A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
It's one thing to appeal to people's sense of civic responsibility for the environment, another thing entirely for commerce. Most people just wanna get their stuff easily and at a low price.
Now, there are some weaknesses Amazon has, like having to sift through a lot of cheap crap or copycat items while searching/browsing, as well as fake reviews. Maybe a website that offered most of Amazon's strengths while tackling its real flaws could be successful, but this doesn't look like that. It just looks like a half-hearted feel good measure to make it look like they're doing something.
With Amazon, if I see I’m running low on rice, I can say “Alexa order rice” and I get rice on my doorstep in 3 days based on my previous rice order history. Doesn’t get more convenient than that.
Amazon had not offered better prices than the main brick-and-mortar shops for a long long time. Try comparing the items you see in shops with the same on Amazon and be Amazed.
The best are small household items. Sellers buy from Ikea and resell on Amazon. Sometimes customers find out and they post reviews you can imagine, "OMG this is the £4 cutlery pack from Ikea. Go to Ikea don't buy here."
Like, good luck finding decent USB batteries/chargers locally, they're usually 50-100% more expensive while being substantially worse than the Anker/Aukey/Ravpower brand items popular on Amazon.
Heck, I'd pay more to get it from Amazon because of that. I'm not driving to the store to save $4 on a knife.
(Sometimes it does make sense to buy from the eBay or Amazon marketplace reseller, if it's a small item where their markup + shipping is less than Ikea's per-order delivery charge.)
Buying at a brick and mortar store reduce that need for individualized shipping, and the economies of scale of buying and delivering a large amount of product from the manufacturers by the retailer which is physically close to the customers help reducing costs.
That seems to be why so many retailers have switched to “discount in the cart” models.
mayyybe outside of urban environments?
Where I live its a bunch of boutiques that have been hoping for altruistic charity from people that can relate to "the struggle". It only works on idealistic and impressional college kids and other small business owners in the 'cult of local'.
They've also sent comical emails for conveniently non-dilutive financing to any customer that Square leaked their info to "in these trying times".
No guarantee of course, but it seems they are setting low expectations they can beat.
Went to buy insurance, couldn't because ToS lists countries couldn't do business with includes, Sadi, Iran, Iraq and Quebec.
Most Canadian's know to live in this province only if you can maximize the gains from it. Buying a first time house, starting a family, and or immigrating to Canada.
My kids go to a nice school. I live in a nice neighborhood. I get the nice metro to work. Or I cycle on the nice cycle network.
I got my covid test, and result. I saw a really good doctor the same day. The same doctor rang me back 2 days later to check up on me at home.
My kids would normally be in and out of a fantastic, modern library, or at the pool, or playing soccer in the great parks. Sadly the lockdown has temporarily stopped that, but it will be back.
If I go outside I'm not avoiding the homeless in huge numbers. Rent and housing are not absurdly expensive, allowing affordability for families.
Yes Quebec has areas to improve, but it's a great place.
If being a great place for companies made for a good society then the UK and USA wouldn't be on their knees.
...and I often stuck on overcrowded orange line (last year was was the worst in delays)
...had to travel for the medical reasons abroad, wait times in QC are really bad if you are not dying right now
...I also don't specifically avoid homeless people, but sometimes it hard to take cash on Sainte-Catherine - people doing drugs near indoor ATMs in the winter because they are heated
...and my kids also like BAnQ library, yet ~about a year ago all soft chairs/sofas were replaced by plastic, because BAnQ is partially a homeless shelter
But hey, enjoy your Quebec, Montreal specifically, as I see. ...and I will try to overcome my issues, in my Quebec.
The orange line is a dream compared to the London tube.
Americans also complain about service in Europe, where workers are also not treating each customer interaction as a make or break situation.
In a recent trip to Montreal I never saw more homeless people out on the streets, and they were nasty and mean, demanding my attention. The shocking part was how cold it was outside and how the city allowed that to happen.
NY has 1 in 125 homeless, 70k. Montreal has 3.1k. (1 in 1000).
