Outrageously Good Amazon Service

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sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
21,015
50,366
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
For several years, about the time of the Corono, my friend Jeff Bezos drop ships me four big plastic cans of Yuban coffee every month. Usually the price is about $25 for eight pounds, sometimes a dollar or two less, sometimes a few dollars more.

I’m as addicted to coffee as tobacco, maybe even more.

There is a reason Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men to ever live.

This month on the 27th my coffee did not arrive.

The Amazon app said if it didn’t arrive by Friday I could get a refund or replacement.

When I got home yesterday evening my coffee wasn’t on the front porch and today I called the post office, who said they think a mail truck must have come to grief with 107 packages due here on the 27th.

Their expectations for it’s arrival were not good.

I got on the Amazon app and a nice robot who works for Jeff sent me a rush replacement overnight for free, in less than a minute.

The robot said I could keep the extra coffee or donate it to charity if it arrives.

Somewhere far away, Sam Walton is smiling.

Walmart used to offer outrageously good customer service when Sam was still alive.

Amazon does that, today.
I've tried to wean myself off of Prime, because Amazon runs its fulfillment centers like a cross between a gulag, a concentration camp, and the factory in Metropolis.

The main reason that I haven't dumped Prime is that they lose money on me, so there's that. Their real business is cloud computing.
 
Oct 3, 2021
1,141
5,374
Southeastern PA
That dastardly Musk can irritate a few folks but, the majority seem to be happy with his more balanced approach on X, formerly known as Twitter. All depends on whose ox is being gored at the moment I suppose. Musk has more "FU" moneys than anyone in the world so he needn't pay attention to the strident minority.

I got a kick out his observation that advertisers were attempting to "blackmail" him with ... wait for it ... money. rotf
:sher:
And then he tells them: Go.....fuck...yourselves....

How's that for FU money? 🤣
 

bobomatic

Starting to Get Obsessed
Oct 11, 2023
120
510
Colombia
roberthunt.com
Bezos built a better mousetrap than anybody else. He started in his garage. I don't think he had any idea it would turn into this. I applaud him for it. I wish I had done it. I use it a lot here in Colombia. I can get pretty much anything delivered down here with the exception of edibles. Free shipping for orders over $35 and arrives in about a week. Can't beat that with a stick.
 

sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
21,015
50,366
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
It’s convenient for sure but not everything on Amazon is cheaper than ordering direct from many merchants - sometimes you are paying a premium and always worth double checking the cost. Customer service has always been top notch.
Yep, Amazon and it's "partners" can often be more expensive than other merchants, and have been under investigation for price fixing. When I can buy what I need elsewhere I do that.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,960
14,359
Humansville Missouri
Or a real life version of Idiocracy.

Every thing in life is about efficiency.

Jeff Bezos could not sport his pretty helicopter pilot to grand galas if the post office in Humansville Missouri and an endless host of other little Humansvilles did not exist.

For example, I can go to either Dollar General or Dollar Tree in Humansville and buy my choice of red Folger’s or blue Maxwell House coffee, or their store brands of coffee.

But it costs more than $3 a pound.

But since there’s free mail delivery from the post office, Maxwell House buys beans from Columbia and roasts them in California and by some magic of efficiency a lot of real people have a job because my Yuban coffee drop ships 8 pounds a month to me.

Jeff’s very nice robot that sent me replacement coffee was a chat bot.

There was some level of AI involved, because the bot asked me questions the bot seemed to know the answers.

$3 a pound today is like ten cents a pound in 1913.

There’s no way Sears could have shipped eight pounds of that grade of good coffee for about 80 cents a month in 1913 and turned a profit.

The freight charges would have been too much.
 

Lumbridge

(Pazuzu93)
Feb 16, 2020
763
2,759
Cascadia, U.S.
I try not to buy from companies like Amazon that routinely take a massive dump on their employees - the hardworking people that keep the machine running. Overlord Bezos would be a relative nobody without his employees, working a 9-5 like anyone else.
 
Feb 12, 2022
3,592
50,716
32
North Georgia mountains.
Walmart beats up on mom and pop shops, and has for over seventy years.

Bezos beats up on Walmart.

But not Dollar General, the hillbilly Walmart.

