
Amazon Home Services - theatraine
https://www.amazon.com/services/
======
brudgers
I don't think this is game changing. Home Depot and Lowe's are already in that
space and they haven't changed it. The reason is that construction is
refactoring and debugging much of the time.

Typical houses are built on the LAMP stack, not Rails. A lot of configuration
and many of the conventions embodied are Rick 's and Rick ain't around. There
are lots of corner cases built into any structure, and clean quick and
straightforward pricing models by necessity come with lots of caveats. There's
often a reason a light switch needs replacing that's bigger than just swapping
out a part. The old one is still there because replacement was nasty work.

Throw a retail model at this and people expect refunds just because. I no-
shit-know someone who had no problem taking back fresh from the ground annual
flowers to Home Depot at the end of the season for a refund. The fact that new
waste pipes won't work that way is why contracts matter. Good plumbers are
busy and paid well, Amazon can't Uberfy them. It's not a commodity skill like
driving a clean late model car. Sawzalls are involved and expert experienced
judgement is required. They'd do better with web developers because they would
nit have to solve the locality problem.

~~~
maratd
> I no-shit-know someone who had no problem taking back fresh from the ground
> annual flowers to Home Depot at the end of the season for a refund.

And when he did, they asked him for his driver's license. There's an annual
limit to how much you can return without a receipt. Home Depot doesn't care so
much, because if you're returning things that way ... they're just giving you
store credit. You're going to have to buy something again and eventually,
you'll end up spending lots of money there. It works out for them in the long
run.

~~~
brudgers
The person kept the receipts. It was systematic behavior.

~~~
maratd
Well, with receipts you have a 90 day window ... so if he's returning them
within that window, then he's really not doing anything sketchy because that's
really Home Depot's policy and intent. They tend to be pretty lax with
returns. He may have brought the receipts, been outside of that window, and
the cashier simply told him to take away the receipts because it was too long
ago, scanned his driver's license, and gave him store credit anyway.

Lowes, Ikea, Bed Bath and Beyond, they all operate the same way. They'd much
rather you buy lots of stuff and return some of it, then buy a few things.

~~~
john_fushi
I knew someone who worked at refund at home depot for a while. Heard official
policy was to refund anyone if they argued enough.

She told me stories like someone coming in with a 3 year old, completely
ripped shower curtain and getting a refund.

So to be honest, I'd have no problem believing that they'd refund cash old
flowers at the end of the year.

------
MCRed
Remember Amazon Menus? (Scanned menus of local restaurants) Remember Amazon
Movie Listings? Remember the "drone delivery"? (It makes no sense on the face
of it, and will never happen. But it was a big press release.) Remember Amazon
scanned catalogs (eg: Mail order catalogs selling things in competition with
Amazon, that you could search) Remember A9? (Amazon's answer to google,
biggest mainstream mention was being used as a verb once on The OC in
2006ish.)

Amazon makes dozens of "products" every year, to do press releases, to sell
more Amazon stock/keep the stock price high. Most of these products never
become real.

Even AWS was a fake product-- they claimed it was "the infrastructure that ran
Amazon.com", which was a straight up lie. (I worked for the company at the
time.) All they had was S3. This product stuck to the wall and grew and became
a real product over time, and so they backfilled.

This strategy works for them because when something disappears (remember
google glass? Yeah, it really is gone, it made no sense to begin with, but
they won't admit it) .... nobody remembers it.

Amazon wasted so much time on nonsense. We had 4 reorgs a year and a lot of
chaos because they were constantly spinning up random teams for BS initiatives
-- many of whome were nothing more than a press release.

I'm not saying this is wrong (except the dishonesty about AWS)...just that
Amazon announcing a product doesn't mean Amazon will be providing that
product.

~~~
flyinglizard
Amazon drone delivery WILL happen. This will be completely disruptive to how
stuff is consumed. Amazon being able to reach any point in an urban
environment from its outskirts, at any time of day, within minutes and at a
cost of just cents, will completely change consumption patterns (at least for
existing Amazon users).

Once something has such a strong financial implication, any other obstacle in
its way is going to crumble (not to mention that the technology is mature
enough today to perform this; the barrier is regulation, and that can change
with enough money at stake).

~~~
rplnt
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

~~~
flyinglizard
Dead serious. The technology is there, the economics are there - it just seems
outlandish as an idea, but for no real good reason.

~~~
rplnt
The economics are definitely not there yet. The insurance alone would make it
prohibitively expensive. Then you need a lot of infrastructure due to low
range. Light drones also can't fly when it's too windy, too rainy, too cold.
And they can only carry a very small subset of usual shipments (limited size
and weight).

Automated cars on the other hand...

~~~
xur17
I see the drones as a last mile delivery solution. Rather than flying the
drones all the way from the distribution centers to peoples' houses, they
could drive their trucks out to your neighborhood, and then release a set of
drones to deliver packages the 'last mile'. This would allow them to deliver a
bunch of packages at once without the driver getting out of the truck, and
larger packages could still be hand delivered for the time being.

Also, I'd imagine that the drones would be (remotely) human driven at least
the first few times they drop off a package, so they can learn where to drop
off the package (similar to how Google handles training their self driving
cars). After that, they could drop it off automatically, but hand off control
to a human if the environment looks too different.

