Comment by ignoramous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ignoramous | Hacker News Reader

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name.

Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

> The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.

Here's Jeff explaining the Internet (at a TED talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKNUylmanQ

> Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal... If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.

Jeff speaking about innovation, invention (based on first principles), making data-driven decisions (and also when to not trust data), learned helplessness at Stanford (2005): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhnDvvNS8zQ

> When times have been good, you’ve been humble.

Heh. Reminds me of this 2008 lecture where Jeff is selling AWS to startup school students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA Classic.

> Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to.

Not sure about that last part, Jeff.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be more internal viewings of that video.

I agree. Amazon's upper management should really do a mystery shopping exercise themselves to see how dysfunctional their (both Amazon.com's and AWS's) support has become.

Might be hard to change anything when you have a core metric that looks like this:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin

Link is broken.

It's supposed to be the stock chart.

looks like https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ works for me, based in the US.

Practically have to do backflips to avoid accidentally signing up to Amazon Prime. Dark patterns deployed front and centre.

I contacted support twice in 2 years for Prime subscription I didn’t want. Each time: “Are you sure you didn— Yes I’m sure, I knew intended to avoid it, so it’s clearly not me.” Both times they correctly cancelled it.

The system is mostly designed to prey upon inattentive seniors with disposable incomes.

If Prime is any good it should be sold on its own merits, tricking people into signing up is despicable

Anecdote for what it’s worth:

I’ve been a heavy customer for many years. While I bemoan the rampant knock off products and fraudulent reviews, by shopping carefully I’ve actually never had a bad product delivered, and the very few times I’ve needed to call support, they’ve been super responsive and remedied the issue quickly. (Mostly refunds for digital content purchased incorrectly).

They may not be perfect, but that have that “Macdonalds” aspect now; you know what you’re getting and it’s consistently pretty good. Which is often more reassuring than trying something new.

I used to trust them, in the last few years the dark patterns have been deployed with gradually increasing intensity and it leaves a bad taste

And canceling Amazon Prime requires you to click a button saying you want to cancel four times.

The "customer" is at the heart of everything, not the ex-customer (or wanna-be ex, according to Amazon).

I'm still a customer, I just don't want to buy their bundle-of-services-I-dont-need. The tricks they pull with tiny hard to find 'continue without signing up to Prime' links are disgusting

A/B testing is awesome for first order problems with your web site design. By the time you’re down to third order problems it’s reductive and cynical.

Immoral techniques always find support from amoral tools. Dark patterns are justified by A/B testing. And shitty people.

I recall reaching out to the customer service more than once pre-2010 or so and they were incredibly responsive and helpful. I guess they just couldn't scale human interactions past a certain point.

They still are. I had to contact support for some purchases I didn’t recognize a couple weeks back. I was dreading the usual “support call” experience, but they were super friendly and within 5 mins I was refunded and they deactivated an old device from my account for safety.

I don't know, I just returned a faulty smart light bulb and the process was beyond easy. Just select it from my previous orders, submit a request to return it, and choose how to send it back. Pretty easy.

As a "bonus" I was able to send it back through a Kohl's store so my wife got a 25% off coupon that she used to purchase some masks and socks (and stuff). Yes, I know, they got us to purchase more stuff, but she really likes shopping there and it was a "we're going there anyway" kind of thing. Plus I didn't have to box up the return or print a label or anything. Just show the clerk the QRCode and hand them the bare light bulb.

My anecdata counterfactual to this is that I recieved an empty package and couldn't even figure out how to make a complaint to Amazon let alone return it. It was a cheap item so maybe they care more if it passes some threshold value?

I had the same issue. I had to use the chat option. It took a little bit but wasn’t too long and they gave me a refund without requiring I send back an empty package. I would have eaten the cost (<$12) if I hadn’t been able to work it out though. Wasn’t worth getting flagged as a potential scammer.

My $2 book purchase anecdata from last summer runs counterfactual to yours. The product never arrived and within 48hours of complaint the cash had been returned.

I had bought a product on amazon.de, it arrived with some cosmetic damage (product worked, little scratch). To be honest, it was one of the best customer support experiences I had seen. Select order, select product, click button 'problem', describe what the problem was, get return info, DHL picked up the next day, two days later I had a replacement product.

Anecdotally, I disagree. I recently contacted their support when I didn't understand why final ordering prices slightly differed from the listings on Amazon EU websites.

