
Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon - okket
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/walmart-announces-next-day-delivery-firing-back-at-amazon.html
======
igetspam
I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm
currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they
can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my
door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take
it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I
contact amazon, tell them it's late because the package is too large and they
picked the wrong carrier and they give me a $5 credit. I tell USPS I'm not
circumnavigating a lake to pick up the package and they can send it back. I
border again and go through the same thing. I've told Amazon that they can't
ship large items to me via USPS but they can't seem to figure out how to
handle it. I even asked them to not use USPS (they're unreliable anyway) but
they're stick in a loop. I'm openly and publicly doing this and they don't
care. It's stupid. Thankfully it's a low priority item and I don't actually
need it. Some day it will show up... maybe.

Walmart, if you can figure out that problem, you'll have my money.

~~~
CPLX
I am in the same boat. I have called and begged and pleaded and escalated to
get Amazon to stop using USPS but it just doesn't work. Here in Brooklyn if
anything is unusually large they just punch in "attempted delivery" a couple
days in a row and send it back. They don't even bother trying, I'm pretty sure
it never even leaves the regional sort facility and gets on a truck.

I'm not sure I blame them. Amazon once used USPS to send me half a dozen
office chairs. I called Amazon as soon as I saw the shipping update and said
there's zero chance whatsoever they will ever reach my door. Nothing they
could do. I just ordered from another vendor the same day and waited the
inevitable 2-3 weeks for the Amazon order to work its way through the system
and back to Amazon without delivery ever attempted.

It's one of a few things that perplex me about Amazon. Like why can't I just
flag a shipping method as unusable. Why can't I search for stuff only sold by
Amazon. Why can't you fucking stop selling fake chargers and headphones?

But what do I know about running a multi billion dollar business right?

~~~
treis
>It's one of a few things that perplex me about Amazon

Their price match policy is pretty silly too. I bought a robo vacuum that got
a $150 off promotion a week later. They were unwilling to refund me the
difference but are willing to let me return the old one for a full refund
while buying a new one at the discounted price.

~~~
alasdair_
That may make sense if the inverse of percentage of people that actually go to
the trouble of returning a bulky item multiplied by the margin is higher than
the shipping cost of a new item.

~~~
jjeaff
It's pretty easy. I've done this with hard drives that I had already
installed.

Just printed the return label for the higher priced item, and slapped it on
the box and gave it right back to the carrier when he delivered the same,
lower priced item.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
Yes, but it doesn't matter if you do it, it matters if most people do it. His
argument (which I believe) is that notably fewer people will do it if they
have to return the item and get a new one.

------
chadash
Does anyone know if Walmart has consigned, third party merchandise like Amazon
does (e.g. sold by X, but shipped prime)? And if so, does it get commingled
with the Walmart supply chain inventory?

My issue with Amazon is that I'm afraid of knockoffs, counterfeits and plain
old cheap crap with fake reviews (really, 2000 people decided to review your
plastic drinking cups?).

These days, I'm shopping more and more at Target, who offers free two day
delivery on orders above a certain threshold, good prices, a curated selection
of items, good website experience and most importantly, no third party sellers
intermingling their fake wares.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
At present Walmart does not commingle its inventory with 3rd party sellers.
Things sold 3rd party are also shipped 3rd party so it is currently immune to
the counterfeit problem that amazon is having.

~~~
cementlady
That's not entirely accurate. Walmart offers DSV (drop ship vendors) which is
basically inventory as a service. Walmart pays the third party sellers for
storing and shipping the item, but takes on the overhead of customer service
and returns. The customer is never made aware of the fact that they bought it
from a third party because even the shipping label is customized to match
Walmart's labels.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Right but they don't have the "we pulled a counterfeit widget out of the
community widget bin and have no idea who's to blame" issue that Amazon had
since they aren't co-mingling inventory from multiple suppliers.

------
jefe_
Whenever Walmart is mentioned I like to use the rise of Dollar General to
illustrate my complete lack of confidence in anything the company attempts.
How on earth did Walmart see the rise of Dollar General and not think: hey we
could do that, or hey we should buy them, or hey Amazon has slow rural
deliveries let's innovate there. They simply gave it a half-effort attempt and
then gave up the small town / discount markets (which contained many loyal
existing customers), blinded by their efforts to become Amazon and attract
customers who don't care about Walmart brand. Dollar General's stock has
doubled over the past 5 years and has a market cap of $30 billion, I have
difficulty believing anything Walmart can do in efforts to become Amazon will
add value equivalent to acquiring or cloning Dollar General around 2009. The
thing that really kills me is that when Dollar General started gaining
momentum during recession in 2009, Walmart was still nearly three times as
large as Amazon and could have used Dollar General strategies to put Amazon on
the defensive in some markets, but for some reason they didn't and have been
struggling to figure things out ever since. I don't even have a horse in the
race, and probably dislike Walmart when I really think about it, but every
time I see a Dollar General I start thinking about this and end up getting
frustrated that a company could so fundamentally lose it's way, striving for
something it will never have.