~~~
dman
Howre they going to solve the pet problem? I can see curious cats / dogs
trying to have a go at the drones.

------
nabaraz
I thought having local service providers would be cheaper. So I compared some
of their prices with Walmart and Best Buy.

TV Wall Mounting (my won mounting bracket): Amazon: $229, Geek Squad: $149.99

Tire installation Services (2 tires): Amazon: $69, Walmart: $12 each

Car Stereo Installation: Amazon: $120, Best Buy: $64.99

I think there is a large market for local listings (e.g. Angies List, Groupon
Local etc) but their prices are way too high.

~~~
MichaelApproved
The Amazon guarantee would go a long way with me. Something goes wrong, I
don't have to worry about battling it out with the contractor. I call Amazon
and let them deal with it.

I can't say it's worth double the price until I actually need to use one of
their services but I would definitely accept a premium for the hassle free
service.

~~~
mattmanser
You'd pay double for a guarantee?

~~~
MichaelApproved
Why is that so crazy? Depending on the service cost, my time could be worth
more than having to deal with the headaches of finding and dealing with a
trustworthy vender.

Consider we're talking about $150 installation for something in my house, like
a TV. That could mean knocking holes in the wall. Searching Yelp reviews and
interviewing contractors can be time consuming. Then, if something goes wrong,
my wall could be ruined. Taking the contractor to court to recover damages is
a massive investment.

That might not be worth the trouble if I could have Amazon send someone and
cover all headaches. It becomes dead-simple. "I'll just use Amazon's guy"

There's no question, it's a premium service, but you're getting real peace of
mind with it. It's not like you're only paying for a brand name, you're also
getting a guarantee from a trusted company.

~~~
bentcorner
Even Geek Squad's rate is too high. Mounting a TV onto your wall is not a hard
thing to do. Find studs, attach mount to wall, attach mount to TV, put on
wall. I've done it several times. Granted, it's not fun, but it's not
I'd-rather-pay-$150-to-not-do-this non-fun.

Even if you're a high-paid professional it's likely cheaper to do it yourself
(assuming opportunity cost for this time was work, and not, you know, enjoying
your weekend).

(IMO the TV wall mounting prices are completely out of line with the
difficulty of the task. Compared to tire installation that takes more time,
tooling, and personal risk, I'm really surprised that it costs so much.)

~~~
VLM
"Compared to tire installation that takes more time, tooling, and personal
risk,"

Don't forget liability, most failure modes involving tires cascade into
personal injury auto accident. I would guess the most likely epic fail of
similar likelihood for a TV installation would be dropping the TV while
installing it. Or maybe drilling into a water pipe while installing it, either
way death is quite possible with cars and highly unlikely with a TV.

Two things always "get" me about hiring a pro even though I can afford it. The
first is I do it exactly the way I want it. Not possible to install my TV 3
inches too far to the right or some idiot company policy to minimize liability
or whatever. The second is the opportunity cost of hiring a pro is astounding.
A pro is going to have a 4 hour window 9-1 next Tuesday so I need to take time
off work and cancel my life for four continuous weekday hours, but I have a
SSD awaiting installation on my desk at home and if I get a half hour
wednesday night around 8:14pm I'm fine, my window for me to do it is dynamic
and hyperflexible and much narrower than a pro and if I'm interrupted its
simply not an issue. Its just more convenient to do it myself than to deal
with someone else. I could afford to hire someone to take the trash bag from
my kitchen to the trash can by the garage, but the hassle of contracting with
another person exceeds the minimal hassle of walking it out there myself.

------
thomasfoster96
Amazon can now let me hire a goat herder[0] to get my lawn eaten down. Is
there anything they can't sell?

[0]
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UBYDXXQ/ref=vas_sf_GoatGrazing](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UBYDXXQ/ref=vas_sf_GoatGrazing)

~~~
pgcosta
We wanted flying cars, instead we got goat rentals. :D

~~~
golergka
And Goat Simulators.

~~~
borgia
And the Mohammed simulator that involved goats made by someone on 4chan...

------
dangrossman
Looks like they took all the contractors offering home service deals through
Amazon Local (which has been running for 4 years in 36 states) and turned it
into a service menu instead.

Which is genius.

I've gotten a leaking toilet fixed, leaking roof inspected and patched, garage
door springs replaced, and a noisy heater tuned up at fixed prices by buying
"deals" for them through Amazon Local when I needed something done.

The experience is a million times better than finding a new contractor in the
yellow pages for all these kinds of jobs. So many of them now charge a
"service call fee" just to come out and do a quote, and won't quote even
simple jobs over the phone. If their quote is too high, you've just thrown
away money (and wasted half a day) without getting the problem fixed.

