The big question is, if you're a Chinese factory and you want to sell directly on Amazon's marketplace, don't you still need an "importer" of record? I do recall hearing about this mysterious Samuel Shapiro Co as well. Is that going to change? If the goods are sitting in Amazon's warehouse, does the Chinese factory still legally own them? Who gets sued if they're defective?
Yeah, it is going to a big "oh shit" moment for all the existing players in the logistics and freight forwarding industry. It may take Amazon a few years to build up the infrastructure but once they do, they could eat everyone's lunch.
Isn't that assuming that all the others in the space haven't spent years and millions of dollars optimizing these things already? Amazon brings a good entry point for products to the US market from overseas, but I don't think there is any shortage of that capability already.
I agree; as an outsider looking into the space it would seem to me that international freight would be far less to optimize than building a network to ship items out to individual homes. Granted still lots of optimization to be had but I'm not sure Amazon would automatically provide a better way to do it.
Most likely this is just more of them trying to own more of the vertical which probably translates into cost savings.
I would assume what's interesting about companies like Amazon and Walmart is that by being more vertically integrated, they can use the cost savings from their retail businesses to subsidize developing and expanding new infrastructure. The same can't be said for companies like Fedex and UPS.
All the big players definitely have spend years and millions (hundreds of millions) optimizing these things. But they are optimizing DOS-based systems built in the 80s. The tech stack that the old guard is working with is unbelievable.
DHL spent $900M with IBM and SAP, recognized a sunk cost and went back to what they were doing before: http://theloadstar.co.uk/we-are-not-to-blame-for-for-dhls-e3... Note: the 345M euros is just the amount they wrote off, not what they spent on the project. Maybe they did manage to get the EDI integrations done that were worth the other $600M.
I work at a large freight forwarder and we still have a whole department of COBOL developers and several million lines of COBOL code in production.
If Amazon is serious about being an ocean carrier, they would be the first major new competitor to enter this space since before the invention of the internet. All the competition is still mired in 80s technology.
But the technology issue aside, my point was really that Amazon has a more aggressive growth strategy and "become a monopoly" mentality than any incumbent player in this field and would be willing to take a loss in order to take market share. I believe they also have a small army of operations science PhDs who understand logistics network optimization better than anyone else in the field, and they also invest heavily in automation and robotics. They have self-driving forklifts as well as automated systems that feed instructions into the earpieces of their warehouse workers now. If they apply this strategy toward freight forwarding, that industry is going to be shaken up in a big way.
You said DOS like its a bad thing. It's well understood, completely paid for, and does the job.
Whats wrong with it, in this case? Even if maintenance costs go up, its still cheaper to maintain than to build a new system, especially if the old system fulfills all the requirements and is proven.
C is not any easier to build a business IT system in than COBOL is.
When these companies want to get their business off of a legacy system, they essentially have three practical choices: 1. SAP 2. Oracle 3. A bespoke system coded in Java or .NET.
These systems fulfills all the requirements in yesterday's world. And more importantly, they fulfill the requirements of the company's operating organization; not their customer's.
Modern customers want real-time data and analysis. They want all of their information available on the web, mobile, sms, email, API. They want a modern technology experience.
A DOS program consuming data via EDI and Excel-based input is a good candidate for the worst technology to do these types of things.
Why would a customer need real-time data and analysis from a bulk cargo shipment? That doesn't make any sense.
I think most customer just want to know when their stuff is going to arrive - they don't need 'real-time data and analysis' (or if they do, they don't expect the guy moving the cargo to provide it for them).
Also, those DOS\cobol systems already made shipping so cheap you can get a 40 foot container (full of stuff) from China to LA for $1300.
They can't scale? They currently handle the whole world's shipping needs. That sounds like it scaled just fine.
1) You want to know where the shipment is
2) You want to know what's inside the boxes
3) You want to know its customs status
4) You want to be able to re-route it in real-time to move the goods to adapt to customer demand.
