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Comment by tyoma | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be some selective amnesia about how great mom & pop businesses were. People drove an hour out of their way to Walmart because it was that much better. Not just the prices, but also selection and return policies (Walmart was the pioneer of long term hassle free returns).

Similarly, Amazon is succeeding because it is genuinely a much better experience than going into a store. You order things, they show up at your door. If there is a problem Amazon refunds your money.

If the government should do anything its invest in a same-day/next-day shipping infrastructure that can be used by any business (say, via the post office or maybe a new package logistics agency).

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Amazon used to be a better experience. Now you can’t trust that the thing you ordered is what will actually be delivered. I was a prime customer for more than 15 years, but I cancelled this year because I no longer trust Amazon to deliver what I actually ordered, not some scammy knock off.

(I like your idea about USPS parcel service though :))

Also if you live in a city there's like a 15% chance your package up and takes a walk

Petty theft proliferates only because people are willing to let it.

I live in a city that is stereotyped with rusting factories and falling down houses. We don't really have a petty theft problem because there's still political will to not tolerate petty theft. The police resources to proactively go after it don't really exist but they come if called. The thieves here are really clumsy and tend to break ribs and get black eyes slipping on ice in June or falling down one stair so that tends to dissuade people from making a regular income stream out of it so you're just left with opportunistic theft. When the police do happen to catch a thief they prosecute.

> you can’t trust that the thing you ordered is what will actually be delivered

I see this all over HN, news articles, and reddit ... yet I've never experienced it. Nor has anyone in friend/family circle. I don't doubt it happens, but it makes me wonder what kind of purchase bubble I'm in that prevents such an observance. Is this more prevalent with certain types of goods?

My personal experience as well, but, y'know, plural of anecdote. The thought does cross me that maybe I just don't recognize it. Then, while it is unambiguously harmful to the genuine vendor, what is the consumer harm (assuming it is not just garbage, or like, toxic etc.)?

That being said, there is a lot of stuff on amazon I'm honestly surprised is worth the space it takes up in their warehouses. And I have knowingly bought some low-quality stuff on amazon. But perhaps with the critical caveat of knowingly, I have yet to have a counterfeit foisted upon me.

> what is the consumer harm

Fires from bootleg phone chargers and the like. (Google for "phone charger fire" to see how often this happens.)

Explosions from bootleg batteries.

Sickness from bootleg water filters and food.

What if you bought CO/ALR receptacles to bring a home with Aluminum wiring up to code, but the terminals weren't made from Indium?

What if you bought a marine battery for your sump pump backup, but it failed to perform and/or failed to notify you of its impending death?

I can continue from here, but I think you get the point.

It might not also be immediately obvious also, a SanDisk SD card bought fulfilled by Amazon might be a fake and just write a bit slow or die after a year. How many people would notice a fake?

I'm no fan of Amazon, but their no-hassle return policy really makes scammy items a non-issue. If you get the wrong thing, just send it back and get a refund.

Yeah, it sucks that you may have to go through this process one or more times, but at least it's there.

> If the government should do anything its invest in a same-day/next-day shipping infrastructure that can be used by any business (say, via the post office or maybe a new package logistics agency).

Trend for half a decade has been to push private companies to fill the gaps and why the rise of DHL etc a few decades back. For any goverment to go against that grain would be a very expensive nightmare, even without the social and buisness politics.

Besides, if any western goverment had a service that good, the push to break it up would be emence and that's even presuming that such a service could be run cost effective to make it appealing.

I'm struggling to think of any country that has anything comparable and drawing a blank. Though mindful that the costs of shipping from china, sure do seem to be a huge factor in helping buisness's operate there. I've had items that have shipped from China to the UK at a price in which would just cover the packaging and to ship the same item using the UK postal service, just across the road would of cost me more than the item and postage.

In many ways Amazon do open their services to others, though to do that you have to operate from their sales store and as we have seen with mobile app stores - you can drag things on for ages, even with blatant issues.

> There seems to be some selective amnesia about how great mom & pop businesses were.

This isn't about quality. It's about competition.

When Walmart or Amazon is an effective monopoly, even in a given region, they have massively outsized power to affect the way things are done there.

It doesn't matter if you're the best retailer in the world; that doesn't mean we, as a society do or should give you license to take over from every other retailer.

