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Comment by w0z_ | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting problem.

If FedEx's platform can't promise 1 or 2-day delivery, it will never take off.

On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery. Amazon does seem to absolutely bleed their workforce to keep up, but also push more absolute junk through their platform now.

Costco is in kind of a prime position to offer quality-tested products with 1-2 day delivery... but they just do not care to offer this "Prime" type of service. Costco is still quick, just not as quick, and their website / app is trash to use compared to Amazon.

One honest competitor I see rising up - Home Depot. They are making incredible moves in this space (in terms of web/app UI/UX and expedited deliverable date).

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> Costco is still quick, just not as quick, and their website / app is trash to use compared to Amazon.

Really? I feel like Amazon is always trying to trick me into a) signing up for prime, b) buying sponsored products, c) buying cheap Chinese junk or d) buying stuff in the wrong currency and getting hit with unfavourable foreign exchange rates.

Whereas the Costco website just works.

The Home Depot website is also a pile of junk. Just yesterday I probably spent 5x longer on the Home Depot site than on a competitor’s (Canadian Tire) website because of the jankiness of filtering for an extension cord. If you search for something with a lot of results (e.g. light fixtures) the result set is basically unusable because of poor filtering functionality. A few months ago the entire search functionality broke because of some ad domain that I was blocking. They harvest emails that you punch in for email receipts at checkout for marketing purposes. etc. etc.

> They harvest emails that you punch in for email receipts at checkout for marketing purposes. etc. etc.

Really? I've been using a unique email (i.e. homedepot@my.domain) at checkout for the last 2 years and haven't received any emails at that inbox except for my receipts.

TBF they may have stopped - I do the same thing with unique emails, and just checked my email history - I actually wrote to Home Depot's privacy line in January 2021 to complain about that practice, and AFAIK haven't noticed any of their marketing emails since. (Though I had manually unsubscribed as well.)

I don't really think 1-2 day delivery matters. I live in a major metropolitan area with 3 amazon distribution centers within 25 miles of me, yet with Amazon prime my orders took 3-4 days to be delivered. I canceled prime a year ago, and now my orders take 5-6 days.

Products from Amazon can no longer be trusted, So I only order things from Amazon for a few reasons...

1. I can't find it locally, or purchase it from a trusted online seller. 2. It is something I might need to return (Amazon's returns are easy). 3. I want something cheap because I'm only going to use the product once.

So my experience is that only 1 out of about 1000 times have my deliveries taken more than next day when it says next day, and almost everything I order has a next day option. So is this a locality issue, or just two competing anecdotes, and if its anecdotes then what is the actual statistical reality.

Amazon delivery estimates have been extremely accurate for me, in both Austin, TX and Portland, OR. Both places I was within 20 miles of a distribution center. We moved to Portland in early 2021 and it was a bit rough for like 6 months but it got sorted. They had some issues with their drivers apparently but I forgot about it until just now, since it’s been a non-issue. Lots of the deliveries come in electric rivians direct from Amazon. Occasionally a 3rd party person in their own car will deliver, and occasionally UPS will.

I can order most things before 10pm and get it by the next morning. Metro Detroit.

I canceled my prime over a year ago, so my deliveries taking 3-4 days was likely during and shortly after covid. Which certainly could have had an affect. I understand that staffing and inventory was difficult during that time.

So I would not be surprised if prime delivery is back to 1-2 days now.

But, I still have no desire to purchase prime again. All it did was encourage me to buy things I really didn't need. Simply being able to buy almost anything at any time is not healthy for me.

When it's 11pm and I suddenly have a desire to start a new hobby and buy a bunch of products to support it, I can no longer fill my Amazon shopping cart and click buy. The added friction of having to wait until stores open the next day means I completely forget about it before I waste my money.

Amazon went all in like google in selling ads for their search function. It has made their site junk. You even search foe a specific product brand + model & you get Chinese backend firms with nonsensical English names. Yechhh.

Someone needs to build a front end that drills down through the ad cruft to reach the products you want.

Or offer a prime plus that doesn’t have search ads.

It is an awful experience.

their "featured" default setting is such garbage most of the time.

> Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery

I’ve seen this claimed a few times lately here on HN but it hasn’t been my experience at all. Is there any data out there to support this claim?

I doubt you'll find anything other than anecdotes, as only Amazon has the actual data in aggregate.

They'll often promise me today or tomorrow and deliver 4-20 days later in some extreme cases.

It really depends where you live. My brother lives close to an Amazon distribution center and often gets orders same day.

