[HN Gopher] Amazon Isn't the Only Shop Online
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Amazon Isn't the Only Shop Online
Author : prostoalex
Score : 235 points
Date : 2020-04-06 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| Animats wrote:
| Amazon is holding up much better than other online retailers.
| Ordering works fine. My Amazon orders are showing up, although
| slowly. Safeway and Smart and Final can't even give me a delivery
| slot. Smart and Final's web site was failing over the weekend -
| Cloudflare timeouts, login timeouts, false credit card declines,
| HTTP error 461 (there is no standard 461 error.), and a "Site
| undergoing maintenance" message from their "DevOps Team". Back up
| now, though.
| StillBored wrote:
| Yah, the only thing that's been arriving from Amazon lately are
| the things sold and shipped by 3rd party sellers. Frankly, i've
| been paying the extra to just order from the smaller shops lately
| because amazon's critical "prioritization" algorithm doesn't seem
| to know what is actually critical.
|
| Part to fix my cloths washing machine? 3 weeks from Amazon, two
| days from Granger.
|
| Problem solved, plus unlike a similar part I ordered a couple
| months ago from amazon, I'm pretty sure the granger parts aren't
| counterfeit. The box stamped "Made in U.S.A" is likely
| legitimate.
| complianceowl wrote:
| The HN is a very intelligent community, so I'd like to hear your
| thoughts out loud here. Do you guys think supply chains will move
| closer to home because of this pandemic? I'm hearing every
| narrative under the sun right now: "This will establish globalism
| even more", "No! This marks the abrupt END of globalism." What
| are your thoughts?
| complianceowl wrote:
| Guys, you freaking rock. Thank you for your informative and
| insightful responses. This is precisely why I referred to you
| guys before even receiving any responses as "intelligent".
| twblalock wrote:
| Supply chains need to be more resilient, and that probably
| means making them more global rather than less.
|
| A pandemic could originate in any country. Making things "at
| home" would turn out to be a bad idea if the pandemic
| originates at home. If that happened we would like to be able
| to get help from other countries.
| jshevek wrote:
| De-globalization, in this case, brings redundancy. This is
| less efficient, but more fault tolerant.
|
| Striving for domestic manufacturing does not prevent imports
| from occurring if deemed necessary. Tariffs are easy to wave,
| in an emergency.
| jshevek wrote:
| Certain products will be made and/or stock-piled closer to
| home. The effect this has on globalism overall depends on how
| various factions battle over narratives.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| It's certainly going to shift manufacturing of some "essential
| items" for emergencies closer to home. But you can't do a knee-
| jerk reaction based on something like this. This is a very rare
| event and it would be foolish to annihilate your existing
| global supply chain over this. It will probably mean that
| countries (the smart ones anyways) will start to stockpile and
| ensure they have plans to follow in the event something like
| this happens again.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Only with government intervention. If company A switches to
| more expensive domestic manufacturing while company B stays on
| the other side of the planet, B can undercut A. Next time there
| is a supply disruption, A will be able to beat out B, but A
| might be out of business by then. Government intervention would
| be required to even the field, maybe through tariffs or
| importation prohibitions.
|
| An alternative would be for company A to appeal to the public
| (or business customers) to buy from them at a higher price
| because it helps keep society from being disrupted by supply
| chain interruptions. That might work short term but cheap
| prices seem to win out over concerns of societal wide benefits
| in the long run.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Globalism"?
|
| It's very hard to say right now. Money will be tight, so the
| pressure to buy the cheapest will remain. A lot of producers
| and consumer businesses will go bust. Shortage and oversupply
| will ping pong around for a while.
|
| A lot depends what the effect of deaths is on politics - do any
| leaders get killed? Differential effect on older voters?
| Hopefully the number of those will be small enough not to
| matter.
| larrik wrote:
| Right when this all was starting, I had finally chosen a bass
| guitar I wanted. I decided to try and support a non-Amazon
| business in GuitarCenter (the local music shops focus a lot more
| on school band instruments). So, I order online, and pick the
| "pick up at store" option, since it says they are in stock.
|
| I show up, and an hour later they figure out that they don't have
| it in stock, they only have the floor model (which I can have for
| a whopping 5% off...). Apparently, the system (a green screen
| app, no less) can't tell the difference between "new in stock"
| and "floor model". I got the rundown of their logistics chain
| (which is basically just UPS), and I lost confidence that even
| ordering ship-to-home online again would even work. So, I bought
| it from Amazon for the same price and got it later that week...
| selykg wrote:
| Check out Sweetwater next time. They are significantly better.
| Their site actually shows you each guitar/bass they have in
| stock and they have an entire gallery Of photos for each. If
| you order one they'll send a zip or the whole collection of
| photos.
|
| If you call and talk to the sales rep for you (you're assigned
| one) they can usually knock 5-15% off.
|
| They also make sure each guitar/bass is setup to factory spec
| before sending it out.
| larrik wrote:
| Never really heard of them before. Looks like everything I
| bought is out of stock anyway, but it's good to know there
| are alternatives.
| selykg wrote:
| I imagine a lot of gear is tough to get unless it's high
| end stuff right now. There has been a ton of people picking
| up instruments during the shelter in place orders.
|
| Sweetwater is significantly better than GuitarCenter
| though. Better customer support, better site, better
| warranty, better everything.
| kube-system wrote:
| All pro musicians know and love Sweetwater
| sosborn wrote:
| I second this recommendation. Sweetwater is great and their
| sales reps know what they are talking about.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I third it! Every guitar I buy from them has come with
| personal images of the exact guitar, you can even view
| everything before you buy it!
|
| Sweetwater reps are also really competitive on pricing. I
| like reverb for hard to find used gear, but I always end up
| shooting over prices from there to my Sweetwater rep, not
| once have they not beat it.
| hsitz wrote:
| Sweetwater is good. BHPhotoVideo is also excellent for music
| stuff (as well as tech in general). Free shipping, great
| service, affiliated payboo credit card that covers sales tax,
| saves me 10% on every order.
| mdesq wrote:
| Home Depot and Lowes do this same thing with certain items like
| dishwashers. It's obnoxious. Their website will show that they
| have "1 left in stock" but it's the demo model that's installed
| in a rack of cabinets and not for sale.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Yeah. I phoned an implement dealer, to buy a mower I saw
| advertised in their online store. Wanted to make sure he had
| set actually eyes on recently, because we've all had online
| listing be wrong. "Yeah we have that. I saw it ... yesterday?"
|
| So I rent a trailer and drive 4 hours, and guess what? Just a
| square of yellow grass on the lot where the mower used to sit.
| nataz wrote:
| Amazon shipping hack - order what you want to order, wait 48
| hours to see if it ships, and if it doesn't cancel and order
| elsewhere.
|
| This assumes you value ordering through Amazon (I do b/c prime
| shipping, easy return policy, and I have a large gift card
| balance)
|
| One thing I've noticed is that amazon may list a delivery date
| far out in the future, but it's possible you still get the
| product quickly, depending on what I can only assume are local
| warehouse logistic issues.
|
| Over the past two weeks I've ordered packing/shipping supplies, a
| high chair, some electronics, and a board game which all had
| expected delivery dates of +1 month, and they all arrived in 2
| days.
|
| YMMV.
| serf wrote:
| > Amazon shipping hack - order what you want to order, wait 48
| hours to see if it ships, and if it doesn't cancel and order
| elsewhere.
|
| Amazon used to have a history of banning 'bad customers' (lots
| of returns, cancelled orders, etc), is this no longer the case?
| mnm1 wrote:
| It is still the case.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Anecdotal but I've cancelled a TON of orders and haven't been
| banned. Returns I can see, but definitely not cancelled
| orders.
| mod wrote:
| > I've cancelled a TON of orders
|
| Out of curiosity, why?
| jshevek wrote:
| I've done this. It doesn't work for some third party shippers
| who claim to ship immediately (cancel option removed) even if
| they don't.
| secabeen wrote:
| I've also noticed that if you order multiple items, and one of
| them has a short shipping time, they'll suddenly ship your
| other items that are waiting. Presumably if they're all at the
| same warehouse, and they're already shipping one thing, they
| put the other stuff in the box.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Flip side is sometimes something that could ship fast ends up
| being delayed so they can group it with something that comes
| from a further away warehouse.
| fma wrote:
| That makes no sense. If you order 2 items, and they're in 2
| different warehouses, you'll get 2 packages. They aren't
| going to ship from 1 warehouse to a 2nd warehouse and then
| bundle them.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I really wish they could provide more clarity. I haven't tried
| ordering things that list as May, but browsing items, I
| randomly see individual items that for some reason have much
| closer dates. I even saw one with 1-day shipping. It makes no
| sense to me. I wish they could give a slightly better window
| prediction than "this may take a month"...
| larrik wrote:
| I needed some surge protectors. The ones I really wanted were
| all May, but then the AmazonBasics one was this week. Hmm...
| airstrike wrote:
| > I really wish they could provide more clarity.
|
| I'm not sure but I think this is because of some virus or
| something, from what I've heard
| dangrossman wrote:
| The 10% of items that show as available for 1-day or 2-day
| shipping are likely the ones in your nearest Amazon
| warehouse. There's 119 other warehouses products can be in
| that they would have to ship by UPS/FedEx/USPS instead of a
| local delivery by their own contracted drivers.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| They are shipping "priority items" quickly. Who knows how
| they determine what are "priority items".
|
| When I ordered hygiene items (shampoo, soap, etc.) they
| shipped the next day. But my order of kitchen equipment has
| expected delivery in May (which I'm totally fine with).
| jupp0r wrote:
| To any other non-amazon stores out there: have toilet paper in
| stock and I'll give it a try!
| rchaud wrote:
| Best Buy's ecommerce site is great; they don't have the absurd
| levels of info overload and upselling of a typical Amazon page.
|
| In Canada, Amazon's electronics offerings are rife with awful
| Chinese brands sold by dropshippers. Amazon seemingly doesn't
| carry any of the inventory themselves unless it's a Fire tablet
| or Echo.
|
| It's actually a big relief to shop online via at a proper outlet
| (even Walmart.ca is more reliable) than through the Bezos flea
| market.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah I've ordered a few things now directly from the
| manufacturer.
|
| The problem is in a lot of cases I'll see stuff that's slightly
| cheaper on their site but then shipping is ridiculous.
|
| I ordered a mono price stand up desk recently. The price on
| Amazon was $10 more, but Monoprice wanted $45 for domestic
| shipping! So I waited three extra days and saved $35.
|
| It's kind of a toss up now between speed and price depending on
| the item. I mean, it always was, but when prime is functioning
| normally, the speed is almost always worth the price (to me).
| bluetidepro wrote:
| I agree 100% with this. It's appalling how many other sites
| (esp. the direct manufacturer ones, like you mentioned) use
| dark patterns with their shipping/handling prices. It really
| does make you understand why everyone wants to use the big
| sites like Amazon, at least they are pretty straight fwd when
| it comes to the price, shipping, fees, etc. Nothing worse than
| getting down an e-commerce funnel only to find you wasted 10+
| mins filling out stages of forms to then find the
| shipping/handling cost is absolutely ridiculous, and have to
| bail.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Or.... small companies don't have economy of scale logistics
| operations?
| bluetidepro wrote:
| As commented to someone else's reply, you don't understand
| what I mean by a dark pattern. There is a difference in
| having a shipping cost, vs hiding the shipping cost in the
| funnel. They hide it in the funnel, that IS a dark pattern.
| There is nothing wrong with charging for shipping, but
| don't be shady about how you present that cost.
| dangrossman wrote:
| It's not a dark pattern that shipping actually costs everyone
| that isn't Amazon a lot. Go get a shipping quote from UPS or
| FedEx for sending a desk across the country. It's not going
| to be any cheaper than these stores are charging. They're not
| hiding extra profit in their shipping fees.
|
| People are so used to Amazon Prime that they have no idea
| what things cost to ship any more. I run a small online store
| and every 1-pound package I mail out costs $8-12 in postage
| by the cheapest shipping method available to me, at
| commercial shipping rates. If the box is over a cubic foot in
| size and going to a state on the other side of the country,
| it can quickly double or triple in cost.
