The Amazon buttons were arguably wasteful, but kinda cool. I had a few mounted on the back of the cabinet door under my kitchen sink...
Out of garbage bags? Press the button. Out of dishwasher tabs? Press another button. Rinse aid? Same.
Out of garbage bags? Press the button. Out of dishwasher tabs? Press another button. Rinse aid? Same.
For me it's just a way to get 15% off stuff that isn't too time-sensitive. Running a little low, stock up. Same way people use Costco or similar if there's one convenient I suppose.
(Tangential, but would be great if you could subscribe on a price basis: send me two of these with my S&S order if the price is below £12.34 or whatever (and not otherwise).)
It reminds me of Uber's prebook a taxi, which (may have changed), doesn't prebook anything and if there aren't any ubers when you booked you are out of luck.
The trick is to go in and review the order before it’s due to ship (you get an email reminder) and cancel/substitute/defer any items you don’t need or that are priced too high.
Occasionally I’ve also noticed items that are showing out of stock on the product page, but they still managed to find stock for my S&S order.
It definitely doesn't 'take the lowest recent price', it doesn't even claim to, it gives you whatever discount (either 0/5 or 5/15 percent depending the product, and less/more than five items respectively) against the exact product listing and exact seller for that listing that you set it up against. I've cancelled/skipped them and ordered the same literal product (maybe a different listing) cheaper as a one-off order on numerous occasions. Nevermind all the ones I have set up that are basically just 'salt' or whatever and I don't care about the brand, the cheapest brand can vary a lot and if you're not careful you can end up subscribed to one that happens to go maliciously expensive.
The coffee I like isn’t available anywhere near me. And even if it was, it’s just one more thing to stay on top of because I damn sure don’t want to run out.
I go through it consistently enough that I just haven’t had to think about coffee in probably two years. Every once in a while I open my door and some has appeared and that’s exactly when I realize I was running low.
I don't use it for price, at least not wholly, but I do have to pay attention to it if I don't want a surprise ridiculous price. If that makes sense.
(Although I just noticed I said in top-level comment that it was just for price, heh. I suppose it's just a mix of things, and I've never really thought much about why I use it. Price can be nice, but definitely convenience too: the prompt to check if I do need more of whatever or can skip it, otherwise I would likely run out and only then order/go out to buy.)
Sure, but then you're losing out on "have the thing on hand at all times without having to think about it".
That basically defeats any advantage of a subscription. You might as well just have a bookmark calendar event that leads to the one-click purchase.
Sibling gave some other clear benefits, but I'd also add it's helpful just to have a basket prepared for you too. Imagine if you walked into the supermarket and someone offered you a basket of things you'd told them you often like to buy. Maybe you don't want them today, there could be all manner of reasons, but you might, it's still helpful.
I imagine they prioritized the short-term profits of a just-in-time middleman.
It IS a predictable problem. And they predicted it, and did something about it.
If you live in a super hot location you can’t always get stuff shipped year round.
I’d prefer that to dealing with the return and refund process.
Which.. yeah, would be cool, but I do think it's a level of analysis everyone who uses S&S is aware does not happen.
There are many stories stating that the driver never shows up, or shows up 15 minutes early and leaves charging you with a no-show fee.
I pre-booked a ride to get to the airport at 4AM, figuring prebooking is the best way to make sure I had availability. Driver accepted it at 9PM, was not awake at 4AM. The Lyft app made me call support to cancel the pre-book and get an on demand ride. I couldn't cancel even though my driver wasn't active.
I have a few from ~2016 that I was playing with a couple months ago. You have to block them from connecting to amazon servers... I got them working and started but didn't finish tying them into a local flask server.
Seems kind of redundant when you can just “hey Alexa, order garbage bags”.
They both came out approximately at the same time, 2014-2015.
Scrolling through functionality on wikipedia [0] almost makes it sound as though it doesn't even do that now. There's just a reference to a 2019 meeting about people not using it to order products.