
Amazon Is Capturing Bigger Slice of U.S. Online Holiday Spending - gmays
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/amazon-is-capturing-bigger-slice-of-u-s-online-holiday-spending
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thesimon
Their return policy is really great during the holidays, which might
contribute to it.

As a (late) holiday shopper and Prime member, their shipping guarantees are
top notch though. No praying that it arrives in time.

(Whereas Amazon says, order within x hours for delivery tomorrow, a lot of
other shops here just feel like "Usually shipped within 1-2 days, if your hair
is green, Tom is working in the office and your order number ends with 4")

~~~
jacobolus
Unfortunately I had several things in my Amazon cart which said “order within
8 hours and it arrives December 24” (or whatever), that when I looked back at
3 hours later had lost the guarantee, and now could only promise to arrive by
the 26th/27th.

Didn’t turn out to be a big deal, but folks shouldn’t take those guarantees
for granted.

~~~
sokoloff
I have seen that as well, and believe it to be genuine/OK. I take it to mean
that the warehouse nearest you has it in stock and if you add to your cart and
order it, you'll get it by that promised deadline.

If a few hours pass and in the meantime that warehouse sells out, you might be
past the cutoff for the next warehouse that has it in stock.

(Not an Amazon employee, just an extremely frequent customer...)

Except for the USPS last-mile shipments, I've rarely (< 5%) had Amazon miss a
guaranteed delivery date. On USPS last-mile shipments, they only seem to make
about 2 in 3 on-time, which means I get a free month of Prime everytime they
miss. I'm almost to the point of trying to figure out the pattern that gets
last mile USPS to pickup free months instead of doing the "no rush" which only
nets me $1 or $2 towards e-books and video rentals.

~~~
shasta
They should still add "(while supplies last)" as a clue.

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zenlikethat
No surprise there. This year I did almost all of my shopping on Amazon and it
worked out excellently, especially considering that I was having Christmas in
another location and just got everything delivered straight there.

Our family also discovered something great this year: Wishlists. By creating
and sharing Wishlists we were all able to get a much better picture of the
specific items and areas of gifts that each family member was interested in.
It results in much more lucid shopping than blind guesses and/or plain text
communication.

~~~
ghshephard
Likewise - I wanted to get my mother a new computer - (a NUC PC, SSD, Memory,
HD, Anti-Static Strap, CD Drive, USB Keyboard).

I was able to get everything I wanted shipped in 4 days to 100 Mile House
British Columbia, including Clearing Customs, from amazon.com, not even
amazon.ca. No worries about carrying packages while traveling, was able to
specify everything exactly as I wanted.

There is zero chance I would have been able to do something exactly like that
in the local computer shop (The Source), and probably wouldn't have been able
to do it in Vancouver at the large computer retailers.

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guelo
Amazon's product search is amazingly bad and the user reviews are getting
faker over time. To me it's amazingly hard to shop on there. Feels like the
engineering team is focused on their many other businesses and ignoring their
retail stores.

~~~
marcoperaza
The fake reviews are really frustrating. I try to work around it by focusing
on longer reviews that discuss both pros and cons, but fake review writers are
probably getting more sophisticated too. It'd be nice to have separate
averages for verified purchasers and real name reviews, since those would at
least cost more to rig. One could write a script for that, so long as Amazon
doesn't throttle/block you. Sounds like a fun and useful small project.

~~~
moultano
Right now the practice is for the manufacturer to give people a refund on the
product in exchange for their 5 star review. It is infuriating. Amazon should
ban these companies from the store or they may lose me as a customer (and I
buy nearly everything there.)

~~~
manyxcxi
It's not so much manufacturers as the sellers of the merchandise. I've had
multiple sellers offer full refunds in exchange for better reviews after I
left 1,2 or 3 star reviews of some pretty shitty products.

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bdcravens
Amazon feels like more of a crapshoot all the time. Just bought a pricey
Thunderbolt dock. Didn't see anything I plugged into it, despite being new.
Went to MicroCenter, paid $50 more for same one, worked great. (even tried new
cable on Amazon unit, just in case that was the problem)

My point isn't a story about a particular product, but to say that I'm not as
surprised as I once was. During the holidays I had two boxes of food etc
delivered (one Prime Pantry, one regular purchase) that were busted open or
otherwise required my cleanup.

Amazon is truly becoming the online Walmart: cheap, compelling, but you expect
the worst.

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ivank
Amazon provides an incredibly valuable _3 month_ return policy during the
holidays (buy on Nov 1, return window ends on Jan 31). This is particularly
useful when buying a bunch of computer parts that might exhibit failures after
more than a month.