|
| Amazon has $120/year in Prime subscription fees to subsidize
| the displayed shipping costs, puts some of the shipping fee
| into the item price (they're rarely the cheapest for most
| products, especially very cheap or very heavy ones), has a
| warehouse within 20 miles of every American so that nearly
| everything they ship is a same-zone local shipment, and has
| their own delivery network so they don't have to pay
| carriers. No other business has those things.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| It IS a dark pattern when they don't show you that cost
| until the final step after you have invested time getting
| there. You misunderstand, I'm not arguing that it costs
| money to ship things, I understand that to be true, I'm
| saying it's a shitty dark pattern when you aren't clear
| about that cost up front in the funnel. People can be
| honest, there is nothing stopping them from doing that.
| dangrossman wrote:
| They don't know the cost to ship you things until they
| know what's going to be in your cart and what address
| it's getting mailed to. Shipping costs are based on
| package dimensions, weight, and distance between the
| sender and recipient. This is the reason that in nearly
| every ecommerce platform, shipping costs get displayed at
| the second to last step of the checkout process, or in
| the shopping cart only if you provide your zip code
| there. They don't have the information needed to run a
| postage quote any earlier.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| Again, you still aren't following. I'm saying many sites
| don't do that. You are correct, I should be able to see
| estimated shipping from my cart on any e-commerce site by
| just putting in a zip code in, and them knowing what is
| in my cart (product wise). It's a dark pattern that MANY
| sites don't do this, they make you fill out a ton of info
| to get to that point. It's sketchy and a dark pattern to
| put that many walls behind a final price including
| shipping. I understand there has to be a few walls, but
| you wouldn't believe how many sites put extra walls in
| there to try to "trap" you in their funnel.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Where you see dark pattern is in fact a limitation of
| most ecommerce platforms. Shopify, which powers millions
| of retailers website, doesn't offer this out of the box.
| You need the advanced plan ($$) and on top of that you
| need a special app/theme that would allow you to do it
| before checkout.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Honest sites let you enter a zip code at the very start of
| the shopping process and display an estimated shipping cost
| as you're looking at items. Dishonest sites make no mention
| of shipping costs until you're at the very end of the
| checkout process.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I'm convinced they do this on purpose. The more time you've
| invested, the more likely you are to acquiesce and pay their
| exorbitant shipping fee.
| hurricanetc wrote:
| I guess I am in the minority because as soon as I see a
| shipping fee more than 7-10% of the cost of the item I
| immediately start looking elsewhere. Numerous times I've
| just decided to not buy an item because I didn't want to
| pay the shipping costs.
| benbristow wrote:
| I usually prefer to use Amazon just because the experience is so
| simple and in the UK their logistics delivery service is pretty
| good with live tracking when the parcel gets near to your home.
|
| Amazon can be annoying when using third party sellers though and
| might end up getting dispatched with an alternative delivery
| service, god forbid Royal Mail who don't have any live tracking
| feature.
|
| I'm always happy to help out smaller/alternative businesses
| though if they offer competitive prices and use decent delivery
| firms like DPD.
| awaythrower wrote:
| Also beware of phony Magento sites that don't have actual
| products, but are just trying to get CCs, PayPal or crypto
| payments.
| prox wrote:
| How does that work? I've seen a lot of copy paste webshops of
| formerly retired domains. They obviously look quickly hacked
| together (allthough looking professional enough to the
| untrained eye)
| salvagedcircuit wrote:
| Ironically, I find that I am ordering more from Mcmastercarr and
| digikey more than ever.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Amazon has massive network of 3rd Party Sellers who ship items
| directly from their own warehouses, not relying on Amazon's
| currently-hobbled fulfillment centers
|
| You can find these by selecting "other sellers" on the Amazon
| product page.
|
| This has been the way to get stuff quickly on Amazon for the last
| 3 weeks.
|
| Then on Friday, with no warning or explanation, Amazon extended
| all shipping times quoted out to April 20th, including the
| shipping times provided by 3rd party sellers.
|
| This extension has no basis in reality, as 3rd party sellers have
| not experienced any shipping delays because they don't use
| Amazon's warehouses.
|
| This was a hugely anti-competitive move by Amazon that has
| severely impacted 3rd party sellers and directly misleads
| consumers.
|
| Numerous 3rd party sellers have reported this situation to the
| DOJ.
|
| If any reporters want more info, please reach out. Email in
| profile.
| CPLX wrote:
| For what it's worth, the solution is just to order whatever you
| want anyways, and watch it ship to you 2-3 days later.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Well of course, but most people go by what they read on the
| screen in front of them at the time of purchase.
| buzzert wrote:
| If anyone is looking for computer parts, I gotta shoutout Newegg.
| Been using them for more than 15 years, and they've been
| extremely great at delivering during the pandemic.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| With all the social distancing going on and my general laziness
| towards staying active without being forced to, paired with the
| massive hype surrounding Half-Life: Alyx, I decided to build a
| VR ready computer.
|
| Newegg was fine. I'd been using them since my first build 15
| years ago. But this time I also had access to the amazing
| website pcpartpicker.com. Not only do they make it easy to find
| parts that are all compatible with each other, but you'll also
| be given multiple shopping options with discounts.
|
| Most of it I got from Newegg but I was able to save about 75$
| by getting the PSU and MoBo from bhphotovideo.com which was a
| surprisingly good experience.
|
| BTW, HL Alyx is as amazing as they say and you really don't
| have to spend a fortune to play it. My entire build was only
| 650$ and my VR headset of choice (Samsung Odyssey) only 270$. I
| was worried I'd made a mistake by going with a cheap headset
| but it works very well.
| tmaly wrote:
| Amazon was sold out of bakers yeast as were the local grocery
| stores. I was able to order from a specialty place. The order was
| delivered 2 days later. The price was very reasonable.
|
| For certain things, I am seeing some serious prices. People are
| selling cotton masks 4 for $25. That seems a little steep given
| that a box of N95 masks went for $6 before this.
|
| I just ordered parts for building a new computer. I had to order
| from 4 different places as Amazon did not have half of the items
| in stock. There are definitely some supply chain issues.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Too bad they didn't mention bookshop.org for getting books.
| iedddkke wrote:
| or alibris.com
| binaryorganic wrote:
| I recently learned about bookshop, and was super excited until
| I actually started making a wishlist of stuff I wanted and
| found half of it to either be back ordered or not exist in
| their system at all. Turns out all orders are processed through
| a single book supplier and if they don't have it bookshop won't
| either.
|
| As someone who doesn't use Amazon, I tend to use indiebound,
| which just pairs you with the closest independent bookstore who
| has the thing you want.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Amazon is the only shop selling the most convenience. At least
| Walmart and Target have online order and parking spots to pick up
| your orders from, but I can only imagine a lot of old brick and
| mortar type of stores are way behind the times. Just some stories
| on here are horror story level examples of the night and day kind
| of service you can get in regards to buyer convenience.
| ebg13 wrote:
| I tried ordering some things from Home Depot the other day, and
| they silently cancelled half of my order while still charging me
| the same amount for delivery from the store and while saying that
| some things can only be delivered from a warehouse and that some
| things can only be delivered from a specific store _and_ that
| delivery from each store has a $45 minimum purchase before they
| 'll even consider delivery despite the fact that they're charging
| the same amount for delivery from the store no matter how much
| you order. That of course makes it difficult to then order the
| remaining items even if you call them and demand a refund for the
| first delivery fee, because the remaining items now don't meet
| the minimum. Then the delivery from the warehouse is some weird
| arbitrary calculation involving a nominal+ amount that then gets
| divided up across the items you're ordering (3.77 here, 2.83
| there, and so on) such that if you remove any item the delivery
| fees for the other items all go up, and then there are some items
| that deliver for free if you order more than $45 worth _from the
| warehouse_ which of course doesn 't help you if some items can
| only be purchased from the individual stores. And then there are
| still things like cans of spraypaint that you can't get delivered
| at all and you're only allowed to pick up in person.
|
| I know that right now is an exceptional time, but this kind of
| shopping experience is part of why people choose Amazon first.
| tmaly wrote:
| I ordered a chest freezer from Home Depot. When I ordered it, I
| double checked that it was not listed as out of stock. I got a
| notice they were delivering on April 4. It was never delivered.
| The delivery company told me they were never shipped the
| freezer to deliver. When I called Home Depot, they said
| freezers are on back order to June. They told me I could call
| the manufacturer. This is a bit crazy. I have never had a place
| tell me to call the manufacturer.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| DO NOT order from Home Depot online. I made that mistake once
| and found out that they reuse SKUs for different product
| models. They will pull the wrong product off the shelf because
| the SKU is all they go off of. Support refuses to do anything
| about items delivered from a local store. The store employee
| won't be able to readily exchange the item.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _Support refuses to do anything about items delivered from
| a local store._
|
| Partially true. Support may actually contact the store and
| negotiate a refund for you. Allegedly I'll be refunded for
| the from-store delivery fee for my first order that had some
| of the items cancelled, and I didn't talk to the store
| directly.
| x0x0 wrote:
| My favorite is how home depot lists stuff in stock on the
| search results page, but then when you click the individual
| item it's out of stock.
|
| It's a store. Why the fuck would a store ever show me an item
| -- at least by default -- that it isn't willing to sell me?
| Like who exactly wants that "feature"? It makes attempting to
| buy something from home depot's site an infuriating experience.
| ebg13 wrote:
| One of the items I tried ordering that was cancelled showed
| 34 in stock at that store _while_ I was on the phone with
| them (immediately after the delivery person left) trying to
| find out why they cancelled my items and they were saying the
| items were probably out of stock in that store.
|
| And if you have three stores within a couple of miles of you
| that all claim to have a bunch of stock of an item but you
| order from one that suddenly (allegedly) runs out, you get to
| go all the way back down the hill because they don't migrate
| stock between stores.
| bradlys wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I don't buy things from Home
| Depot if I can help it. I've gone to multiple stores
| thinking something was in stock to only find they were all
| out of stock. On top of that, the staff there are almost
| helpless when it comes to finding things that aren't on the
| shelf itself. If it's up top, be prepared to waste an hour
| trying to get someone to fetch the item. (If it's there!)
|
| Their poor system can work in your favor though. Went to go
| pick up my order after it being cancelled at multiple
| places. Turns out, at this one, they only had 2 of the 4
| items at pickup. I tell them it says there are more in
| stock, they confirm. We go hunting for the remaining 2.
| Takes 30 minutes for them to fetch the remaining two from
| the top with my help (without my help, they would have
| never found it!). We go back to the register, they punch in
| that they're giving me 2 more. I go home with all 4 of my
| items. I was never charged for the full order. Only the
| initial 2.
| solotronics wrote:
| I mean technically that is stealing but I guess its
| pretty low on the scale of "bad stuff".
| bradlys wrote:
| Is it? They rung me up with it - it's up to them to
| decide what to charge me. I'd put as "bank error in my
| favor." I only noticed later when I was making sure they
| didn't overcharge me when looking at my bank account.
| (They had to charge and refund about 3x)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It's still stealing, the correct move would be to go back
| and pay the correct amount as you likely would have done
| if they overcharged you.
|
| That said, I doubt you could legally be held responsible
| and I see no problems with what you did morally either.
| If you noticed at the time I'd find it morally
| questionable, but you can't fix every mistake.
| sneak wrote:
| Stealing requires intent, generally.
| ebg13 wrote:
| "bank error in your favor" is not a real thing and a bank
| will definitely hold you accountable for that. But I
| honestly read your description as HD just giving you the
| extras as a gift for your hassle.
| [deleted]
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| The first part sounds like a pretty terrible UI bug - it
| should be showing as out of stock everywhere :thinking: maybe
| the search results don't cross-check your selected store
| location but the detail page for an item does. (not excusing
| it just thinking where the issue could be)
|
| A couple of reasons to show items they can't sell you right
| now in the search results...