Why would a customer need real-time data and analysis from a bulk cargo shipment? That doesn't make any sense.
You wouldn't, but freight forwarders typically don't move bulk cargo, they move containerized cargo. Bulk means the entire vessel hull is loaded with one raw materials commodity, like grains or minerals.
Companies importing finished goods absolutely do want instant, automated status updates on where their goods are at, because that information helps them load-balance their supply chain to keep their warehouses and stores stocked at the right levels and evaluate the performance of their contracted manufacturers and logistics service providers. Supply chain managers absolutely want scorecards and dashboards and push status updates.
The container shipping industry is still largely paper document driven. There are startups[1] in the industry working to build software products to disrupt it and cash in on the potential optimisations. When you talk to people who know the industry it's a bit like listening to someone talking about the web in 1995 - there's brilliant stuff going on but things could obviously be so much better.
[1] E.g https://kontainers.com I'm not affiliated, but they did do the same accelerator as my startup.
> It may take Amazon a few years to build up the infrastructure but once they do, they could eat everyone's lunch.
They very well could be disruptive, but I also see this as a rising-tides scenario. There are plenty of companies that wish to facilitate international commerce without using Amazon. Amazon could raise the bar, making opportunities for smart startups to build solutions that will mimic Amazon capabilities for non-amazon customers.
I'm working on the compliance aspect of international commerce, specifically classification of commodities, and estimating duty and other international taxes. My dream is to allow any merchant the ability to easily have international customers without having to worry about cross border regulations.
Amazon getting in this space feels like momentum for updating a proven, but old model of doing commerce.
Yeah, it could be very good for customers and new entrants in the ocean forwarding industry. What I meant is that it cannot be good for the incumbent forwarders that Amazon will now be competing with.
That's a hard problem to solve and very valuable. If you make progress please email me, ryan@flexport.com. I will connect you with a bunch of potential customers, including the largest importer in America who asked us to do this for them.
Did Flexport just preemptively reveal Amazon’s entry into the ocean freight market and then convince every major newspaper in the world to label the service unfit for American companies?
50+ years in future - Amazon is still optimising some part of their ecommerce infrastructure / entering a new market. Jokes aside, it will be incredibly interesting how Amazon's strategy to discard profits and just scale everywhere will work out. Will they become insanely profitable as everyone expects?
shubhamjaim is probably referencing their stock exchange strategy, where they never give dividends and reinvest all benefits. In theory it makes the stock price rise, but one day the trust that Amazon can ever produce dividends will be ballotted (especially if Amazon meets severe hurdles) and the stock price may collpase, ruining all stock holders. So is it a giant Ponzi scheme?
Even Apple gave dividends, from 87-95 and 2012-now.
The stock price doesn't necessarily reflect the eventual issuance of dividends. A company that put in its articles of organization "We forbid ourselves from ever issuing even the slightest dividend" I would expect to have a perfectly normal(nearly matching its dividend-allowing equivalent) stock price on the market, and wouldn't consider this abnormal or irrational on the part of the shareholders.
This almost makes it an entirely different kind of investment vehicle, one where the underlying value is more similar to bitcoin or gold - commodities commonly traded and used as a store of money - with the difference that investors do retain proportional ownership of the company's capital assets, ip, etc. which convert to cash in the (inevitable?) case of the company shutting down or getting acquired.
There's nothing wrong with growing instead of paying dividends.
Growth: We have 100 outstanding shares of $1, so we're worth $100, we made a "profit" of $5 which we immediately invest in ourselves such that we're now worth $105. Each shareholder is $0.05 better off.
Dividends: We have 100 outstanding shares of $1, so we're worth $100, we made a profit (no quotes) of $5 which we pay out in dividends. Each shareholder is $0.05 better off. We also issue five new shares of $1 and invest the revenue in growth, the company is now worth $105.
