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Liquid Communism posted:Third, their shipping has become crap. 'Two day' shipping on Prime has consistently been 'next week' for the last year, and most stuff shows up rattling around in too large boxes without padding. I ordered a cell phone off them and it showed up with the retail packaging but tossed into a box twice that size with nothing to fill the space. I can actually explain some of this, given I work in what is involved! (Also fixing this sort of thing.) Any package that comes directly from an Amazon inventory, IE technically it's Amazon directly, can get packaged by hand as per a shipping computer. This yells at them to put in it a "jiffy" slim package or a box or whatever have you based on various competing carrier costs and the value of the item. If someone orders dog food (ps gently caress you) then it'll say put that poo poo in the biggest box we got and it's going to the post office and so on. How much packing material someone actually puts into the box is up to the tired disaffected employee over there, meanwhile. On the flipside, though, anything that is outside of Amazon, ie a box that is then in an Amazon box, is just kinda chucked in there blindly. Hence re: the tea pot and that sort of thing. Or they're completely boxed up by the third party and if the package ever gets damaged for whatever reason is sent back to them, as opposed to simply being re-boxed real quick. AMZL is literally just Uber for packages, so you have a bunch of disaffected students and stuff who don't want to deal with people and that sort of thing stuffing satchels full of packages in their cars and shoving it wherever. They're pretty garbo given the lack of standards or even much of an overhead. Each of the facilities have very little overhead themselves, meanwhile, outside of the odd "corporate" visit or sweeping network-wide email to push some manner of standardization, so it's all very bizarrely cultured by individual buildings and even shifts in that building. It's kind of a mess, all told.
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Jan 16, 2018 05:48
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KingFisher posted:Do you have an actual complaint? My Amazon-specific complaint is that they will gladly put on a customer-friendly face while assfucking the individual suppliers (the smaller the better) selling through them, up to and including confiscation of income for rules / reasons not listed in the terms of service, terminating accounts with no warnings for, again, things not listed in the terms of service, and not releasing any financial or usage data to support their payouts through Kindle Select for authors who publish through them. Buying from them is largely a fantastic experience. Selling through them is like an online version of being a vendor through Wal-Mart, on the other hand. I've had this experience in both physical object sales and in digital sales, though the fuckery has been an order of magnitude worse on the digital side of things.
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Jan 16, 2018 06:01
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What kinda surprised me about the Amazon Logistics thing is that I recently tried to sign up for it just to see what they'd promise for payment, what they'd demand for vehicles, etc. Turned out that none of the application regions in the northeast (DC, Philly, New York, Boston) were open even though it was the middle of the holiday shopping and shopping season. And you'd think they'd need the most new drivers then.
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Jan 16, 2018 06:04
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Gamerofthegame posted:If someone orders dog food (ps gently caress you) Hey gently caress you!
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Jan 16, 2018 06:50
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I noticed that my package shipped with AMZL allowed me to track the driver down to the street and that made me sad I got my package before 10am tho 
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Jan 16, 2018 07:28
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None of the individual Amazon complaints listed seem to be anything worse then normal customer service stuff you would deal with from any other company. So yeah I'm still interested in someone explaining what exactly Amazon is doing that uniquely is so terrible. Also if such a terrible company like Amazon is ", murdering" retail well that just goes to show the other firms must be worse. Also all of the mentions of "Monopoly" are wildly off base. Amazon is only 4% of US retail sales and over half of that is 3P on the marketplace. Hardly a cause for concern. I mean sure they own ebooks, but they practically invented the category so that's not unexpected and is a miniscule portion of the overall business. As for AWS both Google and Microsoft and many others have public cloud offerings. Google and Microsoft are far more powerful in terms of the monopolies they control in OS and Search.
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Jan 16, 2018 08:26
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Magius1337est posted:would you honestly take stock options over a pension working for a company? I didn't mention retirement plans did I. I want employees to control the companies they work for by owning them. That means owning the stock. If those workers want a pension for retirement that's an entirely separate issue. So try again.
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Jan 16, 2018 08:28
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KingFisher posted:None of the individual Amazon complaints listed seem to be anything worse then normal customer service stuff you would deal with from any other company. Most of us remember what Amazon proceeded to do once they had control of the e-book market. Plus, the fear is not about retail in general, it is specifically e-commerce which Amazon is aggressively trying to control the market on. In 2015 they controlled 33%, in 2016 that number was 43% and it's going to keep like that as Amazon uses its AWS profits to aggressively expand online retailing.
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Jan 16, 2018 09:17
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MiddleOne posted:Most of us remember what Amazon proceeded to do once they had control of the e-book market. I'm glad someone attempted to whitewash Apple's violations of the Sherman anti-trust act
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Jan 16, 2018 12:48
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exploded mummy posted:I'm glad someone attempted to whitewash Apple's violations of the Sherman anti-trust act Two wrongs does not make one right. Apple & CO were colluding to set prices at an artificially high level but they were only doing so because Amazon was using it's market dominant position to restrict their ability to set prices at all. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 13:07
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If it results in lower prices for the consumer it's clearly working as intended 
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Jan 16, 2018 13:25
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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suck my woke dick posted:If it results in lower prices for the consumer it's clearly working as intended The whole debacle is arguably a case for nationalising e-book distribution.