|
| 1. The best reason I can think of is if you click into it and
| it isn't available then they could show "similar" items and
| cross-sell you on those - and maybe actually help you find a
| good alternative.
|
| 2. If you are searching for a specific item then the result
| should show you that item regardless of availability or you'd
| just keep looking for it and be confused about it never
| showing up in their results.
|
| 3. Maybe SEO? More listings - even out of stock listings ->
| more SEO juice
| dvtrn wrote:
| This has long been an issue I've had when trying to use
| online shopping/curbside pickup for grocery stores, and this
| comes even before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and pushed
| more of us fortunate to live in cities where online grocery
| buying is a thing to....well start buying groceries online.
|
| Found myself just as baffled/apoplectic as you are: why would
| this be on your online storefront if you don't have the
| inventory for me to actually buy?
|
| Even Amazon Prime delivery via Whole Foods has this problem,
| to bring it back around to the thread topic.
|
| Interestingly it's something that small e-commerce stores are
| _much_ better about, it would seem (though I don 't really
| have any data backing that up)
| goatforce5 wrote:
| Last year I tried setting up a subscription for some pet
| food from a mid-sized pet store chain.
|
| The first order went through fine.
|
| 3.5 weeks later I get an email saying my next order is
| about to be processed, now is the last chance for
| cancellations, etc. I ignore it, as I want the order to be
| processed.
|
| A few days later I get an email saying they're out of stock
| and they'll retry again later. I get these emails every day
| for 2 weeks, and then my order is automatically cancelled.
|
| This happens for 2 or 3 months before I get fed up and
| cancel the subscription.
|
| If I put in an order effectively a month in advance you'd
| think they could make sure they had enough stock for that
| upcoming order.
|
| (And it wasn't a complicated order, just multiple boxes of
| a single SKU.)
| justforyou wrote:
| >> why would this be on your online storefront if you don't
| have the inventory for me to actually buy?
|
| Twofold:
|
| 1) They're betting that you'll still buy something once
| you're surrounded by merchandise. 2) This allows them to
| play games with shrink, imventory, and insurance.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _They 're betting that you'll still buy something once
| you're surrounded by merchandise._
|
| Hrm. Good point, that's exactly what's ended up
| happening. Just never actively considered it
| justforyou wrote:
| Even better, you can reserve items to pickup at Home Depot
| online which are not actually in stock. Website quantities
| are not tied to point of sale, and are instead manually
| enteted by staff when they have the opportunity/bandwidth.
|
| (Or at least that was the explanation given by Home Depot's
| customer support.)
| markkanof wrote:
| I feel like I'm using a different homedepot.com than
| everyone else on this thread. I'm not aware of an option to
| reserve things for pickup at the store, only to purchase
| them and pickup at the store. Every time I have done this
| they send an email when the order is ready to be picked up,
| and then I go there and pick up all the items. Not saying
| you didn't have the experience you did, just wondering if
| they actually do things differently in different parts of
| the country.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _I 'm not aware of an option to reserve things for
| pickup at the store, only to purchase them and pickup at
| the store._
|
| Those two things you just said are the same thing.
| markkanof wrote:
| I don't think they are. When the parent commenter said
| reserved for pickup, I assumed they meant some way to say
| "hold these at the counter for me to come purchase". What
| I am saying is that in my experience, you are making a
| purchase, someone at the store is pulling the items from
| the shelf and setting them in a special area, then you
| get an email/text that the order is ready, meaning that
| everything is ready to go, they had all the items, and no
| other customer will be able to purchase the items that
| you ordered.
| ebg13 wrote:
| "hold these for me until I get there" is exactly the same
| as "don't let someone else buy them before I get there".
| Whether you pay before you get there or after doesn't
| change the fact that the item is being held for you so
| that no other customer will be able to purchase the items
| that you ordered.
|
| We can break down your two statements and put them
| piecemeal side by side:
|
| I assumed they meant... "hold these..."
|
| What I am saying is... "pulling the items from the
| shelf..."
|
| I assumed they meant... "at the counter..."
|
| What I am saying is... "in a special area..."
| markkanof wrote:
| You're completely correct. What I was trying to
| communicate, and what I should have emphasized, is that
| it's not just a send and forget kind of process. After
| the items have been set aside you get an email/text to
| confirm that things are ready to pickup and in my
| experience everything that I've ordered is there when I
| go to pick it up. So I'm saying that the things that were
| listed as in stock on the website are actually in stock
| at the store, and I get a confirmation once everything
| has been "secured" for me.
| markkanof wrote:
| I'm really surprised to hear so many horrible experiences with
| Home Depot ordering online. Over the past 2-3 months I have
| placed multiple orders for things that are shipped to my house,
| and that has gone off without a hitch.
|
| I've also placed an order for "express delivery" which seems to
| be a HD delivery driver coming from either a store or a local
| warehouse. I placed an order for a bunch of screws, insulating
| foam, joist hangers, etc. My ordered was placed around 1pm and
| I had the items on my porch by about 6pm the same day.
|
| I also ordered a bunch of lumber, sheets or rigid insulation,
| etc. that needed to be delivered by truck. The driver arrived
| on time, used his all-terrain forklift to navigate around a
| bunch of parked cars (I live in a fairly dense residential
| neighborhood), and place the whole load right where I wanted it
| on my front lawn. Couldn't be happier with the whole process.
|
| Just thought it was worth sharing some positive experiences, as
| a counter point to the negative ones here.
| sonicggg wrote:
| It seems the kind of charge I would dispute with my credit card
| company.
| mathattack wrote:
| This is the difference between delivery being your primary
| focus versus secondary focus.
| jakearmitage wrote:
| HomeDepot's ecommerce is a joke. Not only the shopping
| experience is poor, they treat logistics as if they were doing
| you a favor. And, on top of all that, you get damaged items. I
| made 7 purchases and all 7, in different periods of time, had
| to be returned or replaced.
|
| Same for Lowe's. There's a reason people shop on Amazon. Other
| than BestBuy, no other retailer "gets" ecommerce.
| Shivetya wrote:
| Best Buy is great, especially for delivery.
|
| Apple, CostCo, Ashley Home Funiture, Wayfair, Wal-Mart, and
| some minor players, have all performed well in my usage and
| those who I know also use them. Now with two I had a damaged
| item they did not want any part of returned, apparently this
| is common with free shipping deals as the return shipping for
| larger items can be ridiculous.
|
| Home Depot I have to agree with assessments others have made,
| lost an item off their own dock and when recreating the order
| after two weeks of back and forth; UPS was getting annoyed
| too, they wanted to remake the order and charge full shipping
| again. Just really bad customer service. They really do act
| like all screw ups are yours.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's crazy. Target smokes Amazon for most things these
| days, especially with pickup. Ditto for NewEgg and Walmart.
|
| Amazon is increasingly overrated, they peaked a decade ago
| and have declined to a warehouse club/flea market.
| powvans wrote:
| I thought the same thing about Home Depot until this hit.
| I've had the opposite experience with them the last few
| weeks. Things come quickly, my cart is consistent wherever I
| am logged in, and I can just add pretty much as much stuff as
| I want and get it all delivered the next day for $9. I'm
| loving the express delivery. In general it would always be
| worth it for me to spend $9 to get stuff delivered from Home
| Depot. Pre-pandemic it's a solid hour or more in the car to
| cover the 4.3 miles there and back from my house.
|
| Maybe I'm getting a better experience because I'm in Atlanta
| and there's a bit of a headquarters halo effect.
|
| Their search and general catalog organization isn't great. I
| just use Google as my entrance to their site and that makes
| life easier.
| sseagull wrote:
| I imagine this is one of those things where everyone has
| different experiences. Or maybe it depends on location.
|
| We recently moved into a new house (from an apartment) and
| needed lots of little things renters never worry about. I
| have ordered quite a bit of stuff from Home Depot, from a
| washer & dryer to a lawn mower to random small tools and
| paint. Never had any issue whatsoever.
| coding123 wrote:
| This is a key point. Especially for prime items, but largely
| to other items they sell that are not fulfilled by them. It
| just feels like there is more responsibility through the
| amazon platform than other websites.
|
| I ordered a case of water through Amazon through a reseller.
| The shipment literally got lost. Amazon dispute, 20 minutes
| later, refund is done.
|
| I am waiting for a resolution through Paypal from another
| website - off amazon - since Friday for toilet paper that
| will definitely not be sent. After looking at policies, etc..
| they generally don't do refunds.
|
| Though, I did have luck on one other site.
| smichel17 wrote:
| I've been pretty happy with newegg, and my recent electronics
| purchases have been split between it, Amazon, and direct from
| manufacturer (preferring direct unless there is a significant
| price difference, due to counterfeit-wariness).
| kbash9 wrote:
| Never had an issue with costco.com where I've made some of my
| big purchases.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Just this week I had an issue with Costco.com.
|
| Ordered an item, their delivery estimate was 3-5 days. 7
| days passed and the item hasn't shipped. No updated ETA or
| any information/communication on how long it might take.
|
| Decided to cancel and order from an alternative vendor (who
| would communicate better, frankly). Was unable to even
| cancel it online (cancel button was missing, in
| contradiction to their help docs).
|
| Tried to use Online Chat to cancel, which was seemingly
| offline/broken for multiple days. Finally called their
| customer service number, and it was cancelled within the
| hour (which credit where credit is due was one of the best
| telephone customer service experiences I've had).
|
| Took all of 10 days to NOT receive a 3-5 day item from
| Costco.com, the replacement item ordered elsewhere arrived
| in 48 hours. Still don't know how long the Costco.com item
| would have taken because they never communicated that.
| ethbro wrote:
| From experience internally (not at Costco, but other t20
| retail), here's what happened, from most to least likely.
|
| 1. Your order type fell into an edge cast that an
| incomplete batch system -> system transfer job choked on.
| Naturally, it silently failed.
|
| 2. Inventory count mismatch.
|
| 3. Incomplete transportation handshake.
|
| Logistics looks simple from a customer perspective: (1)
| order, (2) ship, (3) receive. From a vendor perspective
| it's (1+) bulk source, (2+) distribute, (3) maintain
| consistent inventory counts, (4) receive order, (5)
| source order items from stock most efficiently, (6)
| orchestrate multi-sourced items, (7+) provision & batch
| transportation, receiving and reshipping at multiple
| legs, (8+) fulfill last mile.
|
| All while stitching together 30+ year old systems for
| each of those. And the +'d items are all semi-outside of
| the company's control. (Ever wonder why there are so many
| transportation-abstraction companies?)
|
| Which is to say, no excuse for bad service. But it's a
| bear of a problem.
|
| Incidentally, why most retail has _excellent_ customer
| support phone centers (usually onshore): they know their
| systems break a non-zero amount of time, and want the
| best touch when you need to have things fixed.
| beamatronic wrote:
| Target is okay although I often get cosmetically damaged
| packaging.
| cpascal wrote:
| > Other than BestBuy, no other retailer "gets" ecommerce
|
| Target.com is a pretty solid experience.
|
| Walmart.com is also surprisingly good.
|
| Although I'm sure people can provide horror stories for both
| retailers.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Walmart has been quite reliable for grocery pickup. I've
| tried Hy-Vee and the experience wasn't very good. Lots of
| stuff sold out or not picked. Target has given up on
| grocery curbside as well. But for household goods it works
| well. I'm trying our local supermarket curbside next so
| hopefully that will work out. I know we are in crazy times
| but I'd be really cool to get a dedicated grocery curbside
| / delivery operation with only warehouses and no stores. I
| think the UK has something like that.
| whymauri wrote:
| I'll toss Staples on to there. I ordered a chair two years
| ago. Relatively modern website, free delivery, and it
| arrived earlier than anticipated with no damage. Just make
| sure you unsubscribe from their newsletter.
|
| I also think they'll price-match.
| bluGill wrote:
| We have been trying to use Walmart for groceries, it is
| okay, but too often they substitute what we don't want.
| There is a reason we ordered mild not spicy: the kids won't
| eat spicy hot foods.
| cglace wrote:
| We have had great experiences with Krogers substitutions.