The former model gives Amazon more freedom by isolating them from the whims of stock market (it's hard/expensive to raise money in a down market), and is probably more efficient because there are fewer transactions involved, but requires investment opportunities for the $5. Apple, famously, does not have these opportunities, so the best they can do (indeed, what they're supposed to do -- if investors want to invest in cash, they'll go to the treasury bond market) is to remit the cash to shareholders, through dividends and buy backs.
I would imagine that tgey realized it would be easier to do autopilot on a container ship than drones.
They already have pilot boats, where a licensed captain navigates from a staging area off shore into the port of call. Actually a reasonably standard thing in shipping.
They are now the level 3/cogent + verizon + netflix of commerce. I dont even think walmart had this level of rollup.
This deal is huge, but I hope Amazon starts doing a little better diligence on their sellers. I was initially drawn to Amazon for their amazing customer reviews - they were usually current and decently, well-written - but most importantly they offered a resassurance that websites without product reviews didn't have.
Over the past year, I've noticed a HUGE uptick in the quantity of fake 5-star reviews. They are so blatant it's frightening, and they usually go unnoticed in Amazon's default "Most Helpful" sorting.
In particular, the Home Office Desk Chairs landscape is pretty insane: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desk-Chairs-Furniture/b?ie.... I was trying to find a chair back in September, and I was appalled by some of the reviews I was seeing. Top selling products, with several hundred reviews that averaged out to 4/4.5/5 stars.
This is a screenshot from back in September: http://imgur.com/qbCz0yE, and it only contains a small sample of the "Awesome, highly recommend" reviews spattered around. You'll notice this pattern on virtually every chair on Amazon, except the Aamazon basics chairs which wer launched sometime in late September / early October. Their reviews seem pretty good so far (i.e. real), but unfortunately for me I had purchased a chair from eBay before these launched.
These patterns are pretty frighteneing (especially considering a lot of people are actually buying these things), especially considering I've experienced the same issues when shopping for others things.
Has anyone else had an experience like this? Or am I losing it?
The amazon vine program sends people free items in exchange for reviews. I started running across absolutely crap 5 star reviews for grad level engineering and math textbooks from the vine reviewers 2-3 years ago. They would talk about how the binding seemed good, and how their was a lot of math and equations. Amazon ignored complaints at the time about these positive reviews. I'm guessing the bump in the star ratings lead to higher sales.
I haven't noticed the more organic type you are seeing, but it does not surprise me at all.
The "best rated" sort became useless after vine reviews.
"This impartial review was delivered after I received the product free or for a discount"? Give me a break. Joe or Judy Amazon are realistically going to be perfectly happy plunking five stars down for free stuff.
If Amazon wanted to do it right, they'd set themselves up as a neutral intermediary, companies could register to get some amount of product in the review chain, then Amazon would randomly distribute it to relevant reviewers, and the resulting reviews would be posted anonymously (with a known pattern, e.g. 'TrialUser'). And drop any users from the program that consistently give five stars.
Instead, they seem to have created a star-for-stuff system.
For me, ratings were the most important reason why I used Amazon (plus the convenience of one-stop shopping). This is a major stumble for Amazon, IMO. Hopefully a competitor steps up - this would be good for consumers, Amazon has become too much of a monopoly.
Sadly, at this point Amazon has the network effect of both consumers and suppliers. They've got the eyeballs, so people want to sell through them, so they've got a diversity of items and people check there to buy first, repeat repeat.
Be that what it may for the market: I think they've been a lot less mercenary than they could be (they could likely jack fees a lot higher now without much fallout), but the potential is certainly there.
Great for low cost optimization, bad for great feature development.
PS: The whole only-being-able-to-price-sort-in-a-single-category is terrible too. How do I know if Thing X is in category Y or Z? It successfully reproduces all the fun of wondering what aisle the grocery store stuck trail mix on.
I usually look at the average / bad reviews that say "it was great but...", and if their concerns about it are unrelated "...this Nintendo wouldn't make my coffee in the morning!" or things that don't bother me, I take that as a good sign about the product. 5/5 and 1/5 reviews are often fake or nonsense.