~~~
rickyc091
They have an incredible return policy period. I've had items that I bought,
completely forgot about, contacted them a year later and they gave me a full
refund, shipping and all. Granted, I do have over 200 orders from them in the
past year.

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randycupertino
I shopped for Christmas on Amazon, it was kind of a pain. I had to ship it all
to myself, wrap it, put on gift notes and then pack it all up and ship it all
to my family across the country. I was going to do their individual gift
wrapping but it was $6 PER ITEM. Considering I got about 15 items, that really
adds up.

I think I'll still do some shopping on there next year, I just wish they had
cheaper gift wrapping and card options.

~~~
mmmBacon
The biggest savings of Christmas shopping on Amazon is _not_ having to go to a
physical store to do the shopping. No driving around wasting hours in traffic,
waiting in lines, and dealing with cranky people. The added benefit is that
Amazon also usually has the thing you are looking for too. So if you add up
all that time saved, time spent wrapping is really not that bad.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It's really the biggest saving of shopping online, period. I would pay a great
deal more to not have to stand in a line and get stuck behind someone pulling
out coupons and a checkbook and doing a price check at a checkout aisle in a
store.

Physical stores can't even implement the obviously better solution of getting
everyone in one queue, and then directing them to the next open register
(except for TJ Maxx and Marshalls and a couple others)

~~~
pyre
Target was doing that during the liquidation sales in Canada (at least at the
ones I was at). It's worth noting that I don't recall them doing that before
they went belly-up.

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Fjolsvith
For me, Amazon is the way to go. I live an hour from the nearest Walmart or
department store. The FedEx and UPS delivery people know me really well.

~~~
yial
Where do you live? I didn't realize places that remote still existed! (Only
partially joking)

~~~
mdergosits
There are plenty of places like that. I go to school in upstate NY and while I
live in a decent sized town, there are plenty of towns inbetween there and NYC
that are pretty barebones.

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Animats
Say goodbye to brick and mortar retail.

"There's always parking at Sears."[1] (Yes, Sears is that desperate.)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmu98-wkmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmu98-wkmk)

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pnwhyc
This doesn't come as a surprise. Amazon has created fantastic consumer and
merchant experiences and brought buyer friction down to almost nothing.

I'll be interested to see how they plan to tackle the in-store experience.
There are obviously the perishable aspects of grocery store products which,
with intense and continual establishment of their current strategies, will
eventually present opportunity to become a viable part of the company. But on
another end of things, shopping as a hobby is something to overcome. No amount
of UX or UI (in current stages, at least) can compare to the coveted
experience that shoppers seek when going to a mall. This is an area where
Amazon might find value in AR. Ex. being able to try on an outfit without
leaving your house.

An obvious method would be to open their own physical stores but that would
probably just be a "tiller on the car" fix.

Whatever direction the company goes, I look forwards to seeing what Amazon has
in store. (Seriously though, no pun intended.)

~~~
rpgmaker
Am I the only one who thinks their site is bloated and slow? I mean, it
_works_ but it's not that pleasant to use.

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marincounty
I went with BestBuy this year, and was pleasantly surprised. I've noticed
Amazon is slowly raising prices. I'm not knocking it; just like the
competition.

Plus--I've always liked Bestbuy. I bought a iPad mini ($under 350.00) at 12:59
p.m. Pacific time, on the 23rd of December. For $12.00 it was delivered to my
door at 11 a.m. the next day.

~~~
goldenkey
I've noticed the same thing. Walmart.com often has cheaper prices than
Amazon.com for the same item. Walmart's selection is a little more narrow. But
it definitely pays to comparison shop if you have a bit of time.

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bsder
The article is comparing Amazon to, for example, Walmart online. Not Amazon to
Walmart sales in general.