| Usually, the substitute with a greater quantity for the
| same price or better quality.
| kube-system wrote:
| I've personally had a lot of issues with Walmart.com.
|
| Their inventory data seems to be a bit messy, I've seen a
| lot of product names/images/descriptions that are clearly
| messed up, and on more than a few occasions, I've received
| a single item when the listing said it was a multi-pack.
| Also, some of the inventory counts are a bit weird --
| sometimes an item will show in-stock on the product page,
| but not in the cart, at the same time.
|
| In the past I had a lot of issues with their shipping, but
| they seem to have mostly fixed those. Stuff like those huge
| stickers over important parts of the product, or improper
| packing.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Walmart still suffers the same problem Amazon has with 3rd
| party sellers. Quality can vary greatly depending on who
| you're buying from on their platform.
|
| Target and Best Buy definitely nailed it.
| caymanjim wrote:
| newegg.com is great. They primarily sell computers and
| office equipment, but if I'm buying that stuff, it's my go-
| to. Fast delivery, fantastic customer service. If something
| is defective, they'll send you a replacement with a return
| shipping label, no questions asked. Been using them for
| nearly 20 years without a single complaint.
| rkagerer wrote:
| 10 years ago I used Newegg a ton, but with third party
| items now mixed into their store, I find shopping there a
| bit more of a dice roll.
| caymanjim wrote:
| Amazon suffers from that as well. I'm loath to buy
| anything from Amazon, Newegg, or any other retailer when
| it comes from a third party seller. As far as I know,
| that's always indicated on the product page. They don't
| hide it, but they don't aggressively inform you either.
| rfeather wrote:
| I have decent luck with Microcenter as a Newegg
| substitution. + if you live in some cities, they have
| brick and mortar
| beamatronic wrote:
| 100 percent this. I dropped NewEgg when they added third
| party sellers.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I was just comparison shopping for an HDMI adapter across
| Amazon, NewEgg and Bestbuy. Out of the 3 I found NewEgg
| still to be the best even with the 3rd party sellers
| mixed in. Amazon the quality looked super sketchy for
| some of this stuff and for Bestbuy the website had
| loading problems, an unintuitive UI for store selection
| (and put me into a store in CA for some reason even
| though I'm nowhere near there and had no VPN).
| mypalmike wrote:
| Monoprice is a good place to go for adapters and cables
| and such.
| raegis wrote:
| I always press the "Seller: Newegg" button. This way I
| never get counterfeit stuff. On the other hand,
| specifying the seller to be Amazon on Amazon.com
| sometimes yields third party products in disguise.
| AmVess wrote:
| Nordstrom does it well. I buy shirts and things and they
| arrive reasonably packaged, and include a return print out
| ready to go. Returning an item is as simple as putting the
| print out on the outside of a box and leaving it for the mail
| collector.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I had a Home Depot order delivered recently, zero padding. It
| was just a cardboard box surrounding the product, and the
| product itself had little internal packaging (inc. Lithium
| Ion batteries). I'm surprised Home Depot hasn't started fires
| before.
|
| Luckily the product I ordered worked fine, but I wasn't best
| pleased when I opened it. It was pretty obvious the
| manufacturer designed the product packaging for retail
| shelves only, and Home Depot just assumed it was shipping-
| grade protection.
| passthejoe wrote:
| My favorite from Target was eight Contigo travel mugs
| (bought for holiday gifts) that came in a very large box
| with no padding. Even though they could have clanked around
| and gotten very scratched, they were all OK. Sort of a
| miracle, but it didn't give me much confidence in
| Target.com.
|
| And you can't state quantities on the Target.com site when
| you select an item. You have to go into the cart and change
| the quantity. That's something most sites do better.
|
| Also, I understand it's a difficult time inventory-wise,
| but don't let me put stuff in my cart if you can't deliver
| it and won't let me order anything until I remove them.
| Give me a "save for later" feature ... like Amazon does.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| One thing that's weird about target is that they fulfill
| from stores. Usually when we get a shady packaging
| experience it's shipping from a Target store from some
| unusual place.
| [deleted]
| croshan wrote:
| Sure, but they handle it well.
|
| I placed an order for a pair of 35lb dumbbells, and only one
| came, and the cardboard box around it was falling apart.
|
| I called customer support, probably for the first time in my
| life, to ask wtf happened. And they explained the logistics
| issue (the dumbbells were shipped separately for some
| reason), and ended up crediting me half the cost of the
| dumbbells, even though the first wasn't really damaged.
|
| Also their dumbbells were better and cheaper than Amazon's,
| so there's that too.
| lkbm wrote:
| > (the dumbbells were shipped separately for some reason)
|
| USPS limits packages to 70 LBs. There's probably some
| special option to get around this, but for the "normal"
| shipping, that's the limit.
| ravenstine wrote:
| To be fair, the in-person shopping experience at Home Depot
| is exactly the same. They're staying true to their ethos. ;)
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I beg to differ. Rock Auto is where it's at for auto parts.
| The website is ugly as hammered shit, but it's fast, shows
| you the options grouped by rough quality level (economy/you
| cheapskate, daily driver, performance, etc), shows you what
| part to select so it _ships from the same warehouse_ as the
| parts already in your cart and saves you shipping, and
| returns are painless (disclaimer: I 've only ever done
| returns for core exchanges). I have never had a better online
| purchasing experience.
|
| And the prices are a fraction of what you pay at a brick and
| mortar place. Especially for e.g. wiper blades.
|
| Companies that "get" e-commerce are out there, but a lot of
| them are quietly and competently doing their thing in unsexy
| domains and aren't trying to eat the whole pie.
|
| Rock Auto, for instance, isn't trying to serve every idiot on
| the planet with a car. If you can't keep your lefts/rights
| and fronts/backs straight when ordering e.g. brake hoses,
| you're going to find it a frustrating experience. Putting up
| a (small) barrier to entry to keep out the least clueful
| people probably helps keep their costs down.
|
| Not affiliated, just a very happy repeat customer.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| I'll second Rock Auto. A dated looking website that Just
| Works (TM).
|
| Parts-tree another great one, focused on yard maintenance
| equipment.
|
| Ace hardware is kind of neat. I ordered some stuff as
| Christmas presents and the local store called me on the
| phone to ask if I was going to be home and where would I
| like them to put the items. I asked if they could stick
| them in the garage and maybe in some generic looking boxes
| to preserve the surprise (of being presents) and the boxes
| all showed up neatly hand wrapped in brown paper! Only one
| data point but definitely made me feel like ordering again.
| quasse wrote:
| RockAuto's easily navigable catalog is what has gotten them
| $5000+ in sales from me over the years.
|
| Autozone / NAPA try, but the catalogs are clunky and
| require many page loads to navigate to a given item. Once
| you find an item, it's a crapshoot whether the listing will
| be items that are actually for sale at a store near me.
| Half the time the first 5 items will be "generic" parts
| that don't actually fit my car anyway.
|
| RockAuto lets you drill down to the exact part you need,
| compare 5+ different brands on the spot and add it to the
| cart without ever changing pages. It's a real triumph of
| slim web design.
| racnid wrote:
| Their website is one of the clearest and easiest to
| navigate parts website I've ever come across. I just wish
| there was an equivalent for motorcycles.
| kube-system wrote:
| Bikebandit's website isn't too bad after you figure out
| how to select your bike.
| solotronics wrote:
| I like NAPA/Oreilly where you can see whats in a store and
| have them set the parts aside for you so they are there
| when you get there.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Advance and I believe Autozone also let you place orders
| for in-store pickup. At one point, Advance was putting a
| coupon code right at the top of the homepage that would
| save you 20% off your order if you did that.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| My nomination is McMaster-Carr (mcmaster.com) - They have a
| huge catalog of parts/tools yet somehow it's so intuitive
| to browse. I was a mechanical engineer in a previous life
| and McMaster's website was my bible. Step one for any new
| prototype design was to browse this site. Best case
| scenario, you could cobble together your prototype from
| various COTS (commercial off the shelf) McMaster parts. And
| if that wasn't an option, scan the catalog for necessary
| parts and raw materials. If they don't exist at McMaster,
| your design idea just got at least 10X expensive and lead
| time doubled.
| mkl wrote:
| My main experience with their site is the incredibly
| aggressive and trigger-happy bot filter. If you reload a
| page a few times due to a bad connection, they block you.
| Not "solve this captcha to continue", just "go away,
| we're not letting you in".
| sambroner wrote:
| I was always shocked by McMaster-Carr's delivery speed. I
| felt like the parts would arrive as quickly as I could
| have conceivably picked them up.
|
| This was 10 years ago now, so sort of like Amazon Prime
| before it became ubiquitous, but for materials and tools.
| However McMaster was and remains much better organized
| and much better spec-ed.
| jgust wrote:
| I have a sneaking suspicion that Amazon is re-solving
| problems that traditional supply chain companies like
| McMaster-Carr solved 1-2 decades ago. It would be
| fascinating to read a case study comparing the two.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Amazon is trying to shed all possible liability as a
| merchant and collect their 15% or whatever rent, since
| that's where the margins are. That's at odds with what
| I'm looking for as a buyer, which is a seller that will
| vet and stand behind their products.
| btrettel wrote:
| Once, circa 2006, I ordered some rubber tubing from
| McMaster-Carr in the morning. It was shipped it from New
| Jersey to western Maryland, where I lived, by that
| afternoon.
| benboughton1 wrote:
| Can anyone nominate an Australian equivalent to
| mcmaster.com ? I am prototyping something and would love
| to have a lost of available parts to troll through with
| prices.
| jbay808 wrote:
| I like McMaster-Carr, but I often hear them being held up
| as a positive UX example when, in my experience, their
| website is endlessly frustrating. They often force you
| into choosing arbitrary categories too early, break
| tabbed browsing expectations, and have a frustrating mix
| of metric and imperial measurements that can't be
| escaped. Their pricing is also generally at quite a
| premium.
|
| For example, let's say I want a piece of hollow metal
| cylinder (any metal, to be determined later based on cost
| and availability), with an ID of around 12 mm and a wall
| thickness of at least 5 mm, at least 150 mm long. It ends
| up being a needlessly frustrating experience even for
| such a simple item.
| btrettel wrote:
| Having used McMaster-Carr for over a decade, I strongly
| agree about the filtering being non-ideal and also the
| prices being high. There's an interaction between the two
| as well: You can't sort by price. Often there are many
| items meeting the specs I want but I just want to see
| which ones are the cheapest. At the moment I skim
| everything, making notes about candidates, and them
| manually compare them on price.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Yes, this exactly. This causes searches to take hours for
| simple things. Sometimes if I look in "steel" expecting
| to find something cheap, the only part matching my
| dimensions is military-grade superalloy tool steel that
| costs a fortune, so I have to go back and look again in
| "stainless steel" where there's perhaps a reasonable
| price.
| smolder wrote:
| I know what you mean, and I can say that most of the
| categorization, which may seem arbitrary, reasonably
| comes from how those items are manufactured and used
| historically. An example is pipe versus tube; they are
| measured differently and have differences in ranges of
| wall thickness, precision and so on, because different
| needs and processes developed between pipes that carry
| fluids vs structural tubing. Most but not all people are
| going to want one category or another based on intended
| use, and probably have a highly-available size/thickness
| in mind already, too.
|
| Getting things custom made is expensive, so customers are
| pressured to use what's widely available. Stocking lots
| of things not widely purchased is also expensive. These
| forces have been working for a long time to give us a
| pretty wide selection that covers most uses.
| jbay808 wrote:
| I know that pipe and tube have different specifications
| and applications -- that's specifically why I picked this
| example. But those differences don't always apply to
| _me_. I 'd prefer a UI with a check box for pipe, tube,
| or both, because sometimes I want my search to cover both
| things. Maybe I want to use a pipe as a paperweight or an
| art piece or whatever. If McMaster could accurately guess
| what I was going to use something for, my employer
| wouldn't need me.
