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Amazon relents on Sales Tax, sets sights on Same Day Delivery instead (1 Viewer)

Carlo_M

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I too pay the correct L.A. County rate, which is significantly higher than California state tax...



...and still tax + Prime comes out cheaper and more convenient than getting in a car and burning $4.50 per gallon gas on the 405.
 

Sam Posten

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Here we go, Amazon introduces Prime Pantry:http://www.amazon.com/gp/pantry/info/ref=pntry_lm?t=slickdeals&tag=slickdeals&ascsubtag=a83212e476624b0486197942d0edae92http://slickdeals.net/f/6881716-amazon-introduces-prime-pantry
Prime Pantry is a new shopping experience on Amazon.com. Prime members can shop popular household essentials and have them conveniently delivered.Adding your first Prime Pantry item to Cart starts a Prime Pantry box. As you shop, you see that each Pantry item tells you what percentage of a Pantry box it fills based on its size and weight. Pantry boxes are large and can hold up to 45 pounds or four cubic feet of household products. As you check items off your list, we continuously track and show you how full your box is.You can buy as much or as little as you want for a flat $5.99 delivery fee per Prime Pantry box. Save gas, save money, save time.
 

Ronald Epstein

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To me, this is very scary news for the Postal Service, a company I work for.

Over the past year we took Amazon away from UPS. UPS didn't work out
well for Amazon over the Christmas rush.

I know