The reply was very on-topic, ridiculously customized and clear for an otherwise complicated topic (reason: VAT is calculated on the shipping location within EU). Almost as if someone with real EU accounting knowledge had taken the time to investigate and reply (which I can't imagine?). And this was from a non-business account. It was easily one of the top-3 customer service experiences I ever had.

I don't deny that Amazon are capable of good customer service. But the site is full of fake products and fake reviews. Returning a product is a breeze but I'd really rather not have to be returning them in the first place. And Amazon knows about the problems. A few times I've reported receiving an offer for a gift voucher in return for a positive review of an item I bought and they've taken zero action on it.

I disagree. Amazon has many times refunded my order in full with a simple call, and for orders internationally they do it entirely faith-based and will send you another version without having to even return the original.

They're great for this. I once ordered the wrong tablet which was totally my mistake and I even ended up unboxing it, but they still allowed me to return it. It's one of the main reasons I use them because I know there's no hassle if anything goes wrong with my order.

Unfortunetly I know a few people who have been abusing Amazon's refund policy recently. I don't come from the best background so I know a few people who have ordered phones and other electrics from Amazon just because they know if they complain they were stolen from their doorstep they might get a free phone. From my experience working at ecomerce and insurance companies it's hard to have a relaxed returns policy when you also have to accept that the majority of the claims will be fraudulent.

I disagree.

I have had orders where they have refused to refund. When I have later, internally, escalated, they have relented and issued a refund.

There is even a dedicated section (can't recall if on inside.amazon.com or the wiki ) to explain the process of how to internally escalate a bad customer support experience on behalf of your friends and family.

If Amazon (retail) is as customer focused as they claim to be this should not be necessary.

I've been a customer since 2000 and an employee for a while now.

Disclaimer: I hear in the US it is totally different and support is a lot better.

"declined" is a major understatement. Too many practices at Amazon is now decisively anti-customer:

- Fake reviews have been happening for years but almost no progress from Amazon

- Huge number of fake products and/or misleading specs

- Sponsored products trumps organic results every time

- Sellers use whatever brand they wish instead of their real names giving appearance that they are "official" vendors of that brand

I stopped buying much there around ~2010. The sheer amount of Chinese counterfeit garbage and lack of proper categorization makes it impossible to browse the site. The clothing category in particular is just 100,000 dumpsters full of unlabeled trash heaped into a pile.

If you didn't discover a product name somewhere else, you won't find it on Amazon. Amazon doesn't do merchandising for shit.

oh yeah? have you ever returned products on other online stores?

One of the main reasons I use Amazon in France is their service.

I never ever had any issues, our biggest fight was about the 2€ they charged me once to send back a 100€ item. They gave up after the 2nd email.

I will pay 10% more for the Amazon price, for the peace of mind.

Amazon's customer support is mediocre at best. I tried to buy something from them and the card transaction failed because I had some protections in place. Instead of them trying again, they asked for all kinds of documents to prove the ownership. I sent them a receipt from a local store, but it wasn't good enough for them. I guess they don't want my money :-)

I would never take a receipt as proof of card ownership. If I were to find a wallet, what's the chance that there's a random receipt stuffed in there along with the card?

The receipt wasn't old. It was for shopping done after they asked me for proof.

That video is pure gold. Lots of lessons you can use even today for any business.

Do people do any analysis anymore or do they just repeat memes? i.e. "we put the customer first".

For reference, I'm someone who hadn't used amazon (i'm in Australia, and I've just had no need). These holidays was my first real experience with the amazon brand and the amazon website.

What I saw was an incredibly user hostile site: reviews mashed together from all over the world, and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller. Search that doesn't work and you're never really sure what you're getting and from whom. I was searching for keyboard trays and it quickly became apparent various products were all the same but just re-labelled cheap chinese output.

When I went to check out, i had at least 3 dark patterns encountered where Amazon was directly trying to screw me: trying to trick me to sign up for prime, promising free shipping on the click but then default you out of it when you check out until you go searching for it, and continually spamming me with offers for whatever their streaming service is.

They weren't "customer first", they were actively customer hostile. I don't understand how this keeps getting repeated, unless their tech side is completely different from their consumer side...

> and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the seller

I distinctly remember the point when I lost trust in Amazon, after being a customer since 1997.

There were reviews for two books on the same topic, but different authors, mixed together under one title. I emailed Amazon to point this out and... they did nothing.