~~~
smogcutter
Dollar General is a vulture that swoops in to clean the corpse of towns that
Walmart has killed. Your argument that walmart isn't racing to the bottom
efficiently enough could be right on its own terms, but what's the point? It's
like arguing over which ocean to dump plastic waste into.

~~~
pnutjam
Dollar General and Family Dollar are not Dollar stores. They are small
retailers who sell a limited inventory of groceries and such.

They are also closing alot of under-performing stores this year. I think Wal-
mart might have known more then people give then credit for.

------
wpietri
What I wonder: why did it take them this long? Walmart has warehouse-sized
stores that are close to almost everybody. And most of America's houses are
already visited 6 days a week by a delivery person. Walmart could and should
have made a deal with the USPS a decade ago. It would have been great for all
concerned.

Instead, they let Amazon practically own the concept, eating away at their
huge distribution advantage.

~~~
joering2
Deal with USPS? Would be hard to find a manager who can make this work and not
obviously post it as a huge disaster on their resumee. USPS continues to bleed
money, is always understaffed, continues to misplace the mail and is bugged
with pretty old technology that is hard to upgrade. Add unions to it and you
have a perfect government entity altho USPS is not actually a government
organisation. If anything it would make more sense for Amazon mail to offer
USPS a helping hand ;)

~~~
jdeibele
Wow.

USPS continues to bleed money but that's due to the mandate from Congress
about pre-funding pensions. That's a requirement that nobody else has - see
the articles about the 3rd-largest coal company declaring bankruptcy and
shedding its pension obligations.

Is always understaffed? Yeah, there are lines a lot of the time. So go to
USPS.com if you can and buy postage online. Go to the offices that have ATM-
like machines if you can't. My usual problem is that I have a letter that I
don't want to send Priority Mail and I've gotten out of the habit of having 10
different amounts of postage labels.

Misplace the mail? I signed up for their service that sends me a picture of
almost every piece of mail that gets delivered. The last problem with the mail
that I can remember having was dropping off a check at the airport while
leaving on a trip. The contractor suggested that mail there got extra
inspection, which delayed it. I'm not sure that's right but I can see somebody
dropping something "bad" in the mail right before they leave the
city/state/country.

They're certainly not perfect and I bet it's not any more fun to work there
than when "going postal" was a thing. But I'm pretty happy with USPS.

~~~
neilv
The unusual pension funding requirement forced on the USPS might be an
instance of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast)

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Perhaps. But any company who makes the claim of pensions or "we'll promise to
pay you more later" should be legally required to store that in escrow.

