
I thought the Amazon store was a terrible idea, then went there - curtis
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/7/9687852/i-thought-the-amazon-store-was-a-terrible-idea-then-i-actually-went
======
TeMPOraL
Good article, even if personally I didn't read anything in it about the store
I didn't expect. A thing that jumped on me:

> _It didn 't even seem weird when I snapped photos for this story on my
> phone_

So why every single photo is labelled as "Stephen Brashear/Getty Images",
while the TFA itself was apparently written by Sarah Kliff?

ETA:

Also,

> _My favorite version of this interaction was between a middle-aged woman and
> a sales associate. He explained that the particular book she asked about
> wasn 't available, but he could order it to the store for her. This felt
> absurd, given that Amazon offers free home shipping to everyone on orders of
> $35 or more, and to Prime members for all orders._

There are many reasons for that scene to not be in fact absurd. For instance,
they may try to preserve the brick&mortar store. Maybe the woman didn't have
(and didn't want) an Amazon account. Maybe she didn't have an address here or
it was more convenient for her to pick it up from the shop or on her way to
somewhere.

~~~
saalweachter
There _are_ over half a million homeless in the US.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes. And many don't look like stereotypical homeless and have enough wealth to
buy books. Thank you, I forgot about that explanation too.

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dkarapetyan
This is like salt on the wound isn't it? First they undercut everyone and
drive 'em out of business then they open up a shop of their own. The only
thing worse would be if they opened it at the same site as a bankrupt B&N
store.

~~~
hvs
Salt in who's wound, though? The bookstores that were charging us more for
books? Not sure how cheaper books is bad for the consumer.

~~~
bezet
This makes me sad. The quintessential consumeristic, capitalist worldview,
missing the point entirely.

Of course Amazon can offer cheaper products. They have grown to be a massive
company, nobody can compete with them now and they make a massive profit that
goes to the company owners.

Ignore the consumer. What about the bookstore owners who used to make a living
and had to close their business because a bigger company basically put them
out of business? People who might have worked generations there, perhaps even
had family run businesses. Previously the income/wealth would go to many
bookstore owners, now it goes to one entity - Amazon. If you don't see a
problem in this simply because "hey, I get cheaper stuff, that must be good
right?", then I am quite sad.

Not everything that is good for the consumer is good everyone on the way.
Please remember that.

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sharkweek
I live pretty close to UVillage so I swung by on Friday last week.

It was honestly a great experience, and I think my initial gut feeling was
that I wanted to try and hate it. But all the books are on sale for the same
price as they are on the website, and there's still something pretty awesome
about being able to flip through a book before buying it.

One funny anecdote - My wife and I overheard one person kind of scoffing at
the whole thing while wandering in the store, "Pfft... these idiots, why pay
full price here when you can just order it from their website..." Despite the
fact that as you walk in there was a big orange sign "All prices the same as
amazon.com"

------
bch
I went there and the most jarring things to me were:

1) they don't take cash

2) when I swiped my card, my email address and amazon info was
instantly/automatically linked w/ this transaction.

re: 2 -- we all know this sort of linking is possible, but I'd never
experienced it like that. Jarring.

~~~
derefr
You've never bought something (a second time) from a merchant using Square?
The first time you use a Square checkout, Square asks for your email address,
and creates a bidirectional {email, CCN} index. The second time, they just
look up the email from the card you swiped and send your receipt
automatically.

~~~
bch
Never experienced that, no. I guess I haven't bought anything twice from
Square. I think that in places where Square might be used (that I'd be (food
truck perhaps?)) I'm much more likely to go to cash as a first pay method.
Amazon isn't the first place I've been that cash wasn't accepted (only the
second I can recall off the top of my head, though), but I think it's
supremely odd that I can't use legal tender to buy things. When a till can't
break a $50 or $100 bill, that's understandable, but when a business refuses
to deal with cash currency at all... well that's strange to me.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This is a trend that slowly starts showing up around the world. In Oslo, they
still tend to accept cash in shops, but they look at you weirdly. It's
understandable - well-designed contactless card payment process is faster than
cash, not to mention more hygienic.

(OTOH it can shut a store down if the Internet Connectivity Gods are in a bad
mood that day.)

------
hartator
> It's a curated collection of items available for immediate purchase. If that
> doesn't sound revolutionary, it's because it isn't! It's how stores have
> worked for decades now.

Saying "decades" seems pretty inaccurate. We rather speak about millenniums.

------
serge2k
> I couldn't have ordered the headphones or the book in time for my flight
> tomorrow morning

Prime now, although perhaps not for that specific book (they definitely have
the headphones though)

~~~
RyJones
Prime fresh, too, if you can wait slightly longer than now. My orders usually
show up between 0400 and 0600 as long as I order before midnight.