Amazon created a marketplace where anyone can sell anything and let it fester. I find something unbelievably broken every day. I found someone entered an Ethernet cable for like everything recognizable out there with an RJ-45 jack creating some 47 000 identical product pages in the process. Today I looked at http://www.amazon.ca/Manfrotto-Release-Special-Adapter-200PL... this is a tripod adapter and it's #135 in Tools & Home Improvement > Building Supplies > Building Materials . The http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Automotive-Body-Repair-To... #5 Automotive Body Repair Tools is a Visible Cutaway of Padlocks Lock. I have seen ordinary ~20" LCD monitors weighing a thousand pounds, messenger bags fit for King Kong and who knows what else.
Umm, you don't have to buy it though. Noise isn't necessarily a problem unless it stops you finding what you want. Actually, most products (except for the one you want) are just noise. Hence the continuing success of craigslist, ebay, gumtree and so on, despite the low average listing quality.
Actually in a way what whacks me out the most is people's expectation for an "open" marketplace with high average quality.
I don't want an open marketplace. I want somewhere I can conveniently find most things I need from my laptop for a reasonable price.
If Amazon came alone with insane, draconian policies and made it a very closed market, I'd be ok with that as a consumer so long as I can find what I need.
They don't have the range of products you can find on Amazon. If Amazon is supposed to replace Wal-Mart then they need to sell the same range of stuff - and with a certain minimum quality standard.
Anecdotally, 4 or 5 years ago I used to go to Amazon to shop with only a "general idea" of what I wanted to purchase. There were many times when I ended up buying more than I wanted, or something more expensive than I originally intended, because I was influenced by reviews and how the items were presented to me on that site (like "People also bought..." listings).
But after getting burned a few times with products that did not live up to the standards presented in bogus reviews or product rankings, now I only use Amazon for the fast shipping. Instead of spending the majority of my time on Amazon doing the research there, I'm spending it on blog posts, reddit, or YouTube looking at real testimonials and going to Amazon only when my shopping is already done. Those extraneous checkout-line addons are no more.
In this way, Amazon definitely does itself a disservice by (seemingly) shifting their priorities away from what they used to excel at to more "big picture" ideas.
If they can control ever growing swathes of the world's economy, they are not doing themselves a disservice. Maybe they are giving you less service than before, but they are simply doing what big companies do.
Again I said it was anecdotal, meaning that it was just a story that illustrates a point that the parent comments were making. But for fun I decided to look at my order history and found that from 2013 to 2014 the money I spent on Amazon dropped 55%, and from 2014 to 2015 it dropped 86%.
I'm only one customer, but clearly I'm not the only one with a growing frustration, and this case (since that's the only one I can attest to) they're losing real money, and I would cause that a disservice.
But if they are making more money overall being a crappier online store, they are only doing you a disservice, whereas their shareholders would be happy.
Unless either 2014 or 2015 had a negative total, you did the math badly wrong on that "dropped 622%" line (most likely by using the end year rather than the start year as the base.)
IMO it is a problem. The extra products are a nuisance and they often get in the way of finding the what I wanted.
It wasn't so bad when the only items sold by third parties were obscure and niche products that Amazon didn't carry. It was actually a good indicator that I might be better off going directly to a site dedicated to bike parts or camera equipment or outdoor equipment or whatever.
But now it seems like every time I search for anything I have to filter out a dozen third party or "sponsored" items that I'm not interested in. If I wanted to be uncertain of what I was getting, have a questionable return policy, and get crappy non-Prime shipping, I wouldn't have went to Amazon in the first place.
People want trustworthy marketplace, not the open marketplace where anything goes. This should be the core learning of last decade that has made Windows apps undesirable but App Store apps highly successful. The wetting price that companies pay is totally worth it and is recovered quite well from fees as well as increased sell. No one wants Amazon to be place where all deceivers can put out their listing as they see fit.
