
Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population in a day, map shows - joeyespo
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/05/amazon-can-already-ship-to-72percent-of-us-population-in-a-day-map-shows.html
======
tracer4201
I own a decent number of Amazon shares. I’m sure they can ship most places,
but to any Amazon management folks reading this - is the longer term plan to
kill Amazon.com the store? The experience has gotten somewhat akin to EBay. It
seems like it’s intentional, but I can’t tell. There are any number of shady
sellers selling the item I want to buy. I have to manually click often times
to ensure I’m buying from Amazon. Even then, a few times I’ve received the
wrong item in the wrong box. I digress but despite your earnings call and all
the financial disclosures, I still have no idea what you guys are doing.

~~~
kevin_b_er
I strongly suspect this is intentional. It feels as if amazon is doing the
subcontractor/gig-economy scam, just slowly.

Amazon is attempting to shift everything to being 3rd party. That way they're
a middleman who gets a cut of everything sold, but without any risk. The risk
is all on the sellers, who are can be at Amazon's whims, and on the buyers who
get garbage from scammers. But sellers can come and go and the customer can't
keep track of which sellers are actually trustworthy.

We can already see this gradual slide with how counterfeits work on Amazon.
You can't tell if or when you'll get a counterfeit. Even Sold By Amazon is no
guarantee since Amazon will mix 3rd party seller goods into the same bin.

This is pure MBA thinking. They remove risk to the business and the need to
have buyers of bulk goods to list them. They don't have to keep their own
stock anymore. Sure they run a warehouse business too, but the risk of holding
good too long is someone else's problem: The 3rd party sellers. And still they
keep getting a cut of everything sold.

------
_tb1_
You know, if Brick & Mortars entered some sort of alliance, they could ship
_same day_ deliveries to an equally large chunk of the population.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I made the mistake of online ordering from Home Depot and they "conveniently"
shipped from a local store. Only problem is that they apparently have a habit
of reusing SKUs and sent me an older model that I didn't order.

Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.

~~~
maccard
>Given a chance, brick and mortars will fuck everything up. Guaranteed.

Let's not pretend Amazon are innocent of fuck ups like this. I'm a semi
regular shopper with Amazon (uk) and in the last 12 months I've had: \- used
products sold as new \- products sent by Amazon's own courier service for
"next day delivery" show up after 3 days \- flat out wrong items sent \-
previews for books sent in place of actual books \- received knock off cables
when ordering manufacturer cables.

That's not to consider the mess of trying to order goods from Amazon and
figuring out when they'll arrive. Searching for "prime" or sold by Amazon
doesn't actually guarantee next day delivery on rh item, nor does it guarantee
the item will be correct.

Their only saving grace is that every time I have a problem, I can resolve it
with live chat, they send a replacement and a courier picks up the old item
from my office (if they even bother asking for it back)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Fixing Amazon mistakes is relatively painless.

With Home Depot their phone support was 100% useless and I had to physically
go to the store the item shipped from. I made sure the new product was on the
shelf and tried to do a simple exchange. Unfortunately the duplicate SKU was a
problem and the price had increased since I paid for the order so the drone
wanted me to pay the difference. That wasn't going to happen so my time had to
be further wasted arguing with them over their mistake.

~~~
maccard
Yeah that's awful, and like I said, Amazon's policy of "refund and we'll pick
it up" if there's a problem has kept me shopping there.

My latest issue was a clearly used item being sold as new, and it was damaged.
The price had increased since I ordered it, and with one live chat they
couriered me a replacement, and picked up the old one, at no cost to me.

------
ENOTTY
Honestly I think this map shows just how empty the rest of the country is.

~~~
leeoniya
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

~~~
EADGBE
If it were true for this example, St. Louis metro and Kansas City metro would
be swapped.

EDIT: Looks like the population ranking has swapped! My apologies!

------
esilver
There are substantial margins to be had in over-the-road freight. The launch
of the Amazon Freight platform last week is a clear indication Amazon knows
this.

Managing an enormous seller marketplace is almost as fraught as shopping on
one. I can understand why Amazon wants to act as the broker in every aspect of
the retail transaction. As a third-party broker you’re shielded from much of
the liability while reaping much of the benefit.

Unfortunately, third-party brokers are limited in the kinds of interventions
that first-parties can bring to bear during a service failure. Walmart,
Target, et al., can fix a wayward transaction much more quickly and cheaply
than Amazon can by virtue of maintaining many well-staffed warehouses, i.e.,
stores.

------
wtmt
While this discussion is about Amazon's shipping coverage, surely I cannot be
the only one concerned that Amazon is going to destroy (more than it has
already done) many other competitors and that consumers would be left with one
large store that can exploit them any way it wishes to! This is increasingly
scary to me, since Amazon is now the largest online retailer (in my knowledge)
in India too. Walmart's purchase of Flipkart (which is a local online store
that started like Amazon did and grew big) doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

~~~
cameronbrown
There's plenty of room for competitors to breathe on the niche end of
e-commerce. Etsy, for example is doing great, and I don't see how Amazon could
take their market at all.

