I’m ready to dump Amazon Prime


 
Worked for Sears PT after I retired. Around 2005 or so, they were living in their 50s glory. Computers from the sixties, sales techniques also from days gone by. Stores were not up graded, stain ceilings worn floor tiles. The worst was when we had sales we would get maybe a few of the sale items and were expected to guide the customer to a more profitable product. Very high pressure working environment, if you did good you were told you need too do better.
Worst place I ever worked. Lasted about a year and said see ya when the dropped our commission 25% .
 
I agree with Sears being antiquated. You couldn't just go to a Sears and buy vacuum cleaner bags. You had to find a salesperson to enter all of your data into a 80s era POC terminal. Took twice as long as it should have.

The scary thing about Amazon, I order from there frequently, is their dominance of the cloud market. Don't get me wrong. They do a good job offering a needed service and they are constantly improving their current services and offering new ones. Netflix, a competitor of Prime Video, uses Amazon's cloud platform.
 
@PHolder..... ya'll just hit a hot button of mine. "Cloud computing" is little more than marketing speak for "somebody else's computer" and to function effectively and safely in that environment requires a completely different outlook and methodology than more traditional computing. There's a huge push in IT to go to cloud computing because it's cheaper. Absolutely not necessarily so. You do get to pay for your IT back end structure out of expenses rather than capital, and no longer have data centers to capitalize, but you also have huge security issues to be aware of as well as sneaky gotchas like bandwidth exceeded charges.

I haven't set foot in a Sears in years, and even if the name stays around, I doubt I'll ever go back, just due to similar circumstances and experiences. I do try to purchase locally, sometimes, it's between not practical and not possible.
 
Don't know anyone even could step foot in a Sears store. They're gone. Like I indicated no issue with Amazon. Really. Sure they sell cheap stuff but you can find and purchase top of the line stuff as well. It is what you make of it. That carb I bought. I had no aspersions that it was a top line Mikuni (made for Honda). I knew full well at $12.00 for a new carb, both a main air filter and pre-filter, and a new spark plug as well, I was buying cheap Chinese knock off stuff. Who cares? I paid $30 for the Honda mower to give to my kid, I am not gonna spend $40 for a Japanese carb on a $30 mower. And what's the difference if you go to Walmart and buy XXX made in China or you get the same thing at Amazon, cheaper and without the poor service of going to Walmart? I have not stepped foot in Walmart in perhaps 18 months.
 
LMichaels said:
I have not stepped foot in Walmart in perhaps 18 months.
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You and me both, brother. I can't stand Walmart, especially our local stores. If anything, Walmart has incentivized me to shop more through Amazon. Greg and I live in different parts of Utah, and I'm much closer to at least one of their warehouses. I consistently get 1 day delivery, 2 at the most. I can get things delivered to my parents without them having to go to a store in-person, which is HUGE right now.
 
Yeah the ability to order things my 93 yo dad needs from home and delivered to his house which is over 50 miles from mine is a huge asset. And, many times if I order him something in the AM he's got it in the PM
 
LMichaels said:
Don't know anyone even could step foot in a Sears store. They're gone. Like I indicated no issue with Amazon. Really. Sure they sell cheap stuff but you can find and purchase top of the line stuff as well. It is what you make of it. That carb I bought. I had no aspersions that it was a top line Mikuni (made for Honda). I knew full well at $12.00 for a new carb, both a main air filter and pre-filter, and a new spark plug as well, I was buying cheap Chinese knock off stuff. Who cares? I paid $30 for the Honda mower to give to my kid, I am not gonna spend $40 for a Japanese carb on a $30 mower. And what's the difference if you go to Walmart and buy XXX made in China or you get the same thing at Amazon, cheaper and without the poor service of going to Walmart? I have not stepped foot in Walmart in perhaps 18 months.
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Who cares ?

< Note from Moderator: Per forum rules, we don't discuss political topics. Content deleted. >

So , yeah , I care. I give my business to American companies, whenever possible. There will be a high price to pay, for getting crap on the cheap from China .
 
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Lynn Dollar said:
So , yeah , I care. I give my business to American companies, whenever possible. There will be a high price to pay, for getting crap on the cheap from China .
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So do I whenever possible. But just once try and find a low level product like said carb I bought recently. Just try I dare you to find one made here. Even the Honda OEM ones are made there. Other than perhaps South Korea just try to find a mobile phone not made in China. Try. I could go on and on and on and on. So WTH am I supposed to do if I need to buy that carb to get my mower running?!
Go buy a any number of GM cars i.e. their small SUV line. Yep you guessed it Made in China! Hell you gotta buy Japanese, Korean or German cars to get one made in the USA!
Sorry, I get it. I too am SICK of the made in China. Don't mistake my "who cares" sentiment with not caring about the sad state of this country. You got me TOTALLY wrong on that.
 
I just checked the top 4 items on my Wish list and they all will take 6 days to arrive.

That’s no bueno for me. If they won’t bring back 2 day shipping I don’t find the membership fees to be worth it.

I’ll still buy from Amazon, but nowhere near as much as I have for many years.
 
Not sure why you're saying they did away with Prime free two-day shipping. The Prime benefits page still says it's included. Important to note two-day service is from the day it ships, not the day it's purchased. Or am I totally misunderstanding?
 