Current major issues are:
1. Sellers can name themselves as they like. For example, you can be a seller with a name of very recognized brand deceiving people that you are official source.
2. Sellers either omit information or publish incorrect one. For example, you can sell toys laden with lead and it would be just fine.
3. Amazon has been amazingly unsuccessful leveraging their own data. For example, they can ask simple question "Are you happy with X that you bought last week?" with just Yes/No and use that information to flag products for reviews. Getting rid of incorrect and incomplete listings can not be optional.
4. Listings are not properly conflated which makes people very confused and forces them to spend lots of time to find the "best" one. For example, there are probably dozen listings for exact same product like Syma 107G helies.
Don't forget about all the spammed product listings. It makes it impossible to look through many categories on Amazon. Try and sort SSDs of a certain size from low to high price and all you get are spam listings. And Amazon offers no way to report them.
On the upside, amazon almost always covers your shipping when returning a product. I dont think they had that before. So even if you ordered something based on fake 5 stars, you can always return it and leave a negative review. But yeah, I did notice the trend myself.
I've experienced the mirror image of this: shopping for a good, long-lasting pillow, I found that every promising-looking pillow had plausible-sounding, highly negative reviews from people who just happened to have no purchase history, and to have reviewed nothing except pillows...
>As the freight forwarder on a company’s shipments, Amazon would see both the name of the supplier and the wholesale price paid by the importer. (from the Article)
It's unlikely that an importer or exporter is going to use Amazon for the freight forwarding outside its network. I guess Amazon only will end up handling shipments of its own or network sellers who significantly rely on amazon to sell their products, likely through LCL Consol box, putting a lot of smaller shipments into a single 40HC container., that's going to save them a lot of cost as well as give them tighter control over the shipment routing and transit time etc.
Other regular importers & exporters either in China or USA are never going to use it. Because of the reason mentioned above.,
An importer or exporter shares too much sensitive and critical information with his freight and customs agent., If I suddenly get involved in trading or in other words become their competitor its obvious no one is going to share the information with me.
Amazon would need to put up a convincing firewall between their freight forwarding business unit and their e-commerce and product business units.
I have seen other companies where this is done--a particular business unit or subsidiary is prohibited from disclosing its sensitive customer data to its parent company because of the conflict of interest it would create.
Amazon is serious about internal controls so I don't doubt they could pull this off as well if they want to.
Amazon needs move product to make money. If others will not physically move that product to the US, then they'll have to do it. More expensive is better than none at all.
The ships are moving. Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden didn't pay for access to the data that shows the ships that aren't in port, didn't realize it, and came to the wrong conclusion that ships aren't shipping.
It's like looking at a parking lot and concluding no cars are on the freeway.
I have been wondering why the U.S. seems to have moved so far from the trust-busting days of Teddy Roosevelt, and why it now seems so permissive towards monopolistic practices. This helps explain it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox
It is absolutely not. On every level there are healthy competitors: Shipping (Ocean freight Cos, Trains, Trucking Cos, UPS, FedEx), Online Sales (AliBaba), General Goods (Wal-Mart)
These are all very healthy competitors, it's just that they are all operating on a massive scale.
Interesting possible side effect. Ocean freight vessels are, disproportionately, on of the greatest contributors, and in fact one of the greatest contributors in absolute terms, to CO2 emissions. Perhaps Amazon's involvement will shine a spotlight on this issue that has heretofore gone under the radar.
Unfortunately they are also the most efficient way to move a disproportionate amount of cargo over international waters, they get terrible "mileage" but when you consider tonne/miles instead of raw distance per gallon of fuel they are "efficient" compared to alternatives.
Unless we plan on equipping civilian vessels with nuclear reactors or somehow make storing gigantic hydrogen fuel cells safe the situation isn't going to change much.
It's not the mileage. It's the fuel and lack of regulation.