If the government should do anything its invest in a same-day/next-day shipping infrastructure that can be used by any business (say, via the post office or maybe a new package logistics agency).

We're already halfway there.

Where I lived until recently, Amazon rented/contracted to use USPS trucks for last mile deliveries after Postal Service hours.

It was always amusing to see one of those little USPS trucklings roll up to my house, stuffed with Amazon packages, late at night, on a Sunday, or on a Postal Service holiday.

This. As annoying Amazon can be sometimes, the customer experience is still among the top. Everything is as frictionless as possible; returns are usually a breeze. Even my last direct call, where seller used deceptive picture to sell me something was resolved within 15 minutes.

I search in vain a memory of mom and pop store, where I did not have to spend inordinate amount of time to resolve any issue.

Amazon was successful, because it filled a need that Bezos noticed that it could be better.

If find it funny how Aliexpress got so shitty in that regard over the years.

Heed my words. Aliexpress was faster, more pleasant experience back in 2010 than it is now, both as a website, and a service.

A lot of their features were copied almost 1-to-1 by Amazon, just for them to later be deleted on Aliexpress.

Most famous, being the inventoryless fulfilment (vs. inventory carrying fulfilment used at the time by Amazon.) They dropped it around 2013-2014 in most markets, and Amazons started rolling it out at around 2015.

You cannot trust the search results on Amazon. A sham great experience is not a great experience.

But it's the best sham experience there is! So frictionless!

I notice that everyone puts all product details in the title of their product because the filters are next to useless. It's like going into a supermarket where all of the products are now on one giant shelf and you have to manually search through the entire shelf because the store doesn't put any effort into putting them into effective aisles, or mandate that the sellers put them in the appropriate aisle.

I don't know why Amazon's filtering is like this - for comparison eBay, which seems less organised on the surface, has very granular filters inside categories. eg - searching for 'buttons' on eBa gives additional filters to narrow by colour, share, type , material, and application... Amazon offers 'works with Alexa' instead.

USPS is the only unreliable parcel provider in my location. UPS, DHL, and Fedex will deliver on time, every time, but apparently USPS just doesn't care enough and often causes my packages to be returned as undeliverable! It's literally impossible to switch even parcel delivery to a different delivery agent (even to pay more).

I'd rather see more competition here, not government-subsidized systematic elimination of all competition.

I do know someone who got Amazon to stop using usps for his account after they messed up too many times.

That said, in my area usps is great, but FedEx not so much.

Don't forget that Wal-Mart made its bones by marketing that everything in the store was "made in the USA." Most likely, in order to divert attention to the fact that they were killing Main Street. Now, I'm willing to bet that almost everything in the store is made overseas. They dropped that nonsense when they started achieving critical mass in the space.

Yes, Wal-Mart too started an Aliexpress like business. I bet, it's only a matter of time when the wall in between their online, and offline business will begin to disappear.

People drove an hour out of their way to Walmart because it was that much better. Not just the prices, but also selection

Sort of. People just shopped differently in those days. If your local stores didn't have what you wanted, you ordered from a catalog.

But the difference is that today, people don't bother checking their local stores first. They just go straight to Amazon and put their neighbors or of business.

Walmart was the pioneer of long term hassle free returns

Not really. High end department stores were doing it for generations. Six months later and no receipt? No problem. My mom used to do this all the time.

Walmart just brought it to the masses.

> and put their neighbors or of business

People aren't obligated to shop anywhere, and it isn't their fault if their neighbours' businesses aren't viable. You can't say the customers who have nothing to do with your business and no desire to go there are the ones who 'put you out of business'.

This is why Amazon is better for Main St than Walmart. A mens clothier on Main St gets shut down by Walmart. Owner and employees work at Walmart. With Amazon, they can become Amazon retailers. In theory at least.

It's better for Main Street if the money from the community is spent in the community and remains in the community, improving the community.

Buying from Amazon just shunts money to Seattle. Not everyone lives in Seattle.

> But the difference is that today, people don't bother checking their local stores first. They just go straight to Amazon and put their neighbours out of business.

Amazon didn't become dominant because of their low prices. They became dominant because they are the everything store. It's a single place to buy disparate items rather than needing to check out at seven different marginally-cheaper speciality shops.

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