I quit Amazon years ago but my wife still uses it, seems like most things take 2-3 days.

I live in the Bay Area in a pretty commonly known city. Frequently the product listing on Amazon says eligible for 2-day or 1-day Prime Delivery. Many times despite doing that it takes 3-4 days or longer.

yeah, in a major metro area, I get most packages next or same day for free pretty consistently.

Pre-COVID it was 2-3 days. Now it's been years since I've gotten anything in less than 7, although lately it's been closer to 10. That's with a paid prime membership, too. There's not even options to purchase extra fast shipping anymore. I used to be able to pay for 1 day and get it in 3-4 at least, but they took that option away.

Walmart has next day, and most 1st party e-stores are 2-3 days, so it really just seems like an Amazon problem. (Montana)

Curious, does your town/area have an airport?

During Covid in Bozeman, I spent too much time tracking inbound packages. With I-90 going through town, most quick-shipping packages either came in via truck from Billings (after the air freight to get it there) or direct on the morning Fedex feeder flight arriving to the airport at 8:15am.

Yes, there is an airport. Not sure how Amazon gets things though.

At one point, outbound through USPS in Billings was a delay of 2-3 weeks, during COVID.

> Is there any data out there to support this claim?

What are you imagining?

The people reporting falsified shipping times on HN are the data you're asking for. I can personally confirm - Amazon "guarantees" two-day shipping for Prime orders, but it will not actually provide two-day shipping, and if you complain their only response is "Well, it got there eventually. What's wrong?"

After enough time where they systematically refused to honor their own purported benefits, I canceled my Prime membership.

> The people reporting falsified shipping times on HN are the data you're asking for

At best they’re an extremely biased sample. More realistically, they’re just anecdotes.

What are you talking about, how am I biased? I use Amazon weekly to purchase things. The quality of products has gone extremely down hill and shipping is not as efficient as it once was. This is my own personal experience I'm relaying. Why would I even bother to say it if I didn't find it true for myself?

Well, obviously, it hasn't actually happened unless a third party has formally counted how often you've complained about it.

Costco is too busy killing it selling gold bars to take notice probably lol

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/16/business/costco-gold-bars...

https://www.costco.com/1-oz-gold-bar-pamp-suisse-lady-fortun...

> Costco is too busy killing it selling gold bars to take notice probably

This doesn't make any sense. The market for gold bars is tiny. At some point, there's nothing you can do to sell more of them.

Costco has the manpower to do more than sell gold bars.

Were those changes recent? A family member of mine once spent several hours shopping on Home Depot, asked for my help checking out. I quickly realized why shopping took them so long: every UI action blocked for 35-40 seconds. Poor soul cared about chipping in and was suffering sunk cost fallacy, but I had to explain that, while I really appreciated the amount of time they'd put into their cart, I simply could not spare the time to carry it over the finish line-- but I was happy to help them screenshot their picks and assemble+purchase a new cart on Lowes in half the time it would have takes us to get through checkout on HD. They'd probably been at in for six hours, starting well before I got home. This was on a core duo with ZorinOS (based on Ubuntu 22.04??) Firefox ~119, maybe ublock origin(?) and partly user error (nieve tolerance), but t's soured by opinion:

https://youtu.be/uO5A8bdDd7Y

Home Depot really need to do more improvement of their technology. I always go into the store expecting to buy one thing and I waste so much time trying to find one of their idiots that knows enough to help me find what I am looking for. I tried relying completely on their website and app to find the exact aisle and bucket the item is located in and their new "in store experience" app is constantly crashing and locking up on my iPhone or the item has "walked away" and is not where the app tells me where it should be. I dont really think they are truly a data and tech driven organization. It seems like they are trying to bolt it onto existing legacy.

EDIT: oh yeah the filtering is horrendous as pointed out in other comments here. Its not walmart level bad but its close.

Do people really care about 1-2 day delivery in most cases? Although I can see how this can be a double whammy - I generally care about 1-2 day delivery for certain non-obscure items that I just need now, like protein powder or a screwdriver... items that are easy to cover. On the other hand, I don't care about 2-day delivery for all kinds of obscure items like old books, climbing gear, or one single side table out of 100 that happens to fit perfectly into my space; the kind of items for which the breadth of selection is hard to achieve. So low coverage, slow delivery would be a bummer. I wonder if that's how people generally treat 2-day delivery, or is everyone much more impatient than myself? :)

> Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery.

... if you live in a big city.

I'm pretty rural, there's a city of about 6000 nearby, two cities in the 20-50k population range within an hour, and Amazon Prime takes 5-7 days to deliver here.

