that"
No, no, that seems like a silly idea, status quo is the best.
No it isn't.
Have you counted the lives and communities it destroyed (e.g. closing local alternatives and smaller chains)? The environmental cost from such large scale delivery of every possible BS? The externalities (including accumulated power to single person who contracts for the military industrial complex and runs newspapers)?
It's not possible to similarly conveniently quantify concern about counterfeit, but if you think they genuinely do not care about it then I don't even know what to say. Even from a purely greed centered point of view, counterfeits hurt mid to longterm revenue.
[1] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
No level of pay can make up for being treated like shit.
Regarding the counterfeits, Amazon loves to say how they're dealing with the issue, but the examples just keep piling up. And of course their childish behavior around Chromecast and Youtube.
Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
If you're a delivery driver, your job options are extremely limited. You can deliver fast food, or deliver for companies like Amazon. It's either that, or starve.
Plenty of shitty companies are successful. They just need to. be more convenient than their competitors.
> Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
Not yet.