So if/when they try their little bankruptcy schemes, it won't work.

~~~
neilv
I agree, at least for modern for-profit corporations. The USPS has a better
track record than that class, is at least quasi-gov't, and, as a citizen, I'd
be happy considering all USPS obligations backed by the full faith and credit
of the US gov't.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
I would disagree.

My wife and I will have different payouts for Social Security, because the
younger have been stolen from. Every year that the federal govt adds to Social
Security is one year less I get. And that matters to my housing, quality of
food I eat, medical help, drugs I need, and basic quality of life.

[https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/retirechart.html](https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/retirechart.html)

I pay in the same percentage as older, yet they can retire earlier and get
their money. And given my family proclivities of massive heart attacks in late
50s/early 60s, I'll see none of it. And I'm diabetic - this country cares
little to none about health care... How many "supplements" will I need for
medicare when I'm close to retirement age?

Where I'm sitting, I don't have that much to look forward to, given how much
I've (forcefully) paid in. And I have little trust in the chuckleheads in
office the last 20 years - since I've been able to vote.

------
noonespecial
They don't need next day delivery. They need a search that works, reviews that
aren't fake, and a way to get products that aren't counterfeits half the time.

Amazon has skated way out onto very thin ice and is ready for disruption.

~~~
criddell
> and a way to get products that aren't counterfeits half the time

How often do you actually get fakes?

My family probably gets an Amazon delivery three or four times a week and
we've never received a counterfeit item.

~~~
jihadjihad
For a few years I was in the same boat: dozens of items delivered without
issue. Within the last year or so it's become more common to hear about
counterfeit issues on HN as well as personally be confronted with them--I've
had to return 4 items that were obvious fakes and a 5th item that was already
opened and probably not legit.

~~~
criddell
Is there any area in particular that seems problematic?

~~~
joombaga
For me it's board games, and more specifically expansions. The last expansion
I bought had slightly differently colored card backs than the base game,
meaning you could tell if someone had expansion cards and making the expansion
unusable. I had to compare them both to a friend's sets to know which was
counterfeit.

~~~
dragonwriter
Outside of the biggest major game manufacturers, that's long been a problem
with _legitimate_ board games having inconsistencies like that, for instance
because different printers with slightly different process were used for
different print runs of the same expansion.

Its perhaps a sign of the times that counterfeits are perceived to be common
enough that the natural assumption when this occurs is "counterfeit" not
"QC/supply chain issues".

~~~
joombaga
My natural assumption was "QC/supply chain issues", because I've seen those
too. In this case the designer actually posted about the issue on a forum,
which was later linked by the publisher.

------
octocode
I'm excited for the future when we'll finally have day-before shipping, where
ML predicts what I want before I even order it.

~~~
wpietri
This honestly strikes me as getting close to doable. For Amazon to do next-day
and same-day shipping with reasonable efficiency, they clearly have gotten
good at this on a statistical basis, as the stuff needs to be in the warehouse
in advance of shipping.

A plausible next step to me is something like the Amazon Corner Store, where
they have neighborhood caches of goods. I go to order something and they say,
"Hey, we figured you might want that, so it's just down the street if you want
to pick it up now, or we'll drop it off later today." Or once self-driving
improves a little more, maybe a mobile truck-sized warehouse with delivery
bots, so they get delivery times down to 10 minutes or so.

And for the future, they have huge historical baselines for a lot of
customers; I've been using them for more than 20 years. Most of the day their
software sits in my pocket, so it wouldn't be hard for them to start
collecting the sort of sensor data that gives them a very good idea of my
activities and metabolic stats. It seems entirely believable to me that they
could know that, for example, colds are going around, that sensor data
indicates I'm going to feel the symptoms soon, and to dispatch a delivery
robot with a package of tissues, OJ, and Nyquil.

~~~
ascagnel_
Amazon does something similar now -- if they see you're following a repeating
pattern (say, ordering detergent the first day of every month, or you buy the
newest installation of an annual video game on release day), they'll prep
loading the product onto their delivery trucks in anticipation of a last-
minute order.

~~~
wpietri
Really? That's very cool. Where could I learn more about that?

------
vfulco2
I tried to get a pair of airbuds delivered to upstate NY. Two weeks after they
were lost in transit, WMT put the onus on me to speak with the shipper and
track down. I canceled. Amazon has nothing to fear.

~~~
whoisjuan
That Amazon announcement was a bait in disguise. Amazon can pull this off
because they have massive logistics efficiencies that are optimized for their
e-commerce business.

Walmart has to do way more because their core business is still walk-in
retail. They have to literally force their model to make this happen and
that's why you get low reliability on the customer offering and an
unprofitable dynamic in the business operation.