| fireattack wrote:
| If we started to include McMaster-Carr I would also say I
| have very good experience with Digi-key and Mouser.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I hope Rock Auto never replaces their website. Sure I have
| to scroll down the whole page to find my manufacturer in
| the alphabetical sidebar listing, and then open the nested
| categories like I'm looking for a folder in Windows 3.1,
| but once I get there I find a list of parts that I know
| will fit my car arranged so I can tell the quality vs.
| price trade-offs.
|
| I used to look for parts on Advance and O'Reilly's sites,
| half of the time it seemed the search results would have
| parts that wouldn't fit my car. So I really like the way
| that RA's nested folder structure ensures the most
| important constraint (compatibility) is met during the
| search.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| I've also had great experiences with Rock Auto. I've been
| ordering the occasional part from them for about 10 years.
| Shipping can be expensive but everything comes pretty
| quick.
|
| Some parts are cheap but they're also inexpensive.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Yeah, I try to bundle things up to save on shipping. On
| the other hand, by the time I need anything, I probably
| also need wiper blades, and the price difference on just
| one wiper blade usually covers the cost of shipping.
| hathawsh wrote:
| This is why I read HN. Thank you for recommending a good
| retailer.
| [deleted]
| monksy wrote:
| Let's face it Home Depot is garbage. From my experience they
| fail completely when at the store (employees running away from
| you, ignoring you, trying to avoid being asked for help, etc).
| The store, the way it's setup, tries to agressively cut
| corners. (The default for checking out is self checkout)
|
| I went to menards and I found the experience really rewarding.
| It's great. They're not a great company ecologically, labor
| rights, etc. However, 95% of the time I have a good experience
| when asking for help and with the prices.
| malandrew wrote:
| They used to be good, but now it's worse than useless. The
| staff has become less knowledgeable over time and the quality
| of the products sold have gone way downhill.
|
| I usually now seek out specialty places that deal with just
| one part of the problems Home Depot and Lowes addresses like
| looking for a plumbing supply place that actual professional
| plumbers would use.
| monadic2 wrote:
| FWIW I just ordered a bunch of shit from home depot, it
| arrived faster than amazon could deliver it and everything I
| was looking for was in stock. I've also never had any major
| complaints in person with unhelpful staff--just the opposite.
| My only gripe with them is the self checkout you mentioned
| (why am I doing the store's work for them?), which certainly
| is not going to improve if Amazon moves into the retail
| space.
|
| I have no clue where this impression of competence on
| Amazon's behalf is coming from--I must simply have radically
| different luck with the service they provide.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| The "pro desk," garden center, and the returns desk are all
| places where I am able to have someone check me out. As you
| said, I don't work for Home Depot. However if you're
| getting penny clearance items the self checkout is the
| place to visit.
| ckosidows wrote:
| Perhaps it's different with a store like Home Depot where
| products are much bigger and perhaps harder to scan, but do
| people actually dislike self checkouts?
|
| "Doing the work for the store" seems like such a non-
| argument to me. I would much prefer to scan things myself
| as I feel I can often do it faster, and I don't have to
| wait in a line if the store only has two cashiers staffed
| at a certain time.
|
| You pump your own gas. Why is checking yourself out so much
| more controversial?
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| One possible reason is that eliminates a whole category
| of unskilled labor? (full disclosure, writing this from
| Oregon, where we can't pump our own gas to preserve
| another category of unskilled labor jobs - except right
| now, thanks COVID-19?) I personally would probably prefer
| to have a human checker for that reason, I don't notice
| much improvement in speed or ease of checking out when I
| do it myself, there's just a line for the self-checkouts
| instead...
| bluGill wrote:
| Depending on what you want you will probably have better luck
| calling (not online, a voice call) your local lumber yard. They
| deal with contractors all the time who call their orders in for
| delivery so this is business as usual. They wouldn't know how
| to help you if you walked in the door.
|
| Make sure you setup an account with a salesman. They work on
| commission, but if you know what you want they know exactly how
| to enter your order so your small order is easy to handle.
| (contractors often give them a blueprint and tell them to
| deliver materials which is work for them although it is more
| money)
| richjdsmith wrote:
| Same story happened to me last Friday. I put in an order on
| their website, met their minimum delivery order amount, and yet
| when I got the confirmation email an hour later, I found out
| 3/4 of my items were being shipped to my nearest (35min, 60km)
| home depot.
|
| I called customer service and was told it was impossible to
| change the order so all get delivered, and that it was
| impossible to cancel the order. My only recourse is to go to
| their wharehouse, pick it up, then ship it back.
|
| I don't love amazon, but they don't pull this crap on me.
| rkho wrote:
| I ordered some things from Home Depot the other day as well.
| They did not fulfill half the order, instead marking it as
| delivered. Attempting to resolve this issue, they refunded only
| 1/3rd of the missing items and then required me to go to a
| physical store to resolve the issue because their system
| literally could not fix the problem without them offering a
| physical cash refund.
|
| This is likely to do with the store which fulfilled the order;
| I've found Home Depots to be very hit or miss in their service
| quality and the location which fulfilled this order has been
| consistently bad in-person.
|
| Don't even get me started on how Home Depot uses location
| settings and keeps changing preferred stores when ordering.
| It's a nightmare.
| vernie wrote:
| I've been using eBay lately. Sellers have been consistently
| delivering in 2 days and it feels just as likely that I'll get
| fake shit as from Amazon these days.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I sell on eBay and it's pretty easy to beat Amazon. Most first
| class and priority packages arrive in under 3 days depending on
| your location to an airport. I'm right next to PDX and almost
| all of my packages go through there and end up on the other
| side of the US overnight. Those packages typically take two
| days. Also helps I ship same day so they're on a flight that
| night or the next morning.
|
| As for the fakes, they certainly exist on eBay but it's a lot
| easier to spot. If an item doesn't have good pictures, that's a
| huge red flag. I personally stay away from sellers that just
| use stock images. I want to know exactly what I'm getting.
| kube-system wrote:
| I avoid shady listings when I really need the item, but if
| I'm looking for a deal, I've never had an issue leaning on
| eBay's buyer protection. I've gotten all of my best deals
| from poorly-listed items.
| tanilama wrote:
| If Amazon has shipping delay in US, then it is unlikely other
| smaller shops can fare it better.
| owenwil wrote:
| This isn't really accurate - independent retailers have quite
| the advantage right now because they aren't constrained by
| centralized fulfillment. The reason Amazon has shipping delays
| is because:
|
| 1) Amazon has observed a massive influx of orders and
| fulfilling centralized orders requires a large amount of
| workers in fulfillment centers - Amazon is hiring more than
| 100,000 workers for this reason[1] - and getting those orders
| in and out of those warehouses takes a good chunk of logistics
| planning and time. Independent retailers don't need to deal
| with this, particularly if they're shipping direct or use their
| own facilities.
|
| 2) They use their own delivery networks for a majority of
| deliveries in cities these days to bypass sending via the
| normal postage system. The platform, Amazon Flex[2], saves them
| money on postage but likely needs to ramp up scale-Flex usually
| actually means deliveries are faster, but as order volume
| scales up, it'll slow down deliveries.
|
| Amazon is bottlenecked on both fronts: a massive influx of
| orders means needing to get those products into its warehouses,
| then actually having workers fulfill them, _and_ it needs to
| manage the shipping side, due to its reliance on Amazon Flex in
| city areas. Independent retailers just aren 't bottlenecked
| like this - they have their own set of inventory that isn't
| super broad, and they ship with normal delivery networks, which
| are generally delivering on time in North America right now.
|
| [1] https://blog.aboutamazon.com/operations/amazon-
| opening-10000...
|
| [2] https://flex.amazon.com/
| behringer wrote:
| Ebay is generally cheaper and arriving on time.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Ebay seems to be doing fine. I make about five orders a week
| through them (this week it's mostly hardware and electronics
| supplies). Having the platform truly just be a transaction
| facilitator means the hard, linearly scaling, work of actually
| shipping merchandise is distributed among tens of thousands of
| sellers instead of hundreds of warehouses.
| jshevek wrote:
| At the beginning of the pandemic, Amazon was overwhelmed by
| people panic buying or preparing for shelter in place. The
| problem was not primarily the shipping industry, it was within
| Amazon. They've since hired large numbers of people and
| deprioritized [items deemed] non-essential so that people can
| get their essential needs in a timely manner.
| StillBored wrote:
| How does amazon know what is essential?
| monkpit wrote:
| A guess: it's probably just heuristics based on things
| being panic-bought, high demand, suddenly high number of
| searches, etc. Obviously they don't "know" some subset of
| essential items, that would be difficult, error-prone, and
| they would inevitably miss certain things which would lead
| to complaints and bad press.
| jshevek wrote:
| _Edit: I thought you said "determine" rather than "know",
| answered accordingly below. Of course they don't "know",
| that's not a helpful question._
|
| The same way everyone does when trying to solve this
| problem systemically (vs individually), by making imperfect
| decisions and leaning on categories.
|
| My UVC lamp was delayed. I think that's more important than
| someone else's "third month" bunker food, but what are you
| going to do.
| grimjack00 wrote:
| At a high level, at least, anything in categories like
| "Groceries", "Health Care", "Personal Hygiene".
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My wife orders from walmart.ca often. It's generally good but
| still feels lower quality than Amazon (which has its own issues,
| yes). Last week they shipped an entirely wrong item. So my kids
| aren't getting their Duplo set for Easter.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >Amazon Isn't the Only Shop Online
|
| They sort of are at the moment, at least here in greater
| London...
|
| My normal groceries company have cancelled online orders silently
| and will not deliver anything. They can't even update their
| websites with new opening times.
|
| The local DIY (B&Q) store are taking order for essential items
| only (loft ladders and plants are essential, but not light bulbs
| or fuses wtf?)
|
| Amazon randomly added a month to all their delivery _estimates_
| but everything is still coming in a few days and I can get
| whatever I want.
|
| To be honest, it makes sense to manage infrastructure of supply
| centrally. That's the genius of amazon, not retail but supply.
| While other companies can barely ring up items, Amazon connects
| buyers to sellers before either know the trade will happen.
| sneak wrote:
| A lot of the things I used to buy on Amazon I buy on eBay instead
| using "buy it now". Even free shipping items are frequently less
| than Amazon.
|
| I've already phased out AWS, I hope to stop using amazon.com by
| the end of the year. I don't like doing business with military
| contractors.
| bradenb wrote:
| While I respect your right to not give "military contractors"
| your business, I just don't see how you can use it as
| justification. The military is a resource and isn't inherently
| good or bad.
| malandrew wrote:
| FWIW it's the military that is now building all the field
| hospitals and sending hospital ships to help with COVID-19
| bdcravens wrote:
| I assume you use Linux for your operating system then? Both
| Apple and Microsoft do business with the military.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| One reason previously for using Amazon was recommendations for
| example their "Customers who viewed this item also viewed: [list
| of alternative items]." Unfortunately the recommendations boxes
| like the "Customers who viewed this item also viewed" have been
| completely removed, with no real replacement except "sponsored."
|
| I don't consider sponsored ads a replacement for actual
| recommendations based on real people's buying behavior. Obviously
| Amazon wants us to though so they can double-dip. Personally I am
| buying less, not more, because I cannot find things.
|
| But maybe it is more profitable to Amazon for us to spend longer
| looking, more sponsor spot revenue. Talk about perverse
| incentives, make more money from a slower shopping experience.
| thebean11 wrote:
| The estimates on Amazon right now seem way longer than the
| reality. I'm getting all my packages in 2-3 days despite Amazon
| estimating a week or more.
| mritun wrote:
| Same for me. 3 items earlier estimated for Apr 27 are already
| sitting in a box in my living room.
| frank086 wrote:
| Same. I put in a big order figuring if I have a three week
| turn around, better buy three weeks of stuff. Two days later
| I see the poor delivery guy unloading all my stuff.
|
| Now I am an inadvertent horder.
| xkjkls wrote:
| Delivery estimates are very much an underpromise, overdeliver
| thing, so that makes sense.
| colmvp wrote:
| In Canada at least, some Prime shipping estimates are ONE
| MONTH.