Humansville just got a new Dollar Tree and has a Dollar General.
DG is every other mile here in the SE. It's disgusting.
And I promise you, Bezos is beheading the mom and pop industry equally or more so than Walmart. Do not be fooled
 
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Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,960
14,359
Humansville Missouri
Give it a watch. Just remember that it's actually a comedy, a rather dark one.

Old men have been afraid of the future for thousands of years.

A thousand years from now old men will be afraid of the future.

My parents paid 700 1968 dollars for the largest, nicest RCA color console television the local television store sold then. Cecil Chaney and his son set it up and I was ten years old and read the manual and they showed me how to work the adjustments.

In our inflated dollars today $700 will buy over ten twenty four inch flat screen televisions at $64 each.

And $700 buys one that would just about cover the entire wall.

You’d need a ten year old to hook ‘em up, but some things don’t change.:)
 

warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
12,358
18,572
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
And I promise you, Bezos is beheading the mom and pop industry equally or more so than Walmart. Do not be fooled
Only those not willing/unable to adjust to fit the current, fast changing retail climate. We've got mom and pops that found a niche and exploit it, be it service, product. or a combination of both. Mostly personalized, knowledgeable service. One needs to be agile and quick in today's environment. But, there are always folks willing to pay a bit more for quality service. I'd suggest that rising local taxes put local stores in jeopardy as well as proprietors being unable or unwilling to change as the environment causes many closures. Well, that and proprietors getting simply tired and wore out dealing with the new environment.

One must find a way to provide what Amazon can't/won't and exploit it. They are a behemoth for sure but, not unbeatable.
 

sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
21,015
50,366
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
Old men have been afraid of the future for thousands of years.

A thousand years from now old men will be afraid of the future.

My parents paid 700 1968 dollars for the largest, nicest RCA color console television the local television store sold then. Cecil Chaney and his son set it up and I was ten years old and read the manual and they showed me how to work the adjustments.

In our inflated dollars today $700 will buy over ten twenty four inch flat screen televisions at $64 each.

And $700 buys one that would just about cover the entire wall.

You’d need a ten year old to hook ‘em up, but some things don’t change.:)
It seems like the only thing that gets cheaper and better are electronics. My first color calibrated monitor cost me about $3600 in 1992 and I needed to remove the cowling and manually adjust the guns using a small screw driver for each gun. My latest color calibrated color monitor has much more flexibility, can be set to specific output aims and specific color spaces, comes with a built in spectral sensitometer that recalibrates automatically, and cost me $1500.
 

sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
21,015
50,366
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
Only those not willing/unable to adjust to fit the current, fast changing retail climate. We've got mom and pops that found a niche and exploit it, be it service, product. or a combination of both. Mostly personalized, knowledgeable service. One needs to be agile and quick in today's environment. But, there are always folks willing to pay a bit more for quality service. I'd suggest that rising local taxes put local stores in jeopardy as well as proprietors being unable or unwilling to change as the environment causes many closures. Well, that and proprietors getting simply tired and wore out dealing with the new environment.

One must find a way to provide what Amazon can't/won't and exploit it. They are a behemoth for sure but, not unbeatable.
There's a lot of truth in this. Unfortunately, a lot of that change is lower quality and less service. Look at the furniture industry. As lot of what is sold won't survive a move, much less last for generations. And even as crap, it's still pricey crap.

The reason that I still have a career is that I adapted to different environments, technological changes, and busted my ever loving ass to provide the best service I can. Necessity is the mother of reinvention. Talent alone rarely is enough. One of the more unfortunate results of more powerful technology is that it enables really mediocre talents to look better than they are and gum up the works.

Of course, that's not anything new.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,960
14,359
Humansville Missouri
I have not. It's been so hyped over the years, I feel like I'll be extremely disappointed if I ever see it.

The reason most film critics name it the best movie ever was the incredible talent of Orsen Wells.

But the plot is about how Elon Musk (and us all) will grow old and die, and Zanadu (his manor estate) will grow up in weeds.

The 44 billon Musk wasted on Twitter did not just vanish. Somebody got that money for a business that was supported by advertisers.

Even billionaires sometimes have to pay just a little taxes for the roads, schools and bridges and warships.

The other billions will circulate.

The advertisers will peddle their stuff somewhere else.

William Randolf Hearst (model for Citizen Kane) even employed some stone cutters, for one of the largest mausoleums in California.

And he left videos behind.

 
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