~~~
dfrage
There's some forcing for sure, but they already had a _lot_ of the hard parts
in place when they started the process. I've witnessed since the fall of 2016
their sending me many packages from various locations to almost always
shipping one package, and without any promises many of those packages then and
now arrive the next day if I order them in the morning.

------
hef19898
That is maybe the first sign of brick and mortar retail finally waking up.
Considering that technically they have one fulfillment center in every small
town they should be able to achieve really short lead times out of these.
Fulfillment Centers obviously being all their stores. While it is a non-
trivial thing to connect all these stores to last mile courier services it is
not necessarily overly complex.

Just what that means for Amazon and retail will be seen. I for my part won't
be surprised if Amazon will change its focus more to Walmart. In turn that
could open opportunities for new competitors.

~~~
m52go
> That is maybe the first sign of brick and mortar retail finally waking up.

Hasn't Walmart been inching into this space for a while? I already cross-shop
with Amazon all the time, and for me Walmart's delivery is often quicker than
Amazon's already.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Hasn't Walmart been inching into this space for a while?

Yup. An aircraft carrier cannot turn on a dime but when it finally comes
around it's bad news for anyone in its way.

------
thebigspacefuck
Amazon has rolled out same day delivery for my area and it is too convenient
to pass up. I used to go to Brick and Mortar to get my items faster and I felt
good that I was supporting them, but now I will have a hard time saying no.

Walmart has always had a terrible website experience for me. It's difficult to
find items that will be in store for pick up and difficult to tell which items
are part of the third party marketplace. Going to Walmart in person is equally
terrible. There are so many trashy people I just stopped going, even though
the prices were lower. It's the worst of both worlds.

I hope that same day delivery becomes something that every b&m retailer can
provide regardless of their infrastructure. Maybe this is through Amazon or
another third party. I'm wary of giving Amazon too much, but maybe this is the
future and everyone else needs to get on board.

~~~
hef19898
Coming up with a next day delivery service on scale for every brick and mortar
retailer out there sounds like a good start-up idea. Kind of Uber for Walmart
or some such thing!

~~~
alttab
Who says that once Amazon figures out one day delivery at scale that they
won't sell it as a platform? Seems obvious.

Uber says that they are the Amazon of Transportation. I'd argue that Amazon is
the Amazon of transportation.

~~~
fma
Actually, Amazon just announced they are willing to throw money at you to
start a company to do delivery for them.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/13/amazon-offers-
employees-10...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/13/amazon-offers-
employees-10k-and-3-months-pay-to-start-their-own-delivery-businesses/)

------
programmertote
I recently ordered an iPad for my mother from Walmart (after comparing prices
at Amazon, Costco and Apple store, and found Walmart's one to be $20 cheaper).

The iPad arrived literally the next day. The iPad covers, although apparently
shipped from abroad, arrived in less than 7 days. I was impressed. Next time
around, I'll definitely be checking out Walmart before I purchase any other
items above $100 for sure.

Side note: I never had prime subscription.

------
w8rbt
I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly
miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good
t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries.
Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow
human in person). I really hope they make it.

~~~
rconti
Walmart is the reason vast numbers of people can no longer buy anything good
locally. They were killing local stores before Amazon was.

I'm rooting for their death, as I have since I first heard about them in the
mid 90s, pushing out local music retailers so they can sell the censored,
watered-down crap they strongarmed labels into producing.

Never spent a penny there, never will.

~~~
throwayEngineer
>Implying local is better

I've found local/mom and pop is significantly more expensive, than our
national counterparts.