|
| At the end of the day, I'm not complaining because prioritizing
| medical supplies is prudent but I have to imagine that a lot of
| people are choosing to use alternative sources like Order-and-
| Pickup instead.
| mod wrote:
| I'm in the south: shipping for my item was 29 days.
| gnulinux wrote:
| I live in Boston. I seem to be getting most things in around 5
| days, even though Amazon estimates 2 weeks. Almost everything
| was delivered before their estimates. But everything is still
| slower than usual (normally, I'd get things delivered in 1 to 3
| days)
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably depends on the item. I'm outside of Boston and I
| don't think any order has taken longer than 2 days--other
| than a couple I picked delayed shipping in exchange for a
| digital credit. (And even those arrived on the early side of
| their estimate.)
| irrational wrote:
| Not me. Amazon is estimating 2-3 weeks on most things now, and
| so far are sticking by their estimates.
| eshyong wrote:
| I'm guessing a lot of this is location dependent, and based
| on warehouse-proximity.
| bradlys wrote:
| It's also based on the items you're ordering. Some stuff
| we've ordered arrives within a few days or less. Other
| items that I've ordered (tools) has taken about 3 weeks to
| arrive. Some items keep getting pushed back. I would cancel
| and buy elsewhere but I'd pay a lot in shipping since these
| aren't all items I can buy from one place online.
|
| I have shopped online for other items though. I bought some
| insoles for really cheap from a UK based bicycle store, the
| items got here in less than a week... all the way from the
| UK! It's not like all shipping is broken down - just
| Amazon.
| xkjkls wrote:
| Yeah, Amazon has stopped issuing purchase orders for a
| huge number of non-essentials, which probably contributes
| to really high delivery estimates. If anything is out of
| stock at their warehouse, they have no idea when they
| might have room to restock.
| irrational wrote:
| That's the interesting thing. I'm located in a major city
| with at least one enormous Amazon warehouse nearby. Before
| the pandemic started we would usually receive our orders
| the same day.
| jasonv wrote:
| Latest order estimated delivery in 10 days but everything came
| in 2-3. In CA.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Can someone please explain to me like I'm 5 why adults have to be
| told that other retail outlets exist besides Amazon?
|
| If you are one of these people, please kindly explain to me how
| you forgot there are other shops.
| kube-system wrote:
| Many people who shop online have only become online shoppers
| _after_ Amazon became the dominant online retailer. For some
| people, Amazon _is_ online shopping.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > please kindly explain to me how you forgot there are other
| shops.
|
| I will provide one anecdata. Often times the first place I look
| for the existence of an item is Amazon. That is if I want a
| certain cable, I do not open and search 5-10 different places
| (overstock, target, bestbuy et al). I just go to amazon and
| choose from what they have. There may be better, there may be
| cheaper, but unlikely with a sufficient margin to compensate
| for the overhead of searching more places, learning more
| nuances (return policy, shipping) etc.
| throwanem wrote:
| For the same reason people who use Facebook tend to forget
| about people who don't. Convenience is sticky. Amazon, like
| Facebook, spends a lot to subsidize that convenience and thus
| that stickiness.
|
| It's the online equivalent of the Wal-Mart effect.
| chillacy wrote:
| Well... there's a thing called the "literal meaning" and
| sometimes there's another "figurative meaning"... and as you
| grow up you'll end up knowing the figurative meaning of a
| phrase quicker until it's second nature.
| chadash wrote:
| pro tip: I find that when things sell out on Amazon, there is
| often a lag before it sells out on sites that cater to
| businesses. The first place to check is staples.com, but I've
| even started placing a few orders with restaurant supply stores
| and such.
| jdlyga wrote:
| Well then give us a list! Nearly everything else I've checked is
| either out of stock or doesn't deliver to my house.
| markkanof wrote:
| Maybe not the type of items you are shopping for, but I just
| ordered a sink and faucet from build.com and got free 2-day
| delivery.
| gambler wrote:
| Most chain stores and even some local stores have online
| storefront and still ship items. It's a good time to support
| them. You don't want to live in the world where Amazon is the
| only game left in town.
|
| Also, Ebay.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I was going to say how Amazon might as well be the only guys
| online but this article is really good and offers real
| alternatives. Very cool.
| ww520 wrote:
| Is it possible to ask for price reduction or refund on the Prime
| membership due to the long delivery time? The point of Prime is
| mostly moot without the speedy delivery.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I cancelled my prime for the time being and it automatically
| refunded the 12.99
| jshevek wrote:
| Edit: Article can be read here:
|
| http://archive.md/k3zNE
|
| It seems like WSJ.com should not be the link used without a
| follow-up link giving access to the whole community.
|
| > _Are paywalls ok?
|
| It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have
| workarounds._
| rsync wrote:
| Mcmaster-carr is fantastic:
|
| https://www.mcmaster.com/
|
| Very simple UI with access to technical diagrams. Good pricing.
| If I order before noon or 2pm or something, here in the bay area
| I receive the items next day.
|
| I wish all web stores could be like this.
| xkjkls wrote:
| It's actually very similar to the UI you get if you go through
| the business section of Amazon:
| https://www.amazon.com/b2b/info/amazon-business?layout=landi...
| ncheek wrote:
| McMaster has a powerfully simple website. You can get to any
| item with mcmaster.com/<part number>. They often provide 3D
| models of their parts. You can even paste in a list of items to
| quickly bulk-add to your cart. It just works.
|
| Their customer service is also second to none. I've never had
| the phone ring more than once before being answered by a real
| person. And they'll respond 24/7 to phone calls or emails. Oh,
| and they've accepted returns a year after I bought something,
| no questions asked.
|
| In the Atlanta area they usually deliver same-day via courier,
| or you can drive over to their warehouse for will call.
|
| McMaster can often be more expensive than other distributors,
| especially for things like metal stock (I recommend price-
| comparing with onlinemetals.com or midweststeelsupply.com but
| be careful about Midwest Steel's processing times). But you're
| paying for the service and ease of use.
|
| Probably the biggest problem I have with McMaster is their lack
| of insight into shipping cost. They don't give you even an
| estimate of the shipping before you check out, it just gets
| added once they ship. I will say their shipping prices have
| always been fair but it can be scary to buy something not
| knowing what it will cost.
| spacemark wrote:
| I've probably put in 100 McMaster orders over the last year
| via work, side gig, and home projects. My take on this is
| that their prime customers (businesses) do not put shipping
| costs in their top 5 or maybe even top 10 priorities.
| Businesses pushing out products or engaged in rapid
| prototyping or meeting a deadline are much more concerned
| with speed, and McMaster __always __beats Amazon in shipping
| time to my workplace (usually less than 24 hours from order
| to delivery, no joke). Their customer also values accurate
| technical data so they 've put a lot of effort into CAD
| models and are very responsive to customer service calls.
|
| In short, they know their customer persona. I wouldn't hold
| my breath that they'll add upfront shipping costs any time
| soon!
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| This exactly matches my experience. I run a prototyping
| shop in the LA area. I get items the very same day from
| McMaster. That kind of feedback loop is priceless. They
| ship with DGC for most deliveries, and DGC is usually cost-
| competitive with any other service.
| loser777 wrote:
| I've observed this with big and small business alike:
|
| + bought a baking steel direct from the seller (shipping time ~5
| days vs. 1 month+, so I canceled the amazon order)
|
| + monitor out of stock for over a week on amazon (in stock at
| bnh, shipping time ~4 days)
|
| + monitor arm I didn't even bother looking at on amazon (shipping
| time direct from seller ~2 days)
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| I never heard of "baking steel". Looking online, it seems to be
| like a pizza stone? If yes, that's cool!
| Shebanator wrote:
| it is a pizza stone, but metal. I have one and it is super
| heavy, which makes it inconvenient to use, but it does
| improve the crust quality of oven-baked pizzas.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| bnh?
| Arcsech wrote:
| https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ presumably. I've ordered some
| things from there, and generally had a good experience, with
| a few notes:
|
| - For large purchases at least, they are very scrupulous
| about sending tax documents to your home state to make sure
| the sales tax gets paid. This is probably a social good
| overall, but unusual for internet retailers and may take some
| folks by surprise.
|
| - They follow a Jewish holiday schedule, including the
| Sabbath, and do not take orders on the Sabbath (in New York's
| time zone, at least). Again, not a negative, but unusual for
| modern businesses, especially online ones.
| tzs wrote:
| * They collect sales tax now.
|
| In 2018 in the case South Dakota v. Wayfair the Supreme
| Court overturned the 1992 case (Quill v. North Dakota) that
| had ruled that states could not force merchants with no
| physical presence in the state to collect sales tax on mail
| order sales to state residents. If a company is doing
| enough online business with customers in a state, that
| state can now force the merchant to collect tax.
|
| If you get a B&H store credit card [1] and use it for your
| B&H orders (which is all you can use it for since it only
| works at B&H) they give you an instant reward at checkout
| equal to whatever your sales tax was. In effect then, if
| you get and use that card there B&H pays your sales tax
| transparently for you.
|
| * With two exception for the most part online shoppers can
| ignore the Jewish holiday closings. The website still works
| so you can still shop. I _think_ you can even still place
| items in your cart and maybe submit the order. Orders just
| are not processed until the holiday ends.
|
| Most of the holidays are just a day, so if you hit one of
| those its not really a big delay.
|
| The two exceptions are Passover and Sukkot. Those are each
| one week long. Passover is in March or April, and Sukkot is
| in September or October. That's long enough to be
| irritating.
|
| [1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/credit-cards
| ghaff wrote:
| Last time I ordered from them, I think they collected the
| sales tax. I'm not sure when this started; I am a long-time
| customer but they're not a store I tend to purchase from
| frequently.
|
| I like them overall and I tend to prefer using them to
| Amazon for AV type of purchases.
| kube-system wrote:
| 2018:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair%2C_
| Inc...
| hsitz wrote:
| Doesn't just about everywhere collect sales tax online
| now?
|
| BHPhotoVideo is my go-to place for tech and music stuff.
| I got their affiliated payboo credit card that pays the
| sales tax for you, saves me that 10% on every order.
| deadbunny wrote:
| I assume it's B&H Photo https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
| chrisweekly wrote:
| thanks! (probably right)
| nkkollaw wrote:
| Sure, Amazon might not be the only one, but every time I tried to
| buy somewhere else, something happened.
|
| They charged me twice, charged me to never sent me the product
| and forcing me to waste 2 weeks, sent to the wrong address, etc.
|
| Amazon seems to be the only one that can actually do their job
| properly without hassles.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| I really felt this. Seeing things go out-of-stock or become
| unavailable for months was a strong reminder of how things used
| to be online - when I purchased different types of items from
| different independent web retailers. I went searching for many of
| them, most are gone.
|
| Does anyone remember Pricewatch? Old school computer parts
| sellers like CompGeeks? Those were really interesting times.
| tanyatik wrote:
| Is it even ethical to shop on Amazon for non-essentials these
| days? There are big concerns amid worker safety.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/technology/coronavirus-am...
| xkjkls wrote:
| I'm not sure these concerns are unique to any other business
| with a warehouse, however.
| bombledmonk wrote:
| I just bought something from Best Buy online when Amazon said the
| same item was in stock, but would not arrive until April 27th. BB
| said it be here Thursday, though is usually a day early because
| of proximity to the warehouse.
| manigandham wrote:
| http://archive.is/k3zNE
| bluGill wrote:
| I always search for alternative sellers. They are more likely to
| have someone who knows the product. A plumbing supplier will know
| something about pipes and I have some reason to trust them when
| they give advantages to their different price levels. I don't
| need 200 different brands of 1/2 inch pipe connections, I need
| the 3 different levels of pressure they are rated for, and the
| choice of material they are made from. They also tend to provide
| reasonable sorting so that I can find what I need without
| scrolling for ages.
| blensor wrote:
| I have started to fall back to a shopping site run by our postal
| service [1] which has been trying for several months through TV
| ads to get people to use the more regional shopping site rather
| than Amazon. I guess they could not have hoped for a better
| scenario than a countrywide lockdown paired with shipping delays
| at Amazon
|
| [1] shoepping.at
| derrekl wrote:
| I emailed a local comic shop that's closed to the public, but I
| was able to order $100 worth of trade paperbacks. Got it 2 days
| later. No "online" shop, but still worked. As best you can, try
| to spend money with the local stores you used to go to.
| olafure wrote:
| I used to use Amazon a lot. The two big factor were pricing and
| reviews.
|
| Today their review system is massively rigged and can't be
| trusted.
| beamatronic wrote:
| Reading this entire thread, something became very clear to me:
| there is STILL a lot of room for improvement to be made for
| online e-commerce. Someone should invent a local-first inventory-
| first Amazon
| sneak wrote:
| Like a local delivery-only costco, perhaps?
| CodeSheikh wrote:
| Amazon's (+Wholefood) supply-chain failure is an eye-opener for
| me during COVID-19 crisis. I hate to acknowledge my dependability
| on Amazon Prime while living in a big city. I am not sure how I
| will break my habit but I know for a fact that I won't be
| ordering everything from Amazon Prime in the future.
|
| For a company that commands e-commerce space in year 2020, it is
| really frustrating to find this workflow while ordering from WF
| while using Amazon's app, it is a joke and UI/UX 101 blunder. You
| add items to your cart. They run out of inventory. Items
| disappear from your cart. Either you place your order assuming
| all items were in your cart or you don't get a delivery slot and
| you have to add those items again. Why can't they just borrow the
| same feature from Amazon.com where unavailable items move
| conveniently to "Save later" section?