"The fuel used in ships is waste oil, basically what is left over after the crude oil refining process. It is the same as asphalt and is so thick that when cold it can be walked upon . It's the cheapest and most polluting fuel available and the world's 90,000 ships chew through an astonishing 7.29 million barrels of it each day, or more than 84% of all exported oil production from Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter." [1]
Yeah, bunker C is awful environmentally, but it's cheap and still pretty good as far as energy density is concerned. Even if freighters ran on refined petrol they would still be going through millions of barrels of petrol a day though, I'd be interested to see the breakdown of pollutants exhausted from burning a gallon of bunker C vs refined petrol - I'm having a hard time finding this data.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 23.5 ms ] threadamazon was changing up it's rules with shipping from china a few months ago, now I can see why they did it.
I still have a stack of paperwork from them back when I was considering shipping some items by container from Japan.
https://www.flexport.com/learn/not-based-u-s-importing-forei...
Amazon getting into international freight logistics is big news.
I'm sure I'm missing the greater significance.
Most likely this is just more of them trying to own more of the vertical which probably translates into cost savings.
If Amazon is serious about being an ocean carrier, they would be the first major new competitor to enter this space since before the invention of the internet. All the competition is still mired in 80s technology.
But the technology issue aside, my point was really that Amazon has a more aggressive growth strategy and "become a monopoly" mentality than any incumbent player in this field and would be willing to take a loss in order to take market share. I believe they also have a small army of operations science PhDs who understand logistics network optimization better than anyone else in the field, and they also invest heavily in automation and robotics. They have self-driving forklifts as well as automated systems that feed instructions into the earpieces of their warehouse workers now. If they apply this strategy toward freight forwarding, that industry is going to be shaken up in a big way.
Whats wrong with it, in this case? Even if maintenance costs go up, its still cheaper to maintain than to build a new system, especially if the old system fulfills all the requirements and is proven.
When these companies want to get their business off of a legacy system, they essentially have three practical choices: 1. SAP 2. Oracle 3. A bespoke system coded in Java or .NET.
Modern customers want real-time data and analysis. They want all of their information available on the web, mobile, sms, email, API. They want a modern technology experience.
A DOS program consuming data via EDI and Excel-based input is a good candidate for the worst technology to do these types of things.
I think most customer just want to know when their stuff is going to arrive - they don't need 'real-time data and analysis' (or if they do, they don't expect the guy moving the cargo to provide it for them).
Also, those DOS\cobol systems already made shipping so cheap you can get a 40 foot container (full of stuff) from China to LA for $1300.
They can't scale? They currently handle the whole world's shipping needs. That sounds like it scaled just fine.
You wouldn't, but freight forwarders typically don't move bulk cargo, they move containerized cargo. Bulk means the entire vessel hull is loaded with one raw materials commodity, like grains or minerals.
Companies importing finished goods absolutely do want instant, automated status updates on where their goods are at, because that information helps them load-balance their supply chain to keep their warehouses and stores stocked at the right levels and evaluate the performance of their contracted manufacturers and logistics service providers. Supply chain managers absolutely want scorecards and dashboards and push status updates.
[1] E.g https://kontainers.com I'm not affiliated, but they did do the same accelerator as my startup.
Lots of big companies run such things in-house less efficiently just to keep their outsourcers on their toes.
Last month it was Air Cargo
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-in-talks-...
They very well could be disruptive, but I also see this as a rising-tides scenario. There are plenty of companies that wish to facilitate international commerce without using Amazon. Amazon could raise the bar, making opportunities for smart startups to build solutions that will mimic Amazon capabilities for non-amazon customers.
I'm working on the compliance aspect of international commerce, specifically classification of commodities, and estimating duty and other international taxes. My dream is to allow any merchant the ability to easily have international customers without having to worry about cross border regulations.
Amazon getting in this space feels like momentum for updating a proven, but old model of doing commerce.