Also, physical stores clearly have some value for Amazon themselves to be
opening them, and at that point they're going to have a much tougher time
competing - cool tech notwithstanding.

~~~
detaro
Amazon has actually tried getting in there ("Amazon Handmade"), but not with
much success as far as I can tell.

But Etsy also has some of the problems that Amazon has: They've not done a
great job at enforcing their "handmade" standard, and you'll find resellers of
off-the-shelf mass.produced stuff there too.

------
tyopiuy
Haha, except their last mile delivery which is really flaky because they use
their own logistics and drivers

~~~
whoisjuan
Last mile, in general, is shit. Not only Amazon's. That's where most
innovation is needed.

~~~
tyopiuy
Ups, fedex, dhl for last mile in the USA is still 100x better than Amazon’s
last mile (yes, that’s two orders of magnitude !!)

------
creato
This is presumably for things shipped by Amazon, which seems really rare (for
me) on Amazon.

~~~
ec109685
Really? It seems like most sellers use “fulfilled by amazon” so they can take
part of Prime.

------
jamisteven
Yea, but not all at the same time, and not for a consistent period of time.

------
passwerd678
Already? I'm surprised they aren't at 100%.

~~~
tanilama
I mean Alaska would be tough, also Hawaii

------
Noobmaster69
well that's impressive!

------
dazsnow
So now it’s about 10% as good as Taobao

~~~
briandon
Taobao is ecommerce with Chinese characteristics (i.e. clown-world style) and
I say this as someone who has been using Taobao multiple times a week for
years.

There's having to get on AliWangWang and chat up sellers to make sure they
actually have stock of the items they're listing for sale. If you
optimistically order without spending ten minutes going back and forth with
them beforehand, your purchases may not ship because one of the items is out
of stock or no longer available in that size/color (despite it being listed
w/claimed inventory of 9898998 pieces in stock) and when you do get on
WangWang, you've got to waste more time haggling over individual item
cancellations, substitutions, etc.

And even if everything you want is in stock, you're lucky enough to be
ordering when the seller isn't away from their phone/computer because they're
asleep/eating/whatever and so is available to confirm this, they're as likely
as not to wait until a bit later to confirm your shipping address. If you're
not on WangWang to respond to the shipping address confirmation query, then
your order sits around unshipped until you do (and until they read your
confirmation).

When you do receive your purchases, you can expect them to be cellophane-
envelope wrapped or rolled up in clingfilm, which is usually sheathed in a
layer of Mainland grit and grime (hence the cellophane/clingfilm) and this in
turn is often packed in crumpled Chinese newspapers or scores of the foam
webbing collars one sees used around individual apples, pears, etc. in
supermarkets here.

If you live in China or HK/Macao, then you'll probably use Taobao much more
than Amazon, but only because of the shipping costs. Actually enjoying using
Taobao after having used Amazon, though, would require a strong masochistic
streak.

~~~
thetechlead
Don't lie about your experience living in China. There is already too much
China-related misinformation on HN.

For 99% of the time, you go straight to click-n-buy which should get your
order delivered on time, and for the 1% you prefer to talk to the seller the
option is a blessing, not a curse.

I used to work for Alibaba.

~~~
briandon
Speaking truths that you find objectionable is not lying.

If you haven't encountered these issues, then I'm happy for you. For my wife
and I, phantom inventory is a regular problem. Usually, we can catch the
problem over WangWang, but it's not unusual for us to place the order and,
just before paying, give the order number to the seller and have them confirm
they've got it before paying, then pay and a few days later when the order
hasn't shipped, message them again and get an apology and a sad story about
one of the items being out of stock or only available in a different version.

Shopping on Amazon is like buying in Target and shopping on Taobao or Tmall (a
slightly better experience w/re to seller flakiness) is akin to buying from a
shabby flea market. If the nearest Target is a few hours' drive away and the
flea market is ten minutes' drive from your house, you'll shop at the flea
market but it's not really an enjoyable experience.

------
ec109685
This assumes each of their distribution centers has 100% of Amazon’s catalog
available.

