rant - Time to drop Amazon

[Country Geek]

Delivering the "last mile" is the most expensive for the shipper. UPS and FedEx have made deals with the USPS to handle the last mile of the delivery. If the UPS of FedEx truck gets to the post office and they sort the packages before they start their routes you get your package that day, if they don't you wait an additional day or more until things get sorted out. If the package is larger it seems to be delivered by the shipper and not transferred to the post office, however, smaller packages seem to end up at the post office for delivery.

Logically this all makes sense and could help to keep the USPS in business and regular mail being delivered in rural areas. Giving the post office a piece of the delivery pie keeps the mail coming as well. This would give the post office one less excuse to stop mail delivery and force us all to go to the post office to pick up the mail.

The UPS and FedEx handing off to the USPS seems to happen more in rural areas then in the cities. I guess it has to do with population density and the miles a truck would have to travel to deliver all the small packages.

Not only this a good, concise explanation but it's also something people should keep in mind when they say things like "we don't need the post office, FedEx and UPS do a better job."

Because in the end they rely on the post office to make their system work.

 

[Country Geek]

Sometimes I feel like ranting about rants, then I catch myself.

If I need something fast, I buy it locally. If I don't, I buy it online.

That doesn't always work any more, I can't count how many times I've been in a local big box store, couldn't find what I wanted, asked someone working there, they had no clue, so standing right there I open up the Amazon app on my phone and order the thing using Prime.

Yeah it takes a couple of days but I usually leave asking myself why I even bothered to go to the big box store. Make no mistake, those guys are cutting their inventory to save carrying costs, and they also often make deals with companies to carry their product exclusively, so if you want an Ace widget but your Home Depot only has Acme widgets because Acme paid them a kickback (google "stocklifting"), Amazon can be the only game in town even when Lowes and Home Depot are right across the street from each other.

 

[Country Geek]

Amazon's prime makes rural living, civilized. For the life of me, I have no idea how they do it. Even with the bump up from $79 to $99 bucks.

Nailed it.

Yes it has problems sometimes and yes it's not as good as it used to be but it's still DA BOMB.

 

[300UGUY]

Nailed it.

Yes it has problems sometimes and yes it's not as good as it used to be but it's still DA BOMB.

Yup!!!

 

[Country Geek]

Yeah, I was shocked at how bad that "story" was written. It was sad it was so bad. Glad I don't subscribe to Forbes. Course, I have seen Forbes pull comments from story about a major IT company because the comments numbered in the thousands and were almost all negative about the IT company. Given that the IT company buys lots of ads...

I don't know about the magazine but Forbes online is nowhere near as good as their reputation used to be. Their website accepts a lot of op-ed pieces with very low editorial standards, then people forward them all over the internet saying "see! Forbes said it!" when in fact it was simply an op-ed on Forbes' website.

 

[jimpen]

Yeah it takes a couple of days but I usually leave asking myself why I even bothered to go to the big box store. Make no mistake, those guys are cutting their inventory to save carrying costs, and they also often make deals with companies to carry their product exclusively, so if you want an Ace widget but your Home Depot only has Acme widgets because Acme paid them a kickback (google "stocklifting"), Amazon can be the only game in town even when Lowes and Home Depot are right across the street from each other.

I have a Lowe's that is abut 15 miles away. They usually have at least one competent person in each department (except when it is close t closing). :thumbsup: Failing that there is an Ace Hardware right across the street. Most of the guys in there know what they are talking abut. The same with the TSC a few blocks up. But it is a relatively rural town that is only about 25K people. Going down to Cincy that changes fr both Lowe's and Home Dept. There yu are pretty much on your own. :thumbdown:

 

[rekees4300]

Going down to Cincy that changes fr both Lowe's and Home Dept. There yu are pretty much on your own. :thumbdown:

That's another big advantage of shopping online, you don't have to spend time walking thru a bewildering maze of aisles looking for something. Just do a search and they either have it or they don't, you know instantly.

At the big box stores there are usually a few competent employees to ask but finding them is even harder than finding the merchandise!

 

[CowboyRon]

Out of curiosity, what brand is your Netflix player? We have had similar issues with our Sony. Switching from the Sony player to the Roku (same connection, no other changes) stopped the "Loading Please Wait" messages.

Aaron Z

Yes, it has to do with how much ram it has to stop the buffering. We have a roku and an Xbox.We were streaming 2 movies last night on a 1.5 meg dsl line with very little buffering.

 

[SirReal63]

Out of curiosity, what brand is your Netflix player? We have had similar issues with our Sony. Switching from the Sony player to the Roku (same connection, no other changes) stopped the "Loading Please Wait" messages.

Aaron Z

Sony blueray player, we watch you tube videos as well with rarely any issues, except for Netflix which is better an it was, but it still has issues.

 

[aczlan]

Sony blueray player, we watch you tube videos as well with rarely any issues, except for Netflix which is better an it was, but it still has issues.

Ours (purchased in Nov 2011) does the same. Supposedly Sony sends all Netflix traffic through their servers, but that seems like a lot of traffic for not much gain (for them).

Aaron Z

 

[newbury]

Anybody ever contact Amazon about deliveries not on time? Read the top post in the link below...
Hold Amazon Prime to their 2-Day shipping guarantee : Frugal

Well I contacted them and all I got was "sorry, that's UPS's problem".

That doesn't always work any more, I can't count how many times I've been in a local big box store, couldn't find what I wanted, asked someone working there, they had no clue, so standing right there I open up the Amazon app on my phone and order the thing using Prime.<snip>

I don't do hardly any shopping at B&M other than grocery stores, Walmart, and hardware. And now thankfully both Lowe's and Home Depot offer free wifi.

That's another big advantage of shopping online, you don't have to spend time walking thru a bewildering maze of aisles looking for something. Just do a search and they either have it or they don't, you know instantly.

At the big box stores there are usually a few competent employees to ask but finding them is even harder than finding the merchandise!

With the Lowes and Home depot apps they show the aisle and bay where items are supposed to be.

A problem in Northern Virginia is that I don't speak the Amharic language and we seem to have large blocks of Ethiopians in some of the hardware stores. I've resorted to pulling up the item on my Samsung Galaxy 8" note on THEIR website and pointing out the aisle and bay REPORTED so they can walk me around to where it's been moved to.

Mississippi isn't bad, they either speak Southern or Spanish.

 

[CHDinCT]

That doesn't always work any more, I can't count how many times I've been in a local big box store, couldn't find what I wanted, asked someone working there, they had no clue, so standing right there I open up the Amazon app on my phone and order the thing using Prime.

Know what you mean. I've done the same, but I now have both the Lowes and Home Depot apps loaded on my smartphone, and you can use that to search for what you're looking for, and if it's in stock, it will tell you that and what isle/shelf it's located on. Of course the HD I usually go to doesn't show shelf numbers (or I can't find them), but it gets me to the right isle and I can usually find what I'm looking for from there. Never seems to be any sales associate around when I"m there, and when I find one, they can't help me and have to page someone that usually doesn't show up. Frustrating.

Edit: Should have read to the end to see that Newbury covered the same thing, basically.

 

[randy41]

prime would be a better deal if the prime music had as much available as spotify.