Even Apple gave dividends, from 87-95 and 2012-now.
[1] https://d28wbuch0jlv7v.cloudfront.net/images/infografik/norm...
Growth: We have 100 outstanding shares of $1, so we're worth $100, we made a "profit" of $5 which we immediately invest in ourselves such that we're now worth $105. Each shareholder is $0.05 better off.
Dividends: We have 100 outstanding shares of $1, so we're worth $100, we made a profit (no quotes) of $5 which we pay out in dividends. Each shareholder is $0.05 better off. We also issue five new shares of $1 and invest the revenue in growth, the company is now worth $105.
The former model gives Amazon more freedom by isolating them from the whims of stock market (it's hard/expensive to raise money in a down market), and is probably more efficient because there are fewer transactions involved, but requires investment opportunities for the $5. Apple, famously, does not have these opportunities, so the best they can do (indeed, what they're supposed to do -- if investors want to invest in cash, they'll go to the treasury bond market) is to remit the cash to shareholders, through dividends and buy backs.
They already have pilot boats, where a licensed captain navigates from a staging area off shore into the port of call. Actually a reasonably standard thing in shipping.
They are now the level 3/cogent + verizon + netflix of commerce. I dont even think walmart had this level of rollup.
Over the past year, I've noticed a HUGE uptick in the quantity of fake 5-star reviews. They are so blatant it's frightening, and they usually go unnoticed in Amazon's default "Most Helpful" sorting.
In particular, the Home Office Desk Chairs landscape is pretty insane: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desk-Chairs-Furniture/b?ie.... I was trying to find a chair back in September, and I was appalled by some of the reviews I was seeing. Top selling products, with several hundred reviews that averaged out to 4/4.5/5 stars.
This is a screenshot from back in September: http://imgur.com/qbCz0yE, and it only contains a small sample of the "Awesome, highly recommend" reviews spattered around. You'll notice this pattern on virtually every chair on Amazon, except the Aamazon basics chairs which wer launched sometime in late September / early October. Their reviews seem pretty good so far (i.e. real), but unfortunately for me I had purchased a chair from eBay before these launched.
These patterns are pretty frighteneing (especially considering a lot of people are actually buying these things), especially considering I've experienced the same issues when shopping for others things.
Has anyone else had an experience like this? Or am I losing it?
I haven't noticed the more organic type you are seeing, but it does not surprise me at all.
"This impartial review was delivered after I received the product free or for a discount"? Give me a break. Joe or Judy Amazon are realistically going to be perfectly happy plunking five stars down for free stuff.
If Amazon wanted to do it right, they'd set themselves up as a neutral intermediary, companies could register to get some amount of product in the review chain, then Amazon would randomly distribute it to relevant reviewers, and the resulting reviews would be posted anonymously (with a known pattern, e.g. 'TrialUser'). And drop any users from the program that consistently give five stars.
Instead, they seem to have created a star-for-stuff system.
Be that what it may for the market: I think they've been a lot less mercenary than they could be (they could likely jack fees a lot higher now without much fallout), but the potential is certainly there.
Great for low cost optimization, bad for great feature development.
PS: The whole only-being-able-to-price-sort-in-a-single-category is terrible too. How do I know if Thing X is in category Y or Z? It successfully reproduces all the fun of wondering what aisle the grocery store stuck trail mix on.
Unfortunately it does not always work accurately, but I think it gives a good estimation whether a product is legit.
Example for AmazonBasic: http://fakespot.com/product/amazonbasics-mid-back-mesh-chair
And for "Engineered Now": http://fakespot.com/product/headrest-for-herman-miller-aeron...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-f...
Actually in a way what whacks me out the most is people's expectation for an "open" marketplace with high average quality.
If Amazon came alone with insane, draconian policies and made it a very closed market, I'd be ok with that as a consumer so long as I can find what I need.
That sounds like Monoprice or Newegg. Slightly more focused for our needs, but not as fast search results or affordable shipping.
