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Comment by DataDive | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the Amazon bashing. My experience is nothing like that:

Kitchen scale, $20 bucks, looks and operates exactly as described; three years later, it still works fine.

Bed sheets, $16, two days later delivered, better than I thought - at least for the price that is. Best price/quality ratio I could get.

If I don't like something, returning is super convenient; I drop it off at Kohl's over the weekend. Time and again I am stupefied of how is it possible that in small town USA, I can get something shipped by next day while paying a one time yearly fee.

I think Amazon is the best online shopping experience on the planet.

At the employee side, the minimum pay at Amazon is $20 per hour. Walmart is $14, AliExpress ... we can be only guessing at that

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> I think Amazon is the best online shopping experience on the planet.

Be careful there. I use Allegro in Poland, where next-day is the rule, their website doesn't scream it was made in the late '00s (in the worst meaning of this comparison), and, as a bonus, they don't compete with their own merchants and even happen to pay their taxes here fairly. I'm sure there's plenty more of such websites across the 'planet'.

I expected the site to look good after all that shit talking, but it just looks like china-slop sites like shein and Alibaba. And it has all the exact same mechanics as amazon. I had to scroll the entire page to stop seeing sponsored products.

Amazon pays $20/hour because most people don't have the mental constitution to put up with it. It's pretty dull.

When I was hired as a part-timer (no interview!) at a warehouse there were about a dozen of us. In a month maybe four were left. It wasn't terribly physically difficult, though I was fairly sore. But there was nothing good about the work.

It was just repetitive, isolated tasks where you have to consciously decide not to meet the unrealistic standard, or just blindly follow the orders on the device, or guess how fast to work to avoid a strain injury while not being obviously slow.

To give some examples, we'd take bags (totes) from specific locations as indicated on our device, pack them on a large push-cart, and shuttle them halfway across the warehouse. Or we'd pick packages for a specific location off a conveyer belt (which usually moved too fast). Or we'd spend 5+ hours, alone, unfolding bags and putting them back onto the shelves.

There's probably some analogy to be made with software development here, based on what I've heard, but I'm only a CS student.

> Amazon pays $20/hour because most people don't have the mental constitution to put up with it. It's pretty dull.

And Walmart gets away with $14 because Walmart is intellectually stimulating?

The covid lockdowns started my senior year in high school, so I ended up working at an Amazon distribution center and Walmart my restaurant job also laid me off.

Sure both sucked, but an Amazon warehouse is much more dull. It is truly mind numbing work, the only enjoyable aspect was seeing how many sex toys people bought when they were stuck at home. It's noisy, hot, and you do the same task for your entire shift. You could not wear headphones or listen to music. You are micromanaged to a degree I have never seen before like timing your bathroom breaks. They even had thermal cameras at the entrance to see if you were hiding any stolen product under your clothes, and insisted they were for detecting employees coming to work with a fever.

Walmart was a relaxing experience by comparison.

You’ll have a distinctly different experience buying clothes on there. 95% of the items don’t fit as described, the fabrics are not as pictured. My wife has a whole box of clothing returns she has to do for some shopping she did before a trip. Almost none of it was as-advertised. And Amazon will “lose” at least two or three items and claw back the refund a few times like they have every year, necessitating she call once a month for 3 or 4 months until she gets someone empowered to fix the problem permanently.

Sadly it’s still a better experience for her than shopping in-person because at least 5% of the items do fit versus nothing in-store. You used to be able to alter that stuff but the cheapness of the fabric and the intricacy of the “on-trend” design makes that impossible these days.

> I think Amazon is the best online shopping experience on the planet.

Does the best online shopping experience on the planet normally include routinely shortchanging customers on their refunds for close to $1bn?

https://finance.yahoo.com/personal-finance/banking/article/d...

I have the exact opposite experience.

I returned two products, got two different return codes, was supposed to send each back separately.

During the return (it was a Kohl's return), I forgot about the two different codes and gave both items to the clerk, who then packaged both items with only one code.

I got credited for the first item a few hours later. At that point, I realized my mistake of packaging both in the same return, but thought it was a lost case and chalked it up as a loss.

Imagine my surprise when, a few weeks (!) later , I got credited for the second return as well. How did they figure that one out? I don't know.

The most amazing customer service, where I did not even have to mention it and the error was still rectified.

I’m not a fan of Amazon either, but you keep spamming that link. The law suit is clearly about mistakes in the return process over 9 years claiming to account for 600 million dollars in returns. Amazon does 600 billion a year in revenue. So 600 million over 9 years is a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Hope that helps.

Really Lowes and Home Depot have been doing better imo for anything they have. Their website actually has filters and decent search and most stuff is free next day delivery. On top of that, the Chinese knockoffs are fairly minimal or at least more established knock-off brands.

On top of that, that's without a $150/yr subscription.

Costco and Chewy are also pretty good.

> Kitchen scale, $20 bucks

The problem is thats it is a 2 dollar product that could be sold and fulfilled by some other seller for 10 but you cant do that because Amazon's pricing scheme.

Shop around and you are likely see the same product with a different "name" on it for 1/2 the price.

definitely not a $2 product, it is big, glass surface, heavy etc.

That "shopping around" for with price being the sole factor is the problem. That's what drives quality down. Not the Amazon markup.

> the minimum pay at Amazon is $20

The same way Uber Eats pay is 22$ an hour, and yet most people working either of these gigs need food stamps to live?

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