I am super enthusiastic about what Amazon's doing here and hope they stay in
this market. Looks like I'll finally be putting in that exhaust vent in the
bathroom that doesn't have a vent hole cut.

------
roneesh
Right now I work in the largest company in this field, Sears Home Services.
And we're moving to Seattle... so this should be interesting!

I think anyone's first thought when Amazon gets into a business is that it's
dominance is inevitable. Not so sure in this case, I've made tons of marketing
pages just like this, hardly a guarantee of success. They'll have to do the
hard work of convincing people they can provide quality service. You can't
just return a home renovation if it goes wrong.

------
gchokov
Really hate when web sites assume you live in the US. Don't make me click
around menus and finally ask for US Zip code (And don't assume Zip codes have
5-digits only).

~~~
techsupporter
> And don't assume Zip codes have 5-digits only

Aren't ZIP (it's an initialism, Zone Improvement Plan) codes by definition a
US-only thing? Even in countries that don't call them post/postal codes,
they're not known as ZIP codes.

~~~
dagw
Pedantically, yes. Practically, no.

Basically everybody in the US uses the phrase "zip-code" informally to mean
postal code even when talking about international addresses.

~~~
ChristianGeek
I've never run across anyone in the U.S. who refers to postal codes as zip
codes.

~~~
wtbob
> I've never run across anyone in the U.S. who refers to postal codes as zip
> codes.

Say what? Where in the U.S. do you live? I've been all over, and I've never
once heard them called 'postal codes'; always and every time 'zip codes.'

~~~
eropple
I've only ever heard "postal code" in the South.

------
TorKlingberg
The is certainly space for a "Uber/Airbnb for home services", but I am not
sure Amazon will be it. What startups are in this space, and do they have any
traction?

~~~
beaner
Task Rabbit is pretty good and well known, and now there's Magic which sits on
top of it. There's a lot more but they're smaller.

~~~
logn
To me, Magic seems like a ChaCha that takes your credit card number and makes
a few calls. That's fine, but it seems that places like Task Rabbit and Amazon
Home are attempting to guarantee some level of satisfaction and results.

I've seen a couple other startups like Magic too. It's basically paying people
to google for you. That might disrupt the personal assistant space but
probably not the market for home services.

------
adventured
Given the price that Angie's List is trading at - $370m market cap on $315m in
sales - I'm surprised someone like Amazon doesn't just acquire them to jump
start a business like this.

------
cyberjunkie
I think as an idea, it's great and there has to be a large market for it.

Of course, I'm in India and I personally might opt for a service like this.
There are some startups here but noone of the size and 'integrity' as Amazon.

I'm not sure about the old-school family type people who'd rather go to a
local plumber, or carpenter to get their work done.

------
pjc50
I first thought this was going to be "AWS for your home server", and then of
course I was disappointed.

------
dangravell
It's interesting but I don't understand what problem this solves, at least in
the area of home improvement.

The problem in this area is finding someone you trust and is competent. I
don't see how this solves that.

For lower skilled work I guess there might be something here.

~~~
MichaelApproved
> The problem in this area is finding someone you trust and is competent. I
> don't see how this solves that.

Amazon is extending the trust you have for their brand to local workers that
they've screened. They'll even guarantee your satisfaction. That's how they're
solving trust and competence.

------
sac2171
For a second I believed this was an april's fools joke due to:

[http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Home-Services-Hire-
Grazer/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Home-Services-Hire-
Grazer/dp/B00UBYDXXQ/ref=lp_11161984011_1_1?srs=11161984011&ie=UTF8&qid=1427746726&sr=1-1)

------
iblaine
Amazon seems like the Walmart of internet services. Amazon will find a niche
that is profitable then, drive down the margins in that sector and bankrupt
companies in its wake.

------
jebblue
This is cool, my wife saw a report on one of the morning talk shows and
mentioned it. Glad to see a reputable company (Amazon) who knows the consumer
and how to deal with lots of small businesses is going to be a goto point for
sourcing home project help.

------
amelius
It looks like if there is any company that can pull off a service like
"magic", it will be Amazon instead.

------
gesman
Do they offer IKEA furniture assembly services?

This usually is a torturous process.

~~~
adyus
I believe IKEA offers that locally through partners. That being said, someone
on Fiverr might be willing to help.

------
ank_net
Amazon is a company which has no clear vision...

------
evlapix
I had attempted to bring a product like this to life a while back:
[http://gigyard.com/](http://gigyard.com/)

Maybe I should re-visit it.

------
jscheel
Exactly what zipcodes DO support goat grazing?

------
grok2
Goat Grazing? Maybe targeted for April 1?

------
golergka
I don't remember when I last saw an ad so badly shot. Seems like any typical
VC-backed startup that would appear on HN would do a better job.

------
buildops
2 days early for April Fools

------
obvio171
Mechanical Turk for your house, soon to be replaced by real AI. Everyone wants
to be the next plantation owner.