But after getting burned a few times with products that did not live up to the standards presented in bogus reviews or product rankings, now I only use Amazon for the fast shipping. Instead of spending the majority of my time on Amazon doing the research there, I'm spending it on blog posts, reddit, or YouTube looking at real testimonials and going to Amazon only when my shopping is already done. Those extraneous checkout-line addons are no more.
In this way, Amazon definitely does itself a disservice by (seemingly) shifting their priorities away from what they used to excel at to more "big picture" ideas.
I'm only one customer, but clearly I'm not the only one with a growing frustration, and this case (since that's the only one I can attest to) they're losing real money, and I would cause that a disservice.
"minimum quality standard"
Pick one.
It wasn't so bad when the only items sold by third parties were obscure and niche products that Amazon didn't carry. It was actually a good indicator that I might be better off going directly to a site dedicated to bike parts or camera equipment or outdoor equipment or whatever.
But now it seems like every time I search for anything I have to filter out a dozen third party or "sponsored" items that I'm not interested in. If I wanted to be uncertain of what I was getting, have a questionable return policy, and get crappy non-Prime shipping, I wouldn't have went to Amazon in the first place.
Current major issues are:
1. Sellers can name themselves as they like. For example, you can be a seller with a name of very recognized brand deceiving people that you are official source.
2. Sellers either omit information or publish incorrect one. For example, you can sell toys laden with lead and it would be just fine.
3. Amazon has been amazingly unsuccessful leveraging their own data. For example, they can ask simple question "Are you happy with X that you bought last week?" with just Yes/No and use that information to flag products for reviews. Getting rid of incorrect and incomplete listings can not be optional.
4. Listings are not properly conflated which makes people very confused and forces them to spend lots of time to find the "best" one. For example, there are probably dozen listings for exact same product like Syma 107G helies.
If the common complaint is something that I can't overlook than I look at other products.
https://twitter.com/JohnTHaller/status/648883968201355264
It's unlikely that an importer or exporter is going to use Amazon for the freight forwarding outside its network. I guess Amazon only will end up handling shipments of its own or network sellers who significantly rely on amazon to sell their products, likely through LCL Consol box, putting a lot of smaller shipments into a single 40HC container., that's going to save them a lot of cost as well as give them tighter control over the shipment routing and transit time etc.
Other regular importers & exporters either in China or USA are never going to use it. Because of the reason mentioned above.,
An importer or exporter shares too much sensitive and critical information with his freight and customs agent., If I suddenly get involved in trading or in other words become their competitor its obvious no one is going to share the information with me.
I have seen other companies where this is done--a particular business unit or subsidiary is prohibited from disclosing its sensitive customer data to its parent company because of the conflict of interest it would create.
Amazon is serious about internal controls so I don't doubt they could pull this off as well if they want to.
I see no reason this would be any different.
Amazon needs move product to make money. If others will not physically move that product to the US, then they'll have to do it. More expensive is better than none at all.
It's like looking at a parking lot and concluding no cars are on the freeway.
These are all very healthy competitors, it's just that they are all operating on a massive scale.
Just from the title I had guessed that that they would own ships as a hedge against rises in freight costs, just as airlines buy oil stocks etc.
Is anyone aware of any analysis of Amazon's recent moves in aircraft, drones, and so on as hedge vs integration vs disruption?
So it makes sense.
Amazon obviously have too much cash lying around.
So be good and stop using Amazon!
Unless we plan on equipping civilian vessels with nuclear reactors or somehow make storing gigantic hydrogen fuel cells safe the situation isn't going to change much.
"The fuel used in ships is waste oil, basically what is left over after the crude oil refining process. It is the same as asphalt and is so thick that when cold it can be walked upon . It's the cheapest and most polluting fuel available and the world's 90,000 ships chew through an astonishing 7.29 million barrels of it each day, or more than 84% of all exported oil production from Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter." [1]
[1] http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ [2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-...