They quit trying to get me packages in 2 days sometime in the pandemic despite being just a few hours away from a fulfillment center where some relatives work.
Oddly around the same time shipping seemed to speed up from other retailers like Best Buy, Target, Adorama, etc. I buy things from Japan on Ebay and get them more quickly than packages from AMZN. Every other retailer sees shipping as a way to impress me, AMZN takes me for granted because I've been paying for Prime for 10 years.
There are accounts that people in the same ZIP codes as AMZN fulfillment centers aren't getting 2 day shipping. I guess these are rural areas with poor shopping options and AMZN doesn't need to be competitive. I'm pretty sure though that my congressman gets next day or same day shipping in Washington, DC.
I was kinda surprised when I dumped Prime. Most stuff still has free 2-3 day shipping on it. I think Amazon has shot themselves in the foot, and their own vendors are making Prime not worth paying for.
They have become much more unpredictable for me, some Prime items will be delivered same-day, others might take 3-4 days, my impression is that they expect only a small subset of customers to bother complaining, in which case they'll be "very sorry" and offer an extra month of Prime or something else which doesn't really cost them anything...
Yeah, it seems to be very regional. Here is my personal experience over the past year.
In downtown Seattle/SLU area (aka "Amazon rainforest", due to that whole area having a very heavy concentration of Amazon offices), most packages take around 2 days. In Atlanta area (midtown and closeby sorta-suburban areas like Little Five and Edgewood), most packages take between same-day to 1-2 days (usually a bit less time than in Seattle). In NYC (Manhattan specifically), it takes 3-4 days (am yet to find a single item on amazon that has a delivery estimate less than that for this area).
I bet it has something to do with distribution centers/warehouses/last-mile delivery infrastructure. But that difference in delivery times between those three regions seems to be pretty consistent, from what I've observed so far in 2022.
If you're in Seattle, you're probably getting packages from like Kent or Everett. I don't see how they could afford a warehouse anywhere near the city.
Just a guess - residential real estate pricing and commercial/industrial real estate pricing are not following the same trends.
The reason residential real estate keeps going up is partially due to zoning laws being out of wack on west coast. So just because the price of residential real estate in Kent keeps getting crazier, that doesn't mean the industrial one does as much.
When I've whined to their support about late packages, they've told me that "two day" just refers to the time my order spends actively in transit, NOT the time between when I place my order and receive the item. So if the item doesn't leave the warehouse for 5 days (to batch it with another order I placed, wait for shipping costs to cheaper on a certain day, or whatever) and then they send the item and it comes 2 days later they've still fulfilled their sacred oath. That would be considered 2 day shipping, not 7 days.
I was using Amazon Music on my commute. No ads and nice selection (often updated), plus included with Prime (which I'm paying for anyway).
Removing the ability to skip really sucks but my commute is not long enough to justify paying for Spotify or for the premium Amazon Music thing. I'm using a few limited playlists on Amazon that still allow skipping but may just go back to FM radio.
At this point there are very few benefits we're getting with Prime aside from shipping (I watch a couple of shows like The Boys, Peripheral, etc.) so I really hate they don't have an unbundled Prime just for free shipping.
I don’t even think the shipping benefit is all that great these days. Yes, you can get it fast, but what “it” are you getting? Usually, it’s some random Alibaba rebrand with a name like XXFOOJLI and ten thousand fake reviews.
So to get this right, am Amazon Prime membership will get you basically Spotify's free tier, while you need Prime + additional $9 a month to get service equivalent to Spotify Premium?
Yup, a couple of mind-boggling changes to Prime music here.
Skip limits, inability to rewind, and for some reason the app keeps nagging me to grant control over Bluetooth on my device, which I keep saying no to.
Installing YouTube vanced (and yt music vanced) on my phone and using YouTube music in the browser with ublock origin has been free and fantastic user experience (browsers now support dbus commands, so media keys work without needing to install the app on desktop). Highly recommend.
Having worked at Amazon for well over a decade, here’s more or less what happened:
1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document
2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers”
3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted (eventually) and mainly to keep their job. If they get fired, they have 30 days to find a new company that will employ them with visa sponsorship. Or they have to move back to Hyderabad or whichever Indian city.
4. Document goes through several rounds of review, where this poor PM gets ripped a new one, many many times. In 1:1 with their manager, they are coached on having a thick skin and being able to handle verbal abuse and being made to feel small. Keep in mind, this person doesn’t really use Amazon Music themself. They just want to turn in their work, get paid, and go home.
5. Eventually, the product team aligns on increasing subscriptions X% YoY and increasing revenue Y%, by end of 2023 or mid 2024. Since we have some agreement already about to go in effect which will expand the music catalog, let’s leverage that. We’ll restrict the non-paid streaming option, and sell it as offering our premium customers (since that’s the metric we care about) more variety. Indeed we are “delighting customers” and “streamlining the music listening and discovery journey” <—- I shit you not. This is exactly how these docs are written.
