Or from your point of view, that's a lot of effort for a product that you already know you want. If you're busy doing laundry, you want to keep doing that, rather than stop and order detergent, or risk forgetting it in the next five minutes (and then not having it the next time). The price is somewhat variable, but the variation is likely below your threshold of caring.
These aren't huge costs, but it's very much web-UX thinking: people have very short memories (and attention spans) and even a single extra click is an opportunity for people to change their minds or get distracted. If your washing machine came with an infinite supply of detergent, or your cat food canister were infinitely deep, your life would be a tiny bit better. If they knew the cost were comparable to other sources, many people would take that deal without worrying too much about whether the exact price.
That's Amazon's schtick. They make your life a tiny bit better and take a tiny profit on that. It works only if they can get that tiny profit on basically everything you buy. Everything everyone buys.
They've since discovered other ways. As you say, you know the rate at which these things get used up, so it's even better for them to just replace the button with a recurring order.
You don't know if the toilet paper is going to arrive the same day, next day, 2 days, or 2 business days. Many times if you know beforehand it's going to take 2 days to get toilet paper you'd just run to the grocery store instead.
Not just toilet paper -- even with shampoo, body wash, kitchen soap, laundry detergent, kitchen sponges, I'm usually unaware I'm running out until it actually runs out, and with most of these things I can't wait 2 days. I also live 2 blocks from a 24-hour Safeway so it's not actually an issue.
It's the firstest of first-world problems, and I sure as heck don't see putting a "shampoo" button in the shower. But it kinda doesn't surprise me that at least some people wanted them.
though to be fair, I am (was?) too depressed to even set up the dash buttons
Wouldn't a smartphone app that has a repeat-purchase item dashboard allowing 1-click orders for them cover most of those "issues"?
That's pretty much (not the exact feature set, but close enough) what Amazon cited in cancelling it, so...yes?
(1) Many of the items aren't consumable items. On my page, there is a wall clock, a power strip, and an instant pot.
(2) The ordering of the items appears to be based mostly on what I bought recently rather than what I'm likely to buy over and over again consistently. (Or likely to need right now.) It could allow me to choose, but it doesn't. It could choose for me intelligently, but it isn't doing that because #2 on the list for me is a year's supply of allergy pills that I bought 3 months ago.
(3) There isn't a streamlined purchase process. The buttons just add them to my cart. (Though this could have something to do with my not having enabled one click ordering on my account.)
Turns out it's also possible to intentionally navigate to it: app menu (top left "hamburger" icon) -> "See All Programs" (under "Programs and Features" group in menu) -> "Your Dash Buttons". And the UI looks just like dash buttons. With buttons that say "Buy now" rather than adding to cart.
It'd be great to have the ability to somehow pin it in a more prominent / convenient location if I were seriously planning to use it.
I say half surprised. They’re probably avoiding Apple’s 30% cut or something
You can use Google Pay (note no "l" in second word) for physical goods, although I think you can collect your own payments if you prefer.
Related: A hardware "Dash" button made more sense in a time when mobile smart devices were not ubiquitous. The recommended items I see are really strange, often items that are "one-offs" which I might only buy once every ten years are recommended. This to me is a serious problem with their algorithm.
Dash buttons were introduced in 2015, which was hardly the pre-ubiquitous-smart-device dark ages.
It’s more fun to press the red bull button than to say “computer, order more Red Bull.”
I didn’t really use them that much because amazon’s prices got a lot worse so I ordered my Red Bull and batteries from other places.
I hope I can repurpose them for other iot signals.
I bought one for that - it's authenticated on my wifi but doesn't know what to order on Amazon. Pushing the button will make it visible on the network but do nothing else. So I wrote some scripts to run when it associates on the network, works pretty well.
In some countries selling something without showing the price at the time of purchase is not entirely legal.
So it was a funny situation where I had to get my phone out anyway.
That being said, it's very easy to just default to Amazon and not bother looking elsewhere.