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Jan 16, 2018 14:06
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MiddleOne posted:Most of us remember what Amazon proceeded to do once they had control of the e-book market. Amazon literally did nothing wrong there lmao. No one should ever shed tears over how those poor multibillion dollar media conglomerates couldn't charge 30 bucks for a dang ebook. You're one of those bootlicker scum who cried when Apple and Microsoft dragged digital album prices down around $10 in the mid 2000s I guess. Those poor record companies! Devalued media!  MiddleOne posted:The whole debacle is arguably a case for nationalising e-book distribution. Sure would be weird to put America in control of global ebook sales. fishmech fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 15:16
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fishmech posted:Sure would be weird to put America in control of global ebook sales. Unlike putting Jeff Bezos in control of it?
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Jan 16, 2018 15:29
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My Amazon story: I ordered a bottle of carpet cleaner gel and a book. They just threw them in the box together. My book about slimy Lovecraftian entities arrived covered in slime. Whatever, they replaced it. The worst thing about Amazon is that all their warehouse workers could not be dying of exhaustion like Nicaraguan sugarcane harvesters, and it wouldn't even cost Jeff Bezos his position as the richest person alive.
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Jan 16, 2018 15:30
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Yes, but the poor panhandling shareholders! They have to put food on the table that just coincidentally happens to be made out of solid gold, where’s your heart?
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Jan 16, 2018 15:42
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Gamerofthegame posted:If someone orders dog food (ps gently caress you) then it'll say put that poo poo in the biggest box we got and it's going to the post office and so on. But...I wasn't the one who arranged to have it sold from my business. As long as Amazon still offers it, I'm going to keep ordering it.
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Jan 16, 2018 17:55
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Halloween Jack posted:The worst thing about Amazon is that all their warehouse workers could not be dying of exhaustion like Nicaraguan sugarcane harvesters, and it wouldn't even cost Jeff Bezos his position as the richest person alive. This is the thing with Amazon and an even bigger version of what I was getting at in my earlier post. Amazon is great if you're a customer. Their presence being completely online allows customers to turn a blind eye to all the nasty poo poo they do in the background, because you never have to see the low-wage employees or find out how the proverbial sausage is made. They are not a good company. They're just a dangerously profitable one. 
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Jan 16, 2018 18:56
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Well, it's a vicious circle for the consumer. Companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart work to destroy the freedom of ordinary people, then offer us goods at prices we can afford to buy in our debilitated state.
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Jan 16, 2018 19:01
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Unlike walmart amazon gives benefits to its hourly workers and stock
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Jan 16, 2018 19:26
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so my options are working at a retail store for minimum wage and no benefits, or working at amazon for benefits and stock and $12.35
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Jan 16, 2018 19:40
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MiddleOne posted:Unlike putting Jeff Bezos in control of it? "Jeff Bezos" controls about 40% of global English-language ebook sales (doubtless less of a percentage when you start including other languages) and about 80% of US ebook sales. I'd say handing 100% control of all of that globally to the US government would be a pretty bad idea! There's also a bit of confusion in the numbers since New Zealand doesn't actually have a regional Amazon storefront and as such Amazon Kindle sales to them add onto the US numbers mostly when they don't add onto the Australian numbers, but that's only a negligible amount of sales considering how small NZ is.
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Jan 16, 2018 19:45
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Magius1337est posted:so my options are working at a retail store for minimum wage and no benefits, or working at amazon for benefits and stock and $12.35 For two-three years, then they push you out the door. They, like the vast majority of warehouse/light industrial low-skill employers, have a strongly vested interest in having high turn-over. If it only takes a week to learn the job, almost anybody can do it, and why have long term employees who might start agitating for higher wages? Around my area, almost everyone at that level is in a constant rotation between employers. Not because they are bad workers, but because the companies find ways to make it difficult to continue after awhile. So people hop to something that pays almost the same with less hours, or has more overtime but gives marginal benefits, etc. ryonguy fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 23:48
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Halloween Jack posted:Well, it's a vicious circle for the consumer. Companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart work to destroy the freedom of ordinary people, then offer us goods at prices we can afford to buy in our debilitated state. How do large retailers like Amazon or Walmart take your freedom away? You are perfectly free to spend your money as you see fit at other businesses. This thread is filled with absurd hyperbole. Give me one specific way your "freedom" has been taken away.
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Jan 17, 2018 05:52
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lol we got a libertarian here
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Jan 17, 2018 07:26
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even a lot of libertarians dont shill for megacorps w/o much cognitive dissonance
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Jan 17, 2018 07:27
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KingFisher posted:How do large retailers like Amazon or Walmart take your freedom away? Interpret the guy's post as talking about their impact on the US labor market and worker rights. He's not talking about your freedom to shop.