Yes Montreal can do better, but as per my original point, where the poster complained about the ease of registering a new business, making your province into a great place to register a business is not the path to a great society.
https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/
https://www.homelesshub.ca/community-profile/montreal
Progress and Poverty, the top selling book behind The Bible in the 1890s has more information:
The parent just wants to brightly shine his anti-quebec bias.
It starts with this and then could become if you're not apart of the list you're going to have "more problems".
What other province is doing this? In my opinion this makes it more complicated already.
It always starts with a first step, Bill 101 exists to protect the French culture. Now people actively use it as an exploit against companies.
I've known people who use Bill 101 to have documents provided in French just because they didn't like what the company was doing and for no other reason than to make them have to do it.
Usually, at least when i was in insurance, it is because of legal and regulatory reason. While the law systems in Canada is based on the common law, the law system in Quebec is based on the french civil code. This had repercussions on the way a lot of regulation is thought about. So when it was time to get our products ready for Canada, we had to do a few special cases for Quebec. My guess is that a lot of suppliers just overlook it or do not want to perform the appropriate checks and adaptations because they are not organized in a way to handle this distinction inside a country.
First time was a company that had 0 clients in Qc (or Canada if that matters), still received a complaint.
Fortunately, since we didn't care about the FR website, we basically added a link which was pointing to a google translate version of it.
But yeah, this law is definitely used by many as an "exploit against companies" just to make you waste your time.
I don't see where my comment is saying that individuals shouldn't be provided the documents in French.
I'm only discussing what I observed and further providing context when it was suggested it doesn't happen often and it could be legitimate.
Equally it might not be legitimate.
It is actually fairly common reply I get when I mention it can be abused.
Bill 101 was created to protect the only French-speaking group in America. It's by definition a lesser evil to protect French from declining and it is visibly not enough since the percentage of French speaker across the province is going down.
Bill 101 was only created by the Quebecers for themselves, not by some entity above them in order to protect them.
Similarly story for New Brunswick as far as I know. Those two are, to my knowledge, the biggest francophone regions outside Québec in North-America. Franco-Ontariens are not very happy either right now with Doug Ford cutting French services. I don't disagree with you second sentence.
Haiti and the various French territories have many more French speakers than those (more or less 7 million, only slightly less than Québec has).
Edit I'm afraid that without an actual source you might not believe me, so here it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_F...
Well... This reads to me like you're saying something more.
Québec is not the only French speaking group in America and bill 101 is only a Québec law, that's what I wanted to say. Maybe that wasn't clear.
Québec's immigration system is the slowest, red taped and infamous for its bureaucracy and mismanagement.
They can't even get a grip on senior home issues with Covid-19 let alone have an online local shopping site. The province's bureaucracy has no limits.
What company is this out of curiosity? To think they see nations entrenched by Wahhabism, or Shariah Law to be on equal footing with Quebec when assessing their threat analysis', it seems like quite a leap in risk management strategies.
I'm told Quebec is a lovely place, to visit... mainly for the reasons you described. And the only working relationships I've had with people from there were 50/50 on relative polar positions: as in one of the most short sighted, lazy entitled person to deal with, to a pretty good worker who showed motivation to want to be part of a team and be a part of something that mattered and willing to adapt to their given situation/role.
Oddly enough, they were a couple.
Also worth noting the post that Amazon's DC in France look to be mothballed, too:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/amazon-is-at-a-standsti...
Their Québécois may sound odd when compared to the Old World, but it seems they're just as 'French' in practice. Maybe we'll see Yellow Vests to a street near you.
It's not this - the laws around insurance, contests and many contracts are different than the rest of Canada; many companies find it's not cost-effective to have to support another jurisdiction for the potential customer base so they just exclude it.
Amazon offers 48h delivery for most products even with COVID. On the other hand, I ordered stuff from a shop based in Montreal and it took 5 days to arrive. Even though it was physically much closer to me.
We can argue on the "necessity" of 2-day shipping, but it is still a massive differentiator.
Now what the article doesn't say is that a lot of the businesses on "Le Panier Bleu" do not even have an online catalog and you need to call them. In these cases, it's pretty much the yellow pages with a different color.