[https://efficiencyiseverything.com/dog-food-per-dollar-
store...](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/dog-food-per-dollar-store-vs-
store-and-protein-calories-vitamins-ingredients/)

I don't think lowest income Americans could live at their current standard of
living off local mom and pop stores.

~~~
rconti
>Implying megacorp forcing their values on people is undesirable

------
p_roz
The relentless competition in retail never ceases to amaze me. I remember when
online order delivery times for basic items were measured in weeks. Now, I can
order the most obscure of items and get it at my door in 1-2 days.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Now, I can order the most obscure of items and get it at my door in 1-2 days.

For anything obscure but to big to fit in a bubble wrap envelope you're still
going to pay big bucks though.

------
aeturnum
I've been trying to use Walmart for most of my household internet shopping
needs because I dislike a lot of Amazon's practices[1].

In general Walmart is...ok. Their shipping times are pretty accurate, though
they will sometimes split up shipments and don't clearly inform you. It also
seems like their shipping pipeline is a lot rougher on boxes than Amazon. I
ordered a window-mounted AC unit and the box showed up _wrecked_ \- the unit
was badly dented and never worked.

Like Amazon, they have the problem of "seamlessly" integrating 3rd party
sellers into their store which means you need to look closely or 4/5 things in
your order will arrive day after tomorrow and 1/5 will arrive in 2-3 weeks.

[1] Walmart is no picnic either, but only so many companies can ship me the
random products I've gotten used to.

~~~
jimmaswell
Wal Mart's practices have certainly been much worse than Amazon's in
aggregate.

~~~
AlexB138
How so? As a consumer, I personally have a lot less trust in Amazon. At least
with Walmart I know I'll get what I ordered instead of some cheap Chinese
knockoff.

~~~
freehunter
Walmart's bad practices by far predate the founding of Amazon and have been
well-documented. Walmart moves into towns and undercuts prices on locally-
owned stores, putting them out of business and destroying Main Street America.
They demand products sold on their shelves reduce the quality enough to make
the items disposable, which forces the manufacturing offshore to China or
Mexico, further destroying American towns.

As a consumer, Walmart is better than Amazon in the very short term. Long
term, both Amazon and Walmart are causing serious damage to the economy of
America.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-
mart](https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart)

~~~
bluGill
Good riddance to those "main street" stores and their overpriced business
model.

~~~
freehunter
Yup. Good riddance to downtowns, to store owners who put their customer and
employee needs before pure profit. Good riddance to community, to knowing your
neighbor, to walking. Good riddance to sustainable pricing and sustainable
wages.

Much better that we drive out of town to Walmart, pick up dinner at the drive-
through, drive home, and never have to talk to anyone or walk on a sidewalk.
Much better that the profits leave the town, the county, the state, and move
to a corporate headquarters. Much better than the main economic center for a
town is outside city limits so the city gets no tax revenue to maintain roads,
schools, and water/sewer service. Much better that the taxpayers subsidize
those rollback prices that force their employees onto food stamps and welfare
checks. Much better that you can buy something so cheaply that when it breaks
you just throw it in the ocean and buy another one.

Good riddance to America. The United States of Amazon is just _so much_ more
convenient.

------
netcan
Delivering physical goods is a surprisingly persistent problem. Circa 2003, my
thinking was that by the time amazon inevitably folds and the next generation
of ecommerce takes over, commodity delivery systems will have gotten good
enough to enable a drop-shipping future. The sites would be aggregators
(stumbleupon, digg, etc.) with a good UI and packages would come directly from
wholesalers and manufacturers.

Meanwhile, it's the 20s and delivery is still a strategic capability that the
largest companies on earth compete on.

------
Someone1234
Target is also experimenting with this locally.

When you order something online, instead of shipping it from a warehouse, it
is instead shipped directly from a local Target store via UPS (you can tell
from the shipping label). I've had several things delivered next day as a
direct result.

The major difference is that Target aren't yet advertising that this will be
the case, and therefore don't guarantee it or similar. But I anticipate we'll
see Target officially announce this service when they've worked out the kinks.