That's strange. Here in OKC we have a sorting center, a fulfillment center, and they are currently building a non-sorting center. But because we have a fulfillment center anything that is listed as Prime is next day instead of the original free 2 day. Here we've had great turnaround on delivery times with Prime.
 
KE Quist said:
You and me both, brother. I can't stand Walmart, especially our local stores.
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Their Covid policies of late are hurting their business in my opinion. Everyone has to enter and exit the same door, and it makes it hard on folks looking for a handicap parking space. They are plentiful on the far side of the parking lot (where the second entrance doors are closed), but said customers have to walk a long ways to get into the store, and then it's usually another long walk to get what they come for, and then there's the long walk back to the car.

Since the parking lot is barren on the closed side of the store lets me know that consumer traffic is down. They used to count heads at both entrances, but after the governor mandated facemasks, the second store entrance was closed. Not sure why the governor's mandate prompted Walmart to restrict traffic to just one entrance door though. None of the other retailers (such as Lowe's, etc.) are restricting access through a single entrance. I think I am going to mention this in my next Walmart opinion questionnaire.
 
Boy, a lot of pent-up complaining going on here. Someone needs to pour everyone a cold one and we can all chillax.

I want to go back to Sears for a moment. For someone of my age, born in the early 60's, when I became an adult in the 80's, Sears was already over. I went for tools and appliances and that was it. I never shopped there for anything else. They hit their high point in the early 70s. Craftsman, DieHard, Kenmore, Allstate, Sears Tower, and later Dean Witter, Coldwell Banker, Discover Card. If you go onto Wikipedia and read the summary of Sears, you see what an absolute incompetent series of business decisions were made, including a long series of acquisitions and divestitures and loading the company to the hilt with debt.

What amuses me sometimes is it just seems like things get re-swizzled in a slightly different way, but it's all been done before. Amazon is opening physical stores here and there (got one here in San Jose, never been) backed by their massive online business. That was Sears and Montgomery Ward years ago, a small local store backed by a massive catalog business selling everything from undies to kit homes. Who remembers catalog showrooms like BEST and Consumers Distributing where you saw merchandise displayed around the store or you looked through a catalog, then picked up a form and a golf pencil, entered info, turned it in and waited for your item to slide down the conveyor belt, and paid for it? Not too different from going to an Amazon store, seeing/touching an item, ordering it, and having it show up at your doorstep the next day.

I feel like we're not far from the end of physical shopping in stores. Things arrive at home quickly and easily, and returns are getting easier and cheaper. Why not order that pair of socks, you can always send back without too much expense or trouble. We'll end up plowing under all the malls and strip shopping centers and turning them into data centers and solar panels to run our online lives.
 
Chris Allingham said:
merchandise displayed around the store or you looked through a catalog, then picked up a form and a golf pencil, entered info, turned it in and waited for your item to slide down the conveyor belt, and paid for it?
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That was the beginning of the end for Service Merchandise (formerly Wilson's) here. Pretty ironic, as it signalled an end of the "service" part of the business.
 
Doug D said:
That was the beginning of the end for Service Merchandise (formerly Wilson's) here. Pretty ironic, as it signalled an end of the "service" part of the business.
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Service Merchandise. Oh, how I remember them. I really liked their format.
 
I well remember Service Merchandise. Had one in Chicago on far NW side where wife and I lived. They were kind of a weird store though. Many times due to how they handled packaging and stuff, I would get home with my newly purchased "treasure" only to find out I had 2 of them. There was a similar store here in Rockford when we moved here back in 92. Called K's Merchandise. It's where we bought our first Weber Genesis (that is now residing with my son in law).
Having been born way back when Truman was our POTUS I remember all the catalogues my mom would order from. Sears, Dayton's, Monkey Ward and IIRC there was a fourth but my old brain cells can't quite bring it back.
They were uuuuuge books too. I remember my mom pouring over them and pulling out an order form. She would send me to the corner mail box and weeks later packages would arrive. (I guess USPS was slow back then as well :D)
Of course I also recall having stores on the corner, mom didn't drive so off we'd go to Grocerland, National Tea or A&P with her tote cart in tow behind us. Of course she also had to push the stroller or buggy with my little sis in there then later on 2 little sis. We rode the bus everywhere or the street car. For basically a dime we could travel all around the city and get home.
The times they are a changin' and not for the good I am afraid
 
Chris, the last part of Sears' downfall is purely due to Eddie Lampert. His actions pretty clearly indicate that he's gutting the company and buying what falls off at fire sale prices, especially real estate.
 
J Grotz said:
At least Amazon rarely uses fedex in my area. I had a time sensitive package that the shipper shipped overnight by fedex. The first two delivery attempts were on a Saturday and Sunday (delivery date was supposed to be the prior Tuesday), of course my office was closed. They finally delivered it two weeks after the initial delivery date. I had already initiated a return and sourced the item elsewhere so it went straight back to fedex.

I'm currently waiting on fedex for a package from Weber, an ivory Smokey Joe Premium and parts. It left Weber 8 days ago. Fedex tracking said it was on a truck to be delivered yesterday. It never showed up and no further updates to the tracking.

I will no longer do business with vendors that use fedex.
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Fed ex is killing me right now, they have had my replacement parts for my glen blue for 2 weeks and they say they have it I just can’t seem to get it delivered.
 
Weird having issues with FedEx. Sound like all the issues I have had with USPS and why I have given up on them and now only use FedEx or UPS
 
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