6. This is reviewed and signed off by layers of directors and VPs. Keep in mind none of these people use Amazon Music. If anything, some of them might even have disdain for music.
7. The changes roll out. There’s an A/B test, designed in a way to not completely obscure reality but still give us what we want. End customers unhappy.
8. Product team works with technical team to look at specific A/B test results. Results show subscriptions are actually up. The measured increase is statistically significant. Music listening time is overall flat or increased slightly as well, but definitely not a regression.
9. Product team celebrates. Product team knows the product is worse off, customers are unhappy, etc. but the “metrics” we have show a win.
10. PM hangs out for several years. Realizes they can’t get promoted to a principal and leaves for another company, or they get annoyed with the whole visa back and forth process. They move to Canada and find some other Amazon team there, or they just go back to India once the initial stocks vest.
11. Cue the next round of MBA talent, looping through step 1.
I'd act differently if the worst that could happen from failing to deliver/someone thinking I had was being kicked out of the country rather than just unemployment, it's about sticks not carrots
You're right to be offended but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if sponsoring tech companies rely on the implicit threat of deportation to extract performance just as non-sponsoring yet immigrant-reliant industries like food production do.
> How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company.
> P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.
Most of these PMs are Indians on H1Bs. The incentive designed by the company is extracting a certain output, under specific work conditions, and it requires bringing employees to the US, at scale, and having their visa situation hanging over their head.
If you’re offended that Amazon is able to do that, at scale - I don’t fault you.
If you’re offended that I’m openly discussing this, then I would say I don’t agree with censoring what’s in fact reality.
So many questionable decisions were made, at least during my time at Amazon, because of a cut throat environment of fear. I had 1:1s where Indian employees would cry about the situation they find themselves in, where they often have to agree or do things they don’t want to do, out of fear of losing their job and having to relocate back to India.
Whether this is offensive or not, I have definitely seen worker visas used to exploit employees. And visa employees dealing with much more insanity than nationals. Sometimes it's overt, sometimes it happens in a proverbial boiling frog kind of way by the visa holding employee having to satisfy more and more inane manager expectations. But not being able to easily walk away from a company is not good.
My young kid used to love Alexa, because it would play their favorite songs for them. Now, I'm dealing with a screaming child that doesn't understand how Alexa could be such a jerk. They and I certainly don't think this an improvement.
In some insane move, Amazon recently replaced their decade old mp3 buying UI with Amazon Music. In the process, they got rid of the 30s samples. Egregiously, there's now no way to listen to music before you buy it unless you sign up for Amazon Music! You can't even confirm it's the song you think it is!
The icing on the cake is there's a listen button on the album and each track, which when clicked plays a _random unrelated_ song. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an alternate dimension.
Amazon was the only music store offering some major artist music I could use (not buying a Mac just to buy stuff on iTunes), not sure how I'll get music now.
iTunes doesn’t exist anymore because people don’t purchase music this way. For better or for worse, Spotify and Apple Music are how people consume music now.
What do you mean? iTunes still exists. It’s separate from Music but you can still boot up iTunes (pc/MacOS/ iOS) and still search, sample, buy everything as you did before.
Does HN crowd in general not resort to pirating music? Obviously piracy is unethical but it is the best way I can enjoy music. No ads. I still have all the songs I had like 20 years back. And many other positives.
I still buy music on Bandcamp or 7digital. I've been accumulating my collection for over 20 years ago it's huge. I have it in pCloud, but there's also a copy on all of my laptops and NAS. I play music locally with MusicBee, and on the go I just use a 256gb sdcard and a decent app. If I'm in someone else's house I can use the pCloud player but it's shit. I have thought about using Astiga to play my pCloud collection on the go but so far the sdcard + app works well.
They've made Amazon Prime Music totally unusable for me.
All my carefully curated playlists are now gone - user playlists are no longer a feature. Instead, you play a track, and then Prime selects every subsequent track based on "similarity". Don't like a track? Ah, well, there is a "skip limit", so you can only skip tracks so many times per month?!?
Who the hell thought of a skip limit?!
I haven't used it since. They've completely destroyed a really good Prime benefit. After this, I'd rather pay more for Spotify than pay for the paid Amazon Music tier :-/
49 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadOddly around the same time shipping seemed to speed up from other retailers like Best Buy, Target, Adorama, etc. I buy things from Japan on Ebay and get them more quickly than packages from AMZN. Every other retailer sees shipping as a way to impress me, AMZN takes me for granted because I've been paying for Prime for 10 years.
There are accounts that people in the same ZIP codes as AMZN fulfillment centers aren't getting 2 day shipping. I guess these are rural areas with poor shopping options and AMZN doesn't need to be competitive. I'm pretty sure though that my congressman gets next day or same day shipping in Washington, DC.
I agree not to pay prime if they can't deliver. That said, I get 0/1/2 day delivery most of the time, but I live in a city.
