Amazon, other retailers revamp 'free' shipping as costs soar | Hacker News Reader

Amazon, other retailers revamp 'free' shipping as costs soar

reuters.com

19 pointsmfiguiere13 comments

I don't understand the hate with Amazon.com. I thought in the 90's Amazon is what people dreamed of. Click a button and have something at your door in hours.

Anytime I would see I have to buy more stuff to get it sooner for free I would just buy things I needed for the house that I would otherwise spend two hours to get. Seemed like a win win to me.

>I thought in the 90's Amazon is what people dreamed of. Click a button and have something at your door in hours.

The problem is this only ever really worked for the people in the bigger cities. Half the time people who live in rural areas can't even get their prime items to come in less than a week. It's why I only ever take the free trials for the free shipping and cancel it immediately on arrival. And in the entire time I've been doing that the only time my items ever arrived within two days was when I specifically got a hold of Customer support and complained about it.

It sounds nice. It is definitely just a dream for many of us. Hours? LOL, I've never seen it happen in real life. Must be nice for those who can actually get it.

> I thought in the 90's Amazon is what people dreamed of. Click a button and have something at your door in hours.

Sure, but most people wanted that without the societal ramifications.

The same is true of AGI. And outsourcing. And dependence on oil.

We wax poetic about the good and leave it to people like Murray Bookchin to decry the bad.

My utter frustration is that there's regions that Amazon Prime literally won't ship anything sooner than a week out. I never am given next-day let alone 2-day shipping options anymore -- everything is 4 to 5 out at the fastest with no way to pay for even faster.

To add to the insult, they don't ship it for 3 of those 5 days, then it suddenly goes overnight on day 4 after the order.

This is even on Amazon's own products -- right now, I can't get a Kindle Oasis without it being delivered next Wednesday at the soonest. That seems a bit unfair to pay for Prime and get second-class service.

>I thought in the 90's

Ah, see that's your problem. It's 2023.

People also want an end to world hunger, but not if that requires killing people and feeding their ground corpses up as nutrient bars! That is: Amazon is useful, but also does a toooon of bad stuff, so people don't like it for that bad stuff.

It's Hacker News. You're not allowed to like things. Hey, I don't make the rules.

I’m not saying it’s right but secretly every time I return something to Amazon I feel better about myself. The heavier and bulkier the better I feel. Mind you, I don’t just buy crap to return. I draw an ethical line in the sand there but the faster the beast dies the better if you ask me. Amazons days are limited. All junk. Can’t find anything real, just cheap copies made by the same factory with different nonsense names, 4/10 of the purchases I make are obviously reused or previously opened. None of this is original, it’s a known issue but like I said, I feel great. Got some returns to make tomorrow!

Maybe you're bad at choosing

What kind of items are these? I have never once received something fake in all my years of heavy Amazon use.

If a product brand looks like DAFINJA, it’s a pretty good bet it’s cheap junk. So don’t buy that stuff? Amazon sucks at filtering this shit out though. I don’t want to have to scroll through pages of UTREVUY and MAIVIHP brands to find some hidden non-shit item.

Free shipping at $35 on Amazon Fresh always felt too good to be true in manhattan – it was way cheaper to get your groceries shipped in from their warehouses than to shop in the city itself

Honestly, reading that article makes it sound like Amazon will be the last one standing. They run the majority of their logistics themselves and are the only retailer, maybe save Walmart, that can attempt to find efficiencies rather than just pay what UPS/Fedex ask for.

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