Asking because I noticed that here (Seattle), a couple of specialized niche stores do that, and it works really well, but i feel like there might be some reason for why only those kinds of stores do that.
The one that comes to mind is Patchwerks (analog synthesizer store; disclaimer: I have zero affiliation with that store aside from being a happy customer). Their own online inventory system is a pleasure to work with, and they stock all kinds of rare items that are accurately reflected in their online system. Ordered around noon, picked up a couple hours later, it was a true pleasure to work with. What their website displays is in stock has always been in stock. Not even once the state of the inventory on their website didn’t match the reality. And yet, not any other more general store I’ve seen could even match it, whether it is a local or a larger scale store.
For example, Guitar Center’s online inventory system is a straight up joke. What the website says is in stock at my local store is not in stock 99% of the time. And it cuts the other way around too. Which renders the whole website useless, as i have to call to find out what they actually have, so they can spend 10 mins of my life on hold while they are searching for an item. Then rinse and repeat if I want to check on another item or if i want to check another Guitar Center that is a bit further away in a nearby town.
I've been shopping for plants recently and there is a world of difference between two different nurseries.
I don't understand how commenters on this site constantly miss this point and argue over a few dollars in savings. If you live in Seattle, you get same-day shipping for free w/ Prime on a lot of items, one-day shipping for most, and two-day shipping on everything else.
Small businesses don't even ship products out 6 days a week with a 1 day handling time, much less provide reasonable rates.
Speed is king.
Quebec has great talent in electrical engineering and building hydro electric power plants. Quebec companies bring their expertise and develop hydro power plants across Canada and around the world for customers who don’t know how to do it themselves, sometimes in exchange for part ownership of the project.
The power transmission had to go through quebec, any other option was uneconomic as they are now finding out with the muskrat falls.
$45/MWH for renewable dispatchable power is cheap. $3/MWH is pratically free but Quebec also has financing costs for the project on top of that to pay. Plus the risk.
I don’t think Newfoundland got taken advantage of here, this is a deal that works out well for both sides. Nobody makes a deal they don’t like - if they had a better option they would have done that.
They clearly have a different hand to play now than they did in 1969.
Quebec owns 33% of the plant so they will be happy if NFL sells the power to the states at higher than the marginal cost of generation in QC.
1. There is less information on that website than Google Maps, it is pretty much useless right now. I am convinced the investigators of the project are sincere, but they are disconnected from reality (Alexandre Taillefer is a failure as a business man, but he has friends in high places)
2. They spend 300k$ on this project which is made by an non-profit. This is nowhere near enough to pretend you want to compete with Amazon. This is due to incompetence of bureaucrats in the government who have no clue how to build a software project.
3. What they could have done is a partnership with Shopify since they already built all the functionalities (search, payment, shipping, etc.) and create a real platform that looks and feel like 2020 not 1995.... But its the Not Invented Here syndrome that stroke again.
4. What people want is speed of delivery and low cost of shipping. I am simplify not waiting a week for my package to arrive via a shitty service like UPS where I need to be home to receive it. I am also proposing the government subsidies the shipping cost for small retailers to make it more appealing to buy from them.
5. Another idea I had would be to create a competing product to Amazon prime which would combine a subscription to tou.tv, free shipping on this Amazon-like website and an audio streaming service for Quebec music, I am 100% sure it would be a hit.
In summary, we have to stop the "magical" thinking that if we create a broken website in bootstrap that feels like its 1995 all over again we are going to save local businesses and make people shop in local stores. We have to build something that is modern and appeal to customers. But considering the people they have on board, I doubt it will ever happen...
Marketing and integration would be hurdles: You'd have to convince businesses to integrate, and you'd have to become a household name to consumers. You'd have to write integrations for the menagerie of systems small businesses use, or else become key enough for them to switch.
Local makers could use it, too. I'd expect that'd become more important as things like 3D printing and working from home continue to grow.
You could order via their single portal, have it fulfilled from the nearest store, and then dispatch delivery and track it all in one place. Would be a one-click enable for most merchants. Many of them are not large enough to run a full online store, and there isn't enough consumer trust to buy from every mom and pop website our there (nor should there be).