In downtown Seattle/SLU area (aka "Amazon rainforest", due to that whole area having a very heavy concentration of Amazon offices), most packages take around 2 days. In Atlanta area (midtown and closeby sorta-suburban areas like Little Five and Edgewood), most packages take between same-day to 1-2 days (usually a bit less time than in Seattle). In NYC (Manhattan specifically), it takes 3-4 days (am yet to find a single item on amazon that has a delivery estimate less than that for this area).
I bet it has something to do with distribution centers/warehouses/last-mile delivery infrastructure. But that difference in delivery times between those three regions seems to be pretty consistent, from what I've observed so far in 2022.
The reason residential real estate keeps going up is partially due to zoning laws being out of wack on west coast. So just because the price of residential real estate in Kent keeps getting crazier, that doesn't mean the industrial one does as much.
Where I live now, Prime shipping is usually 4 days, sometimes longer.
Removing the ability to skip really sucks but my commute is not long enough to justify paying for Spotify or for the premium Amazon Music thing. I'm using a few limited playlists on Amazon that still allow skipping but may just go back to FM radio.
At this point there are very few benefits we're getting with Prime aside from shipping (I watch a couple of shows like The Boys, Peripheral, etc.) so I really hate they don't have an unbundled Prime just for free shipping.
Skip limits, inability to rewind, and for some reason the app keeps nagging me to grant control over Bluetooth on my device, which I keep saying no to.
1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document
2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers”
3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted (eventually) and mainly to keep their job. If they get fired, they have 30 days to find a new company that will employ them with visa sponsorship. Or they have to move back to Hyderabad or whichever Indian city.
4. Document goes through several rounds of review, where this poor PM gets ripped a new one, many many times. In 1:1 with their manager, they are coached on having a thick skin and being able to handle verbal abuse and being made to feel small. Keep in mind, this person doesn’t really use Amazon Music themself. They just want to turn in their work, get paid, and go home.
5. Eventually, the product team aligns on increasing subscriptions X% YoY and increasing revenue Y%, by end of 2023 or mid 2024. Since we have some agreement already about to go in effect which will expand the music catalog, let’s leverage that. We’ll restrict the non-paid streaming option, and sell it as offering our premium customers (since that’s the metric we care about) more variety. Indeed we are “delighting customers” and “streamlining the music listening and discovery journey” <—- I shit you not. This is exactly how these docs are written.
6. This is reviewed and signed off by layers of directors and VPs. Keep in mind none of these people use Amazon Music. If anything, some of them might even have disdain for music.
7. The changes roll out. There’s an A/B test, designed in a way to not completely obscure reality but still give us what we want. End customers unhappy.
8. Product team works with technical team to look at specific A/B test results. Results show subscriptions are actually up. The measured increase is statistically significant. Music listening time is overall flat or increased slightly as well, but definitely not a regression.
9. Product team celebrates. Product team knows the product is worse off, customers are unhappy, etc. but the “metrics” we have show a win.
10. PM hangs out for several years. Realizes they can’t get promoted to a principal and leaves for another company, or they get annoyed with the whole visa back and forth process. They move to Canada and find some other Amazon team there, or they just go back to India once the initial stocks vest.
11. Cue the next round of MBA talent, looping through step 1.
P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.
Put them all together to advocate together and think of what they will want done with you.
They've already got the angle to exploit you on lined up. And secretly, this is what they think. So what happens when you give them the power?
> P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.
Most of these PMs are Indians on H1Bs. The incentive designed by the company is extracting a certain output, under specific work conditions, and it requires bringing employees to the US, at scale, and having their visa situation hanging over their head.
If you’re offended that Amazon is able to do that, at scale - I don’t fault you.
If you’re offended that I’m openly discussing this, then I would say I don’t agree with censoring what’s in fact reality.
So many questionable decisions were made, at least during my time at Amazon, because of a cut throat environment of fear. I had 1:1s where Indian employees would cry about the situation they find themselves in, where they often have to agree or do things they don’t want to do, out of fear of losing their job and having to relocate back to India.
The icing on the cake is there's a listen button on the album and each track, which when clicked plays a _random unrelated_ song. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an alternate dimension.
Amazon was the only music store offering some major artist music I could use (not buying a Mac just to buy stuff on iTunes), not sure how I'll get music now.
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#med...
Does HN crowd in general not resort to pirating music? Obviously piracy is unethical but it is the best way I can enjoy music. No ads. I still have all the songs I had like 20 years back. And many other positives.
I would settle for being able to strip DRM simply and quickly from media I could "buy".
All my carefully curated playlists are now gone - user playlists are no longer a feature. Instead, you play a track, and then Prime selects every subsequent track based on "similarity". Don't like a track? Ah, well, there is a "skip limit", so you can only skip tracks so many times per month?!?
Who the hell thought of a skip limit?!
I haven't used it since. They've completely destroyed a really good Prime benefit. After this, I'd rather pay more for Spotify than pay for the paid Amazon Music tier :-/