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| paywall, whatever :(
|
| yep, amazon has been useless lately - ebay, on the other hand,
| all those independent sellers, very responsive!
| jshevek wrote:
| http://archive.md/k3zNE
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| thank you
| Diederich wrote:
| http://archive.md/k3zNE
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| thank you
| Diederich wrote:
| Help requested.
|
| My wife, who is in her 50s, is immunocompromised, and she also
| has a history of fast escalating and difficult to treat
| respiratory problems. We are and have been (for the past 32 days)
| treating this bug very carefully. If she catches it, she has a
| very good chance of not surviving it.
|
| Our son and I are at less risk, but we can easily bring this bug
| home.
|
| We've been having more and more trouble getting food. We have a
| fair quantity of emergency supplies, but we'd rather not tap into
| those.
|
| At first it was the various delivery options: instacart, various
| others, but they became less usable. Early last week we started
| doing Amazon Prime Now, which allowed us to place and pay for
| orders at Whole Foods, then wait in the parking lot for them to
| put the orders in our trunk.
|
| Over the past few days, this has gotten less viable. We'd find
| ourselves driving 50 miles to pickup a $30 order.
|
| So, we're open to suggestions. We live in Mountain View, the SF
| Bay Area.
|
| We have been able to buy quite a bit of chicken and beef, and we
| have a 50 pound bag of flour coming in, so we're certainly not in
| any danger of starvation.
|
| It's just kind of a low-grade anxiety that kind of sucks.
|
| Thanks!
|
| PS: We have a pretty rigorous decontamination process that
| everything goes through before it comes into the house, so we
| feel pretty good about that.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I'm on the east coast, but I'm participating in a mutual aid
| network that does exactly this kind of thing. Try googling your
| local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (I think
| you're in Silicon Valley DSA's territory). Each chapter is
| independent and not great at communication with each other, but
| I found a web page that said SV DSA is doing grocery delivery
| mutual aid for elevated risk people. I don't want to post it
| here because I don't want them to get trolled, but it's easily
| to google.
|
| I only mentioned DSA because I'm member of the national org,
| but there are probably many other organizations doing similar
| work. Please be safe and stay healthy! Good luck!
|
| Edit: Just want to emphasize to people in a similar situation,
| that the key words to search for are "Mutual Aid" on google,
| facebook, and twitter if you don't know someone already
| connected to an organization. Many of these orgs are also
| looking for volunteers.
| julianramirez wrote:
| We've been using a meal delivery service like Blue Apron for
| several years now and have increased our order from 3 nights to
| 7 nights. We still use grocery delivery for snacks and other
| meals, but it's been a great having dinners taken care of.
| Diederich wrote:
| We have been avoiding prepared meals until there is clearer
| data about how safe they can be.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I hear Sigonas Market has their own delivery service. I go to
| their store in Redwood City and at the Stanford Shopping
| Center, but dunno if they'd deliver to or have shops in MV.
| Prices are quite good on some items, but they're not full-
| service (no meat, I think).
| RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote:
| Expensive options:
|
| - Subscribe to meal kit services like HelloFresh or Blue Apron
| (or both).
|
| - Buy from other mail order grocers like Imperfect Foods, Omaha
| Steaks, etc.
|
| - Hire someone with TaskRabbit to do the shopping for you,
| particularly from grocers that don't deliver (i.e. Trader
| Joe's, smaller specialty grocers, etc.).
| Diederich wrote:
| We actually have bought a fair amount of meat from Omaha
| Steaks.
|
| > TaskRabbit
|
| I had not considered that, we'll take a look. Thanks!
| [deleted]
| pottertheotter wrote:
| My parents live in Sunnyvale and my mother is also
| immunocompromised, so they're going through the same thing.
| They have some people helping them get things from stores, and
| I'm absolutely certain they would be happy to help out your
| family. Feel free to reach out (email on profile) and I'll make
| sure you're taken care of.
| swsieber wrote:
| > we have a fair quantity of emergency supplies.
|
| If you won't use them now, when will you? Are we talking days,
| weeks or months?
| smileysteve wrote:
| When someone in the house gets sick and nobody is supposed to
| leave because they've been exposed.
| swsieber wrote:
| Well, that's I ask about duration the food supply will
| last. If you have a 1 week supply, then yeah, don't dip in.
| If you have a 3 month supply, then I'd be a little more
| open to it (personally).
|
| I'm pretty much fine with it as long as I think it's
| reasonable that I won't deplete more than some fraction of
| it before I can top it off.
| Diederich wrote:
| There are few universal truths, but one of them is this:
| Things can always get worse. (Even if that might be unlikely
| at any given time.) At this moment, we have enough normal
| food to not need to dip into the emergency stuff, though it's
| getting more challenging. Plus, we rather prefer normal food.
|
| Basically, we don't consider our current situation an
| emergency yet.
| airstrike wrote:
| Consider soylent or other meal replacement items and military
| rations for emergency.
|
| Stock up on non-perishable grains, pasta, tomato sauce and
| canned fish. And I really mean stock up - at least 3-4 weeks
| worth of meals.
|
| Not in the SF Bay Area, but WF through the Amazon app is still
| what's been working for us, though I have to log in repeatedly
| to find a delivery window available...
| Diederich wrote:
| Thanks for your response.
|
| We do have a fair amount of such emergency supplies,
| primarily in the form of protein bars, but a lot of other
| things as well. We would rather leave those be until (and if)
| there's an actual legit emergency for us to face.
|
| I think the Whole Foods via Amazon is still working, it's
| just extremely over-used in the bay area, so the orders we
| actually manage to get through are very small.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I find the chocolate Soylent drink to be quite yummy now
| and then, especially for breakfast (far above what my
| standards would be in an emergency) and Amazon is showing
| delivery this Friday to my apartment in SF.
| justforyou wrote:
| This is an actual legit emergency.
| Diederich wrote:
| > This is an actual legit emergency.
|
| No disagreement; remember, we consider every box that
| arrives as potentially life threatening. And we're quite
| aware of the local, national and global scope and impact.
| tehlike wrote:
| I live in MTV, and I have helped a neighbor who was going
| through chemo once last week (so roughly in similar situation
| from immunity pov, her family does not leave home for same
| reason), and would be happy to help you. Email in profile.
|
| I stop by costco once every two weeks, and would not mind
| picking up some stuff for you.
|
| Like another commenter mentioned, nextdoor is fairly decent for
| getting help, you can find highschoolers doing runs for their
| neighbors.
|
| Small side note: it's kind of hard finding some staples -
| toilet paper, eggs, etc, so make sure you are aware of it.
| Diederich wrote:
| That's very kind of you, we'll keep it in mind! Many thanks.
| azakai wrote:
| Aside from Whole Foods, Amazon also has Amazon Prime Now (go to
| https://primenow.amazon.com/ and pick store: Amazon). They have
| a lot of staple foods there, and sometimes they have more
| availability than Whole Foods. (I'm guessing there might be
| different bottlenecks at Whole Foods stores and Amazon
| warehouses.)
|
| Another option are restaurant deliveries. Those are easy to get
| (they're happy to get the orders!). Up to you how you feel
| about the risk, but all the experts I've read say you can
| reduce the danger there to something comparable to grocery
| delivery (mainly to discard the original packages and you can
| also reheat the food).
| wear_a_mask wrote:
| I am not allowed to post because Dang is kind of a dick, but I
| can tell you that you should go out and shop with PPE at local
| Lunardi's markets. They are really doing a great job, have lots
| of inventory, and enforce social distancing.
|
| Wear a mask and gloves, come in to your house, strip down and
| wash/throw everything away. Delivery is just not going to work.
|
| Conversely, you could post on CL offering $100 cash (Venmo,
| square) to someone who can get groceries for you.
|
| Hopefully a shadow-mod sees this and lets it appear.
| Cerium wrote:
| Instacart releases slots throughout the night. 2am to 5am are
| great for getting one. There are many currently lesser known
| delivery systems - search for ones targeting minorities. For
| example Yamimeal (despite having meal in the name - they do
| groceries). Also, buy bigger orders if you can. I have been
| getting at least a couple hundred dollars at once, good for
| 7-10 days. I would get more at once, but I want to eat some
| vegetables.
| Diederich wrote:
| > throughout the night
|
| We haven't tried at very odd hours as you suggest; we'll give
| it a try, thank you.
| shadowoflight wrote:
| My mother-in-law's strategy for getting a slot with Wal-
| Mart grocery pickup has been to pre-fill her in-app cart in
| the evening, and set an alarm to wake up a few minutes
| before the window to place the order and get a pickup slot
| opens up (I think somewhere in the 12:00-2:00am timeframe).
| This may be applicable for placing Instacart orders (and
| the like) as well, unless they require you to pick an
| available slot _before_ populating your cart...
| williamdclt wrote:
| I don't know if they can be delivered, but frozen vegetable
| can be kept forever and are often better than "fresh"
| supermarket vegetable because they are frozen right after
| being picked, so they actually are fresher.
|
| My only source is my mom though, you might want to double-
| check this claim
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| Personally I have been utilizing Costco same day delivery
| powered by Instacart. The next available delivery day is
| usually 5 or so days out but you can modify your order until
| they actually start physically shopping so I just add groceries
| all week once I have my delivery day. I start a new order the
| day my last order arrives so I have a constant flow of fresh
| groceries every 5 days. Totally affordable (free delivery and
| only slightly marked up over sticker prices) and I haven't left
| my house in 3 weeks. Just make sure you setup replacements as
| I'd say 15% of items I choose are out of stock. Instacart now
| leaves your groceries at your front door and sends you an SMS
| so you don't even have to interact with anyone.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| For produce, eggs and chicken, consider a "CSA" -- Community
| Supported Agriculture:
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CSAS-THAT-DELIVER-TO-...
| ipsum2 wrote:
| I'm happy to purchase groceries for you, I'm in the same area.
| Email is in the profile.
|
| For other people who are also in a similar scenario: NextDoor
| and local FB groups are great for this.
| Diederich wrote:
| Wow thanks! We might take you up on that, very much
| appreciated.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Definitely try alternate services. We had much more luck with
| local stores than with Prime Now. In our area, Prime Now for
| Amazon has never had a delivery window, Prime Now for Whole
| Foods rarely does, but the local Fred Meyer has delivery
| windows open up regularly, often for same-day delivery. Also
| check Albertson's, Safeway, Target, Walmart, Shipt, and any
| other service. Talk to local non-chain or small-chain stores
| and see if they have any options; I've found that several
| places that don't normally delivery are happy to deliver in the
| current situation, especially for a tip. That goes for
| restaurants, pharmacies, and many other services. In some
| areas, TaskRabbit and similar are still operating, and "pick up
| XYZ for me" tasks are very common. And if all else fails, ask
| around for someone willing to pick things up and drop them off
| for you, and pay them well.