------
bradenb
I actually ordered a CPU from Walmart.com a few days ago. It'll take a week to
get to me, but it's still amazing to me that the order happened at all.

~~~
dfrage
My goodness, they sell a bunch:
[https://www.walmart.com/search/?cat_id=0&facet=retailer%3AWa...](https://www.walmart.com/search/?cat_id=0&facet=retailer%3AWalmart.com&query=intel+cpu#searchProductResult)
(substitute amd for intel in that query if you prefer) including a $1,629
Ryzen Threadripper $70 cheaper than Newegg, free 2 day delivery or local store
pickup. The multi-thousand dollar Xeons seem to be more in the receive next
week category, but a couple of the most expensive 18 or 28 core, $3K plus or
minus, are 2 day, at or just a bit more expensive than what Newegg is charging
for them.

------
UncleChis
One thing I don't understand why Walmart hasn't invested in: change the web
interface!!! Their website is just not attractive at all!!!

~~~
degenerate
They're shooting to keep it as close to the in-store experience as possible,
in that regard ;)

~~~
dfrage
You joke, but with the recent update they do have similar design aesthetics.
If you're already a happy Walmart physical store customer that's perfectly OK,
"familiar" is a good thing, even if it's not as attractive as you'd like.

I personally wouldn't say the design aesthetic for either is "attractive", but
they're pretty clean and functional, and that is worth a lot. Walmart.com
transactions are now a bit easier than Amazon, before you factor in the
tremendous amount of effort the latter requires to avoid counterfeits.
Walmart.com search is a _lot_ better once you get the right terms, and turn
off 3rd parties which they make trivial.

------
leesec
This is still only on orders over $35.

Walmart still does not realize what Bezo's has done with Prime. He has made it
the default option and incentivized users to check there first by removing all
the friction.

Having these weird caveats and no 'membership' (which again, makes users think
of Prime first) is going to keep Walmart behind for a long while.

~~~
objektif
Walmart did realize what AMZN did with prime membership. But they probably
also realized their customer base wont pay for another membership.

~~~
lintroller
They already have a bulk retail subscription with Sams Club. A membership that
includes access to both the retail store and one-day walmart.com shipping
could be attractive.

~~~
dfrage
Possible evidence they could be thinking about this: a few minutes ago I
filled out a survey of their's about my last Walmart.com purchase, and one of
the questions asked was if I, or an immediate family member had a Sam's Club
membership.

------
AuthorizedCust
They have this already for groceries in some markets. The problem is $13+ of
delivery fees and tips. This has got to be worked down to $0.

------
dsfyu404ed
Walmart seems poised to steal a lot of cost conscious shoppers from Amazon
because Amazon simply doesn't offer a lot of the "value priced" product lines
that Walmart does and they've basically been competitive with Amazon for
shipping times for quite awhile now.

------
RickJWagner
My family has started using Walmart's grocery pickup service. You select your
groceries online, then schedule a pick-up time. You drive up at the agreed
upon time, Walmart workers come out and load your car trunk with groceries.
You never leave the car.

Walmart's not sitting still.

------
bob_theslob646
It is for orders above 35 dollar and only available on certain items?

How is this a shot back?

Does Amazon have a money printing side business that allows them to subsidize/
keep prices near 0?

Until then, this is the equivalent of pissing in the wind.

If I was an investor, this looks like WMT opex just increased big time.

------
AlexB138
It's good to see some viable competition to Amazon, but it's regretful that it
comes from, and probably can only come from, another mega-corporation with an
extremely poor track record around worker treatment.

I wonder how viable some sort of supply-chain co-op would be. Basically, get
all of the medium players together to share resources to try to match these
gargantuan companies on the delivery and returns front. It just doesn't seem
possible for them to match these companies on their own, and a third-party
would basically just be UPS.

~~~
mabbo
In a sense some of the food delivery companies are doing exactly this. Perhaps
if one of them branched out...

------
sjg007
Target needs to get on this too.

~~~
untog
Dataset of one, but I've been more and more impressed with Target's online
offerings lately. I've gotten a little sick of the fakes/third party nonsense
on Amazon so I tried both Walmart and Target. As long as you're ordering over
$35, Target does free two-day shipping, and they've been pretty seamless for
me.

------
rock_hard
Too little too late!

------
KIFulgore
WalMart.com lost me at limiting my password to 12 characters.