Seems like a nice migration path for brick and mortar - like Uber eats but less predatory.
I mean the government represents what the people want. The people apparently want to buy at local businesses, rather than at Amazon. Why don't they simply do it?
Or if they actually DO want to shop at Amazon, why would they want the government to prevent them from doing it?
In my case, I am willing to pay more to the local shop if everybody is doing it. If Im the only one, the benefit is lost but I personally pay the cost.
You can see it as a community agreement. When I travel with friends we agree to pay each one a lunch, it is way faster than to pay individually. But, I agree to do it because all of us agree. If Im the only one, the it is problematic.
Except that you and your friends agreed to do this voluntarily. I want to shop at Amazon and I don't want to pay for a government alternative that's a sop to obstreperous and uncompetitive local retailers. I'm buying your lunch twice.
And I want abortion to not be restricted, and that other person wants to discriminate by age, and that other one wants to throw the trash to the street or I want let my factory dump dangerous chemicals into a river.
Democracy is NOT perfect. But, it is a great solution. Even if sometimes you need to follow a law that you do not fully agree with. And, if it does not work you are free to express your side of the story, go to the justice system if the laws are unconstitutional, and also vote differently next time. That's a very good system.
I haven’t agreed to anything and you’re forcing me to pay for this. You’ve got my money. But you don’t get to delude yourself that you have my willing cooperation.
But a significant number of people should be wanting to do it - after all, the elected government wants it. So at least 30% of the people or so should want it, the ones who elected the government.
30% of people should be enough to keep some local shops afloat?
Also, I don't get the analogy of sharing travel costs. Shopping locally doesn't get cheaper if more people do it. Unless you build a huge mall, if that is what you want.
That is people do not have any way to say what they want and what trade-offs they are willing to accept, they have to choose between two or three horrible bundled packages, which end up doing things only small minority wants.
As long as we do not have a way to vote for individual policies, and to trade our support for a policy with other people we are doomed to have governments that do more harm than good.
Why not? Amazon dodges taxes everywhere it operates, which directly impacts us, the citizens. But it is so convenient that people use it nonetheless.
So the government is trying to help make local shops a bit more convenient to use in response, wihch would benefit the people.
Thank god for Amazon. If I relied to local stores I'd be sat here with no electricity in half the house.
Tangentially, app store reviews are also country specific. Annoying when I'm looking for a relatively niche app that may have 50 reviews with a handful containing good information in the US app store, but the Canadian app store has 3 reviews, none of which are useful.
Maybe that's a good way to fight against Amazon? Having a reputable business with a steady quality over time.
Québec must learn to walk before they run. Have you seen their Panier Bleu site ? I might as well use yellow pages instead of that.
While I do get the benefits of online delivery to customers (especially in the current pandemic situation or for people too old or impaired to walk/drive), the situation is much more dire for their communities across the world:
1) Many towns rely on some sort of commercial tax on local companies to fund their operations. Amazon however only pays taxes where they employ people (i.e. some random small-ish villages near highways), but not where they sell stuff - this means that as more sales shift from physical retail to online, the funding of the town goes down.
2) With delivery of food taking over, small stores that enable local people to buy e.g. groceries without needing a car get unprofitable which means they go six feet under and people are forced to drive to the next town having a Walmart or other kind of large supermarket.
3) The more stores close, the less attractive the mall or the area becomes. "Storefront blight" makes an area less attractive to potential and existing residents, invites vandals (smashed glasses, graffiti, ...) which in the worst case creates a negative self-reinforcing spiral to the bottom. Additionally, the jobs that are lost there may (!) be replaced on a national level by additional hirings in Amazon warehouses or delivery companies, but again, as delivery centers tend to be centralized, this creates another loss for the communities. Depending on the country, this job loss may hit communities further when the community is responsible for unemployment or other social benefits (e.g. housing) and not the state/federal government.
4) The tax loss also hits the countries: Amazon (and other mega corporations such as IKEA) can and do exploit complex tax loopholes to avoid as much corporate tax as they can.
So you do want to get a cheaper service and it does benefit society.