Just bought a Nesco dehydrator from Walmart. Amazon and
Walmart wanted the exact same price, but Amazon was on Prime
with 2 day delivery. I don’t have Prime and refuse to pay for it, because my girlfriend, who has Prime, sometimes has to wait as long as 2 weeks, in order to receive items from Amazon.
Walmart guaranteed the same 2 delivery as Prime, but at no extra cost.FREE.
Fedex, who Walmart uses, did not deliver on the second day.
I called Walmart the next day, and without me asking, gave me a $10 refund and the item was delivered that same day. Try getting Amazon to do that.
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Truthfully i have had Amazon refund and reship a product that was late. I do have Prime and I use it for much more than just shipping so it works for me. I have gotton several free products because they were late. That being said walmart has been good with service too.
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People in retail often have an aversion to Walmart, and I never got in the Walmart habit. I used to buy a fair amount from Amazon, but I developed mixed feelings about their third party vendors. I was always comfortable buying from Amazon itself, but less so with the vendors who sell through them. Credit where it is due, though: they’ve always stood behind everything.
But it’s an absolutely brilliant business model. With the third-party vendors Amazon doesn’t have to manage inventory or staff. They just skim a little cream off the top for providing the platform and managing customer relations. So they are kind of like insurance companies or banks, always operating with other people’s money. Sears could have done it, but they didn’t have the vision, believe it or not, to understand how to make money selling things to people a long way away -in the internet age. Now the rest of the world is playing catch up, and Amazon is moving on to managing data for others in the cloud!
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I also don’t pay for prime. When I did have prime they got my packages in the mail the next day, usually delivered in 3 days. Now that I don’t prime they just wait 4 full day to ship it , usually delivered in 7 days so the shipping method takes the same time so the only thing different here in Atlanta is they wait 4 days to ship it?
I still get most shipping for free since I order over a certain amount of money but when they try to charge me the first place I go is Walmart then Lowes then Home Depot to try to get the same deal but with free shipping.
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I have basically stopped belonging to any " club" or " advantage plan" that I have to pay for every year. I am about ready to stop my Sam’s Club membership because I really do not enough things to justify the membership cost. Having to buy two of so many things there ends up costing me more in the long run. Of course that is just me. If it works out for others, great. Seems to me it is just another way to get more money out of you and at times I think people buy more things in order to justify the cost of belonging to things like Amazon Prime. They hook you in at a low initial cost and then the yearly price goes up each year when it is time for renewal.
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Nowadays I don’t use Amazon anymore. Mostly because they cost more for shipping, unless you buy more than $25, which a lot of stuff I order is less than that. Plus, when I did use them, their shipping time took too long. Never paid for Prime, not worth it for me. And, they don’t always have what I need, and if they do, not always the best price.
Now I use eBay almost exclusively because most things are shipped free, and I usually get it really fast, like within a few days. I think the longest I’ve had to wait is a week, but most of the time it’s less than 5 days. There have been a few items that were wrong or not exactly what I ordered, but those issues were resolved or worked around.
Never used Walmart online, but sounds like they have a good thing going.
Plus, one other reason I don’t use AMZN is because of Beel-Bezos. Something about the guy and his empire doesn’t set well with me.
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I know what you mean about that! I admire his success and uncanny way of leveraging his business, but I think it’s just bizarre for individuals to own so much. Why does anybody need that kind of wealth? What do they intend to do with all that money -and to whom?
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I have Prime and admit the service has been great. Once in my entire life I had a prime package take longer than the advertised 2 days and Ive probably placed 100 orders over the years. They gave me credit for the hassle. Some things are actually getting delivered next day now. I have super wide feet and needed a new pair of running shoes. My local shoe stores do not carry the model I wanted in extra wide and showed no desire to special order it for me when I made the inquiry. I checked Zappos as I usually do and then Prime. Prime had the shoes a little cheaper but but offered free next day delivery. They were at my front porch by 2:30pm the next day.
All that being said, I am seriously thinking about abandoning the platform. I don’t think its good for the American economy to have one retailer that powerful. We saw what Wal Mart did 20 to 30 years ago to the retail industry by undercutting both local retailers and other large retailers with their Chinese goods. There are very few B&M retailers remaining that provide products similar to Wal Mart. I think we all enjoy getting lower prices on goods but we just need to be aware that there can be underlying implications that aren’t necessarily good for the long term.
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You have to look closely at the ship date on Amazon, even for Prime eligible items. It may have 2-day shipping but may not be in stock and not ship for a couple weeks. I’ve been using Prime for shipping for probably over 10 years now and I’m struggling to think of a time when something was late, although I’m sure out of hundreds of orders it has happened. Now, you can even get some items delivered next day in certain areas. I have ordered several items to have them delivered the following day by Amazon’s delivery service and I live out in the country.
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Our family has used Prime since it began. We have one account that our whole family uses, including the families of our 4 married children. In our area, we can get free same-day delivery on many items and next-day on most. Two-day is usually the worst even when shipping from another vendor. We never pay for shipping and orders always arrive on time. We also use Prime for business purchases and buy $20-30k worth of supplies annually. For us, the convenience and time savings of shopping at the laptop with next day or two-day delivery is well-worth the Prime fee. In addition, we cut the Verizon cable and now use streaming TV (Sony Playstation Vue at less than half the cost of Verizon cable), so the commercial-free Prime TV is also a nice feature. I agree that Bezos is kind of creepy and Amazon is too big, but they got that way by being good at what they do. They have also made UPS, FedEx and the USPS better at what they do. We even get Sunday deliveries by USPS occasionally for Amazon shipments.
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