(Without Prime, Amazon seems to retaliate by switching from UPS to USPS, which means that on top of a 1-week delay I typically need to go to the post office to pick up the package.)

Other sellers using seem able to do 2-day shipping here when they want to, so it sure sounds like cost savings at Amazon.

FedEx/UPS + Costco + Home Depot is a fascinating anti-Amazon.

Unfortunately, Home Depot probably wouldn't be interested. They're doing their thing, have their own extremely efficient behind-the-scenes logistics system, and largely specialize in markets that Amazon isn't interested in. (Some consumer overlap, but Home Depot's bread and butter is non-consumer stuff)

Costco... what would be in it for them? Do they want to move more items / have more members? I guess so? Not sure if they're volume constrained and what their logistics flows look like.

But store-picked + shipper-delivered seems interesting. Costco assembles orders overnight, then truck stops by in morning on way to deliveries and loads. Customers get next day delivery within range of a Costco.

How about Walmart? At least to me, that seems like the true Amazon competitor in the US. Unrivaled physical footprint, strong logistics, and a growing online presence.

Walmart is having issues lately where folks login after a while away or setup a new account, and the account holder finds that there are credit cards already added to a seemingly new or disused account.

https://twitter.com/seclilc/status/1746207647865405528

Walmart has the same shitty chinese crap dropshippers, but also has incorrect stock info and less reliable shipping / logistics. So it's a more discombobulated and less return-friendly version of amazon.

When I order from home Depot online, I end up getting 3 packages from 3 different stores (when they are common items in stock at all stores) and 1 of the 3, is always days later than the estimate.

Home Depot essentially runs a virtual logstics backend out of a surprisingly lean footprint.

Whereas Amazon has a huge warehouse / fulfillment footprint, Home Depot uses stores + a few (2?) online-specific fulfilment warehouses.

The benefit of that system has been really efficient storage costs. The limitation has been multi-item (especially rarer) pulling from multiple stores (because each only has a few pieces).

At a high level, Home Depot's logistics goal is zero warehoused inventory. Either something is (a) on a ship, (b) in transit to a store, or (c) in a store.

Im flabbergasted, how do they have such a poor shopping experience yet have this (supposedly) really fancy backend?

Amazon built its logistics from the ground-up for online fulfillment.

Home Depot has been around since 1978.

Retooling a brick and mortar logistics system into a flow-through, multi-channel one isn't simple, cheap, or easy. But they've been working on it since ~2010(?).

Suffice to say... looking at retail is like looking at the tip of an iceberg. Most of the company (the logistics), you never see.

Isn't home depot website absolutely terrible?

Not uniformly, but product search is abysmal. Try searching for HomeKit-compatible light switches.

https://www.homedepot.com/s/HomeKit-compatible%20light%20swi...

Ok, I see a bunch of HomeKit compatible light switches with that search phrase. What's the issue?

Ironically, I seem to have phrased my example in a way that works better with their search algorithm.

Try the slightly more terse "HomeKit light switch": https://www.homedepot.com/b/Electrical-Wiring-Devices-Light-...

After a confusing "new in..." section mixing relevant and irrelevant results, the top three results are all non-smart switches, with only the first sponsored result actually matching the query. The next four results are all non-smart switches, with a mix of relevant and irrelevant results after that, with more HomeKit-compatible products buried multiple pages deep.

That's true but there is a filter on the left, "Works With"

"[] Google Assistant, [] Alexa, [] Apple HomeKit, ..."

As an european (Spanish) is very suprising to read than in the US it takes up to 2-4 days to deliver for Amazon.

Here, even in a remote village, normally it's 1 day, and if you live in the big cities you can even have the "same day" delivery.

Also a side note, but I have been reading a lot of people complaining about fake stuff on Amazon, and I feel that it's also a problem that we don't experience here, at least, not at that level to be noticeable.

Im talking about Amazon Spain of course.

I would be interested to see any data on how much the 1-2 day delivery promise drives customer purchases from Amazon? Personally, the thing that matters much more is the breadth of the offering. I would buy much more from Costco if they carried the stuff that I want. It would not matter to me if it took a day or two (or three) longer to get it as I don't really buy stuff that I need right now online.

> One honest competitor I see rising up - Home Depot

I'd like to add Walmart, too.

The article mentions that FedEx acquired Shoprunner which was like Prime for AMEX holders for a while, it offered a personal 2-day delivery and free returns on many retailers.

they can if they can say promise 3-4 days and it doesn't cost $170 a year, probably soon to be $200

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