Nowadays the review section is a dark pattern itself, you have to keep your wits about you. What used to be a great public resource in the Internet has been lost.

The customer friendliness is 1. free fast shipping 2. they will cancel and refund things 3. if you make multiple orders they'll combine them 4. the website loads really fast.

Competitors have gotten better at many of these, but it's still hard to impossible to cancel orders many other places, and if I have to chat to Amazon they still refund and replace things very easily.

I have used amazon.com.au and noticed the selection is pretty bad there. amazon.jp is great though, and worldwide shipping is amazingly fast. The customer service is even more important there because Japanese companies hate cancelling things or special requests (omotenashi/"Japanese customer service" means you do what they tell you, not the other way round.)

This is the “new amazon.” Old Amazon was really customer focused. Back when prime was a good value ($80/year for 2 shipping) everything just worked. You could find products easily, order, automate reorders.

In the past five years, every visit to Amazon involved wading through ads for bad products (eg, search for Iphone7, see sponsored ads for Samsung phones). There are more sponsored line items than actual results.

Prime’s price has almost doubled and I had 6/25 packages take longer than 2 days in the last year I had prime (compared to 99-100% for the previous 15 years).

One click doesn’t work because if I try it, I get charged for shipping even though free is available. I have to manually go into every over and uncheck 1-day shipping for $5.99 (or whatever) and select free 2-day. Every time. And I have to click through a screen to manually say I don’t want to buy prime.

Amazon sucks now. They abandoned their customers.

Comically, Walmart has a better (easier, faster, less bullshit, cheaper) experience than Amazon. I never would have guessed.

My experience with Walmart is poorly packed boxes handled roughly by FedEx leading to a bunch of damaged orders. At this point Amazon's delivery service itself is a differentiator for me, and I don't love the company or paying for prime.

That was mine with Walmart for a long time. In 2020, I tried using them and find that they seemed to have improved. Normally packed boxes, speedily shipped. For me, I usually get UPS.

But I think the biggest thing for Walmart is the site as shopping for hard drives shows you hard drives instead of whatever people pay for ads. I was able to find the product I wanted more easily.

I think Amazon's search quality going down the drain lately. Too much's been taken by promotions.

Amazon's search and recommendations were never any good, though. You've always had to search a page or three, and buying a TV recommends you more TVs.

The last experience I had with Amazon customer service was so bad I decided to stop using them as much as is physically possible. If your situation does not fit in a simple bucket, they will force it into one even if its bad for them and you at the same time.

> Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise:

Agreed! He knew exactly what he was doing.

Interesting that he talks about attention being a scarce resource. Things did not improve from that point....

Thank you for sharing the video. I liked seeing Bezos on startup phase. I had not heard the story, so I learned that he started as a quant on Wall St and left that job to start Amazon later in life. Many people expect tech startups to happen in your college dorm room, but Bezos took a completely different route.

He sounds like a time traveler from the future. He talks like it's a given that the Internet is going to take over the world but back then it really wasn't.

Ostensibly it was going to take over the world? I think you mean to say it was non obvious. But unless we’ve split timelines that is exactly what was going to happen.

I was at that Startup School lecture in 2008. I still have strong memories of his body language and affect. He wasn't at all what I was expecting

In what way, if you don't mind? I always have the impression that he is practical to a fault, and consistent in his prescription for engineering above all.

"this is day 1".

I'm wondering for what else it is day 1, right now.

I know cryptocurrencies have been booming, it's not clear exactly if they will continue to boom but the space is already so big that one has to really read a lot to catch up.

What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?

I think cryptocurrency is more akin to personal computer. DeFi- the internet.

What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?

Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.

I am in robotics and it seems well poised to grow. There’s a lot of big problems left to solve at the research level but deep learning seems to be slowly knocking down big problems left and right.

Yes cryptocurrencies are one thing but look at the possibilities afforded with having a decentralized, distributed ledger in all areas of life. Having a source of truth in things like law or politics. This would be a fundamental shift for society as a whole not just finance.

Quibble: to me "This is day one" is less about "what market can we get in on the ground floor of and ride a wave". It is more to underscore we are driving the innovation or market and that we are always starting from zero, never too late to change / pivot and we're still aggressively growing everything, or that is the goalline.

That isn't meant to take away from your question. As a developer I'm often focused on leaf concerns. Your question is more about broad strokes and I have to remind myself to think about fundamental changes.

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