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Jan 17, 2018 08:23
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KingFisher posted:How do large retailers like Amazon or Walmart take your freedom away? Are you a libertarian shill, or just so ignorant that you are incapable of understanding how Walmart's model has destroyed most of their competition and is being seen as an ideal to copy by other large retailers? Even working for a company that is a supplier to Walmart is a special hell, because much of their competitive advantage is based on being big enough to dictate terms to their suppliers that are absurdly in Walmart's favor.
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Jan 17, 2018 08:46
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Sundae posted:Interpret the guy's post as talking about their impact on the US labor market and worker rights. He's not talking about your freedom to shop. So paying 1/3rd more than average retail wages, stock, benefits, employee education programs. Looks like if every retail job was replaced with an Amazon warehouse job, millions of people would be better off financially. Last time I checked people working in retail weren't in unions either, and it is way easier to unionize an entire Warehouse or all of a single firms warehouses then you know one Old Navy store at a time. So I'm still not buying it.
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Jan 17, 2018 08:50
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Amazon can literally shut down an entire warehouse that attempts to unionise and re-open it nearby with all new staff. I wouldn't be surprised if they did exactly that the first time someone tries.
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Jan 17, 2018 14:47
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KingFisher posted:So paying 1/3rd more than average retail wages, stock, benefits, employee education programs. Again, for three year or less, then they "encourage" you to find other employment. And a significant percentage of their staff is through employment agencies which get none of the things you mentioned.. They have very high turnover, and can maintain that easily. Like I said, all warehouse/light industrial is like this. They thrive on having new employees/low wages. You don't really know what you are talking about, and are regurgitating easily dis-proven libertarian bullshit.
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Jan 17, 2018 16:06
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KingFisher posted:How do large retailers like Amazon or Walmart take your freedom away? Just as one argument that should appeal to libertarians: Large retailers like Amazon and Wal-Mart deliberately pay starvation-level wages because they know they can get away with it due to the existence of the food stamp program and Section 8 housing subsidies. In effect, your tax dollars are being taken to subsidize Wal-Mart's low wages. Because food stamp programs exist, Wal-Mart gets away with paying their workers less than those workers need to stay alive. this is why we need a raise in the minimum wage
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Jan 17, 2018 16:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just as one argument that should appeal to libertarians: Of course, conservatives and lolbertarians insist this is the reason we need to do away with assistance programs instead. As usual they are somewhat correct but burning the candle at the wrong end. They see the problem and think that removing the bandaid will stop the bleeding. They refuse to admit that maybe we should stop cutting the patient instead.
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Jan 17, 2018 17:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just as one argument that should appeal to libertarians: I just last night read this exact tidbit in Robert Reich's 'Saving Capitalism' book. His example was the $6 billion in Food Stamp costs that have gone only to workers in the fast food industry as a direct subsidy to their profit line as corporate welfare. Funnily enough I used the example this morning to an acquaintance who is normally pretty obstinate about this kind of stuff, and I think he actually absorbed it. If you(non-specific you) are not in the 'full communism now' camp I definitely recommend the book. It's really well written, and offers tons of compelling explanations as to what caused the shitstorm we are in.
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Jan 17, 2018 17:06
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KingFisher posted:So paying 1/3rd more than average retail wages, stock, benefits, employee education programs. your company can’t seem to stop killing people by working them to death in their warehouses you corporate stooge i did retail for 9 years of my life and would never ever step foot into an amazon warehouse
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Jan 17, 2018 17:09
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MiddleOne posted:The whole debacle is arguably a case for nationalising e-book distribution. That is what publishers want because they know they can steamroll the gov when they want to. Publishers are the problem in the publishing industry, not Amazon. Publishers take something like 65-80% of revenue and do nothing but circle jerk over "GUARDIANS OF CULTURE" with the money. There is a reason why the best paid authors on the planet are people self publishing through Amazon. Amazon gives them 70% of revenue. Traditional publishers usually pay less then 5%. Publishers are terrified that their business model of loving consumers and authors and making bank doing it is coming to an end.
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Jan 17, 2018 17:12
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the best paid authors on amazon also do nothing but spam terrible porn and romance novels using loopholes within amazon's algorithms to maximize views and profits both models are broke as poo poo
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Jan 17, 2018 17:16
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Traditional publishers also make it really hard to get published. They don't pick up new authors easily. Somebody a traditional publisher won't take can, write, publish on amazon and do decently.
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Jan 17, 2018 17:17
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Pounded in the Butt by the Hunky Disfuctional Reality of Amazon Disrupting the Traditional Publisher Business Model
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Jan 17, 2018 17:17
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Xae posted:That is what publishers want because they know they can steamroll the gov when they want to. I think that has change dramatically as well. The poster Sundae has a sideline of publishing short stories (erotica?) on Amazon, and he has bitched massively about how Amazon has changed the ebook revenue models.
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Jan 17, 2018 17:27
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