|
| Also, this may depend on your financial situation, but if you
| can, don't make small orders; make large orders less often.
| (This is true all the time, but it's especially true right
| now.) Then, even if you have to drive a long distance for a
| pickup or pay a larger delivery fee, you don't have to do it as
| often.
| urxvtcd wrote:
| You could try replacing some meals with Huel or whatever.
| whymauri wrote:
| J. Kenji Lopez-Alt wrote a really good COVID-19 Food Safety
| Guide [0]. You may find it useful when preparing food at home
| or dealing with food delivery. He's also really active on
| Twitter and Reddit, so you can probably ask him more specific
| questions or even this question and he'll reply with some good,
| professional advice.
|
| [0] https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-
| coronavi...
| Diederich wrote:
| Beautiful, this is great. I really appreciate it.
| orchard_vkm wrote:
| Great resource. Thanks very much for sharing!
| credit_guy wrote:
| Some restaurant suppliers have opened their online store to
| individuals. I can't speak for California, but in New York City
| we just shopped yesterday on baldor[1]. For most items the
| minimum quantity is way to high for a single family (e.g. for
| potatoes you can only order 50 lbs or so). But you can still
| find some stuff. It's not a very pleasant online shopping
| experience, but it'll do for now.
|
| [1] https://www.baldorfood.com/
| gwittel wrote:
| I am in MV.
|
| Unfortunately most online things are overwhelmed. They don't
| have enough shoppers. You can keep checking for a slot opening
| up, but its a challenge and hard to plan for. Are you
| specifically looking for fresh items, or are there particular
| things you need?
|
| Staples are usually available, and you can sometimes get them
| from smaller vendors online. At least those you can plan ahead
| for a future delivery. For some staples I've had luck with
| Target and random online (usually specialty/gourmet) sellers.
|
| For fresh items, its harder -- either get lucky with online or
| go =/. You can try the smaller chains as they are lower foot
| traffic or in some cases are better at rate limiting customers.
| I've had luck with Ava's downtown (they also have early hours
| for senior and/or immunocompromised). Nijiya is rate limiting,
| as is Trader Joes (expect 30+ min line though). Nob Hill has
| been OK, they also have special pre-packaged boxes for seniors
| and at risk customers. They are first come/first serve, and
| have mixes of staples/fresh foods. They say they're available
| via e-cart as well, but I haven't tried. I've had to book Nob
| Hill ~1 week ahead (and didn't get everything). Dittmer's is
| also rate limiting (but sounds like you're good on meats).
|
| As a last resort -- the MV farmer's market opens an early for
| seniors and immunocompromised (so either 8 or 8:30, I can't
| remember and its not listed online). I've been ~9 and its
| busier than I'd like. They're trying to enforce line spacing
| and do limit number of people in booths. Some booths only sell
| pre-bagged items held behind the counter (e.g. apples from
| Rainbow).
|
| As a last resort -- maybe a shared grocery need list with
| friends/neighbors? Someone can pick up an extra item or two
| when they're out. We've been doing that at times and following
| usual safety procedures afterward.
|
| Take care!
| Diederich wrote:
| I'm working (at home!) at the moment, so I can't reply
| properly right now, but thank you for all of this!
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Rose Market on El Camino across from Castro Street also has
| good groceries, just don't carry paper towels, toilet paper,
| etc. But if you just want food they're usually well-stocked.
| gwittel wrote:
| Ace Hardware is doing curbside pickup. Cost Plus World Market
| is as well (they sell random pantry goods).
| iandanforth wrote:
| https://www.goodeggs.com/sfbay/home - Can be busy but slots are
| opening up
|
| https://zeroshop.co/ - Limited selection but good availability
|
| Can't speak to if they deliver to you, but both do in Menlo
| Park.
| rb2k_ wrote:
| We've had no issues getting same Whole Foods deliveries via
| Amazon in Menlo Park. We just had to refresh a few times over
| the course of 15 minutes or so and always got a slot.
| Animats wrote:
| Costco is still shipping. I just ordered about $135 worth of
| stuff, including fruit, bread, milk, and hand cleaner, for
| delivery today.
| djrogers wrote:
| That depends entirely where you live - around me, this is
| aboslutely not true for all intents and purposes (no delivery
| windows available, or no products available, or both).
| graeme wrote:
| > Over the past few days, this has gotten less viable. We'd
| find ourselves driving 50 miles to pickup a $30 order.
|
| You might consider making tiers of food. And maybe get a
| standup freezer if you have the space/budget:
|
| Tier 1: fast perishable fruits/vegetables, e.g. bananas. You
| buy these in quantity at the store, but accept you'll run out
| between trips Tier 2: root vegetables and other long lasting
| produce. You buy in quantity and store in a cool, dark place.
| Should last a while Tier 3: frozen meat, frozen nuts, frozen
| vegetables. Frozen sliced bread Tier 4: canned fish, canned
| fruit, canned vegetables. Canned meat/jerky
|
| I'm Canadian. My grandma had a root cellar in the basement.
| Tier 1 was basically out of the question every winter for a
| portion of her life
|
| You more or less arrange things as a tradeoff between tier 1,
| and trips to the store, which are both costly and increase
| exposure odds.
|
| You also then keep checking all delivery options and look for
| alternate qaya to keep tier up. But tiers 2 and 3 are fairly
| decent.
|
| There's also bulk meal cooking + freezing after a store run.
| This is where the freezer comes in handy again.
|
| If you have a backyard, also a good time to experiment with
| gardening.
|
| It sounds like you're already doing a good job of having
| emergency stockpiles. Am hopeful this might give you some more
| ideas for how to make the long term stockpile more palatable in
| between orders.
| alleyshack wrote:
| You don't specify why Instacart "became less usable", though if
| your experience is like mine I'd guess it's a combination of
| delivery windows being a full week out and the results being
| somewhat unreliable between replacements/out of stock. What's
| been working for my household is to make the Instacart order
| knowing it won't be delivered for at least a week, and use that
| time to fill out the order as needed. We're not to this point
| yet but I've also thought about doing a rolling window (i.e.,
| make one order with a delivery window of next Saturday, then
| start another one in two days with a delivery for next Monday,
| etc) so there's always something coming in.
|
| Another suggestion, which I have not tested yet personally,
| would be to look up small grocers in your area. If you're
| willing to drive to pick up your shopping, a small grocer may
| be willing to prepick your order and have it ready for you in
| the parking lot without an intermediary.
|
| A third option would be to check for local milkman deliveries,
| since many of them deliver more than just milk. A quick search
| for the Bay Area brings up "Bay Area Milkman" and "Milkman SF".
| Again, haven't tried them so can't vouch for them, but I'm
| keeping similar options in my own back pocket if/when we need
| them.
| impendia wrote:
| > a small grocer may be willing to prepick your order and
| have it ready for you in the parking lot without an
| intermediary.
|
| This is what I did. A small, upscale grocery near me started
| offering curbside pickup: you send in an order in the
| morning, get called to arrange payment in the afternoon,
| drive there the same day, and they drop off your groceries at
| your car. Worked perfectly. Yum.
|
| Indeed, prominently advertised on their website:
| https://www.rosewoodmarket.com/grocery-curbside-pickup/
|
| Unfortunately this is in a different state. But maybe
| Mountain View/Palo Alto/Sunnyvale/etc. has something similar?
| Where do all the vegans and serious foodies shop? I'd try
| there.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > You don't specify why Instacart "became less usable",
| though if your experience is like mine I'd guess it's a
| combination of delivery windows being a full week out
|
| I can't get a delivery window _at all_ in Instacart right
| now. I can 't get pickup of delivery from any grocery store
| in northern New Jersey right now.
| alleyshack wrote:
| Oh yikes. Mine's been iffy, but looking a full week out
| I've usually been able to find something. I suppose I
| should consider my area fortunate for that.
|
| I don't know if either of my other suggestions are of any
| use to you, but I genuinely wish you luck in your search.
| MBlume wrote:
| Check out immediately after midnight, this is what's worked
| for us.
| andrewblossom wrote:
| I've experienced the same in northern NJ. No available
| delivery/pick-up slots from any providers.
| Diederich wrote:
| Ok, this is all very useful, thank you kindly.
| zapstar wrote:
| I have been very impressed with ordering online at Target. Many
| items that my local grocery store did not have were able to be
| shipped to me in 2 days. I hope maybe this can help with your
| situation, at least as far as non-perishable food is concerned.
|
| (They do have warnings on every product now about potentially
| being out of stock, but so far, they've been able to fulfill
| every order I've made.)
| jefftk wrote:
| Have you considered buying from stores that normally target
| commercial businesses? They generally have a lot more slack
| right now with restaurants not running. The minimum order size
| is kind of high, but if you buy non-perishables it might be
| good? https://www.webstaurantstore.com is what I've used.
| Diederich wrote:
| My wife has tried that but so far she's run into the 'must be
| a restaurant' wall. We'll try
| https://www.webstaurantstore.com , many thanks.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| When I was in San Jose, there was a "Cash and Carry"
| foodservice store where one could just walk in and browse
| the food (I once randomly met the properietor of Psycho
| Donuts there, looking for new flavor ideas.) It appears to
| be operating under a slightly different brand now, but
| seems to be open the the public still?
|
| https://www.smartfoodservice.com/locations/store/san-
| jose-57...
|
| Looks like there's a click-and-carry option, but no
| deliveries unless you Instacart.
| caymanjim wrote:
| It sounds like you're shopping with alarming frequency, almost
| daily. Why so much? I stocked up over a month ago because it
| was clear this was coming, and while I've supplemented a little
| bit with one delivery and one shopping trip since then, I
| certainly didn't need to. I especially wouldn't be relying on
| InstaCart and other one-off prepared food deliveries with an
| immunocompromised person at home.
| influx wrote:
| Do you have Amazon Fresh available? You might have to check
| through the day to get a slot, but it's been a life saver for
| our family.
| Diederich wrote:
| We do have Amazon Fresh, it's just been hard to get slots.
|
| When you 'check through the day', can you say roughly how
| many times you are checking? Thanks!
| simmons wrote:
| I think they must be adding slots fairly frequently. (But
| they might also be snatched up quickly.) My wife and I put
| in an Amazon Fresh order yesterday after doing a quick "dry
| run checkout" to confirm there was an available slot. While
| shopping, we got a notice that the slots were exhausted,
| but we continued in the interest of getting an order
| prepared. When we checked out, it again said there were no
| slots. I waited a minute and refreshed the browser, and a
| slot had opened up for tomorrow. I'm in Colorado, but I
| assume AF works the same everywhere.
|
| So far, I've had a better experience with Amazon Fresh than
| with Instacart (King Soopers/Kroger) due to 1) the ability
| to "call dibs" on items instead of waiting for the shopper
| to see there's no stock and struggle to find a replacement,
| and 2) the quick 1-2 day delivery (but maybe I've just
| gotten lucky). On the other hand, lots of stuff is out of
| stock which makes shopping challenging.
|
| We also put in an Amazon Pantry order yesterday. Expected
| delivery: April 26! :O
| chaz wrote:
| Dozens of times per day. It's on my bookmark bar, and I
| click it routinely:
| https://www.amazon.com/afx/slotselection/
| kirykl wrote:
| Contact local pet sitters, and see if they would do in-store
| shopping for you. Many have lost business with people
| cancelling vacations
| Diederich wrote:
| That's a very interesting idea, thank you!
| repiret wrote:
| My wife is also immunocompromised, and we live in the middle
| of nowhere, where instacart and uber eats and all the other
| gig economy services don't operate.
|
| We were able to hire our housekeeper to do grocery shopping
| for us.
|
| Housekeepers; Pet sitters; more generally, there's a lot of
| people out of work right now, connect with them and you'll
| find someone who will help with your shopping.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/k3zNE
| monkpit wrote:
| Https cert error
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