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Comment by tomfakes | Hacker News Reader

I bought 2 things on Amazon this week, both with free 2 day shipping with Prime

Item 1 spent 13 hours on a UPS truck driving around my city and was delivered about 7pm in the evening 2 days after ordering.

Item 2 was delivered 14 hours after purchasing by Amazon Fresh at 9am.

For the same price of shipping, which service would you rather have?

EDIT To Add: The delivery guy for the 14 hour item works for Amazon - the whole experience was produced by Amazon without needing a third party. UPS is another company that will be in trouble if Amazon can make this scale.

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UPS could also benefit greatly if they play their bargaining game right and form a good partnership. Breaking into shipping is difficult, even for a company as large as Amazon.

It depends on how well I know the item. If it's a commodity where I've bought exactly the same thing before (Charmin Extra-Strong Toilet Paper), then price rules all. If it's a new item that I'm not sure what I need about it (chef knife, bar stool, etc.), then seeing the item in person helps determine which item I need.

I'm not sure if you've used Amazon's return system before, but it's absolutely immaculate. In my opinion, this is more an issue of perception than reality - in many ways it's easier to return things to Amazon than to your local store.

Except for the times they charge you $8 for return shipping on a $5 item.

Every time I've tried returning an item less than $20, they don't make me send the item back in. They just give me a refund and tell me to keep the item.

I've never been charged for return shipping. was this purchase an item sold _by_ amazon, not merely fulfilled by them (a la amazon marketplace)?

Yes. I gave a light bulb sitting in my garage unused because it was going to be $9 return shipping for a $14 light bulb.

Amazon charges you for return shipping (or obliges you to use your own shipping, e.g. USPS) depending on the reason you are returning an item. If you are returning it just because you decided you didn't want it, they don't pay to take it back.

That was my experience with some housewares stuff, about three weeks ago. I decided to take the item down to the Post Office to ship it back rather than using Amazon's label, because it was cheaper that way. (If I'd used the label, they would have deducted $8 or something out of the amount they were going to refund me eventually; USPS was something like $4-5.)

If amazon decides to built its own transportation organisation, yes. But such a thing would make most sense in metropolitan areas, in rural ones I'm not sure. Maybe here it's better to use the existing specialist. But then amazon built it's own top-notch distribution and warehousing infrastrucrure, so maybe I'm wrong.

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