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theDoug
This is a front to eventually sell Amazon hardware and be entrenched in an
area wealthy and near both an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store.

~~~
chambo622
They're already selling Kindle and Fire devices in the store from what it
looks like (presumably Echo as well).

~~~
bch
All the Kindle devices (which I'd say might be the highlight of going to the
store -- if you've ever wondered what form factor / features you wanted, and
were a bit timid from _guessing_ and buying online -- drop by the store and
find out first-hand), and the Echo device (dimming lights as a show of
strength to an entertained audience), and some other things like headphones
and AmazonBasics bluetooth speakers...

------
thefastlane
> I don't expect a wave of [Amazon bookstores] popping up across the country,
> mostly because of how other large bookstore chains have shuttered in recent
> years. At the same time, now I can at least imagine a world in which they
> might work

> If there's a case for an Amazon bookstore, it's really the case for any
> other store in the mall: It will always (or at least the foreseeable future)
> be faster to buy something in person than it will be on the internet.

i shop at independent bookstores whenever possible, and it's not because it's
'faster'.

this essay sidesteps several elephants in the room...

~~~
__david__
What are your reasons, then? Of which elephants do you speak?

~~~
thefastlane
for one thing, i know that a local bookstore will never punish writers by,
say, yanking all Hachette titles off their shelves in a vindictive,
monopolistic fit.

like others have said: Amazon has been a big reason why other bookstores are
going out of business, and we are culturally poorer for it. bookstores are
about culture, not speed. and it's also about who drives culture:
neighborhoods and curators? or a neoliberal megacorporation that holds authors
and publishers in disdain?

~~~
Ollinson
I'd rather have a corporate bookstore than an independent one. My personal
experience with independent bookstores is that they're usually biased about
their stock and can be even more vindictive against authors they don't like.

It doesn't help that most bookstore owners I have met (maybe half a dozen) are
aggressively opinionated about what books are "worthy."

~~~
eropple
Is that a negative, when there's another one down the street? I like people
with opinions, when there's more than one to sample from. That Amazon has
effectively destroyed the idea of a bookstore as a curator, without really
replacing it, is still troubling to me (and random curators online don't have
the same investment--that is to say, a financial one--in providing something
worth considering).

------
borkt
I'm tired of seeing this headline structure. So overplayed.

[http://www.powerwriting.com/caples.html](http://www.powerwriting.com/caples.html)

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petra
I wonder if this is just a temporary phase in the store format ,and the next
format will include an on-demand book printing machine and some nice way have
the shopping experience around it ?

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bookmarkacc
I dislike that the author went in ready to "write a takedown". Dissuaded me
from taking the authors opinions very seriously. (Is that ironic?)

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bratsche
Maybe I've been under a rock recently, but this is the first I've read of an
Amazon brick-and-mortar store.

~~~
pnt12
I think it opened quite recently. And it feels like a curious experiment for
the time being, not quite mind blowing news.

------
thunga
Even now, I see a lot of parents/kids on weekends browsing/shopping in old
style bookstores! There is a definite need. Good to see the offline stores
coming back!

------
CyberDildonics
Pure advertisement.

------
danielam
Scott Galloway of NYU/L2, Inc. talks more about this "clicks to bricks" trend
in his videos.

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seattle-local
It's interesting that the Amazon store doesn't accept cash. No books for the
poor ? Gotta give them credit for pushing the digital divide as hard as they
can.

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seattle-local
It's interesting that they don't accept cash. No books for the poor ? Got to
give Amazon credit for pushing the digital divide as hard as they can.

~~~
copperx
I would think it would be illegal to reject cash in a brick and mortar store.
Who else does it?

~~~
gizmo686
The only legal requirement is that cash be accepted as payment for debt (so a
restaurant that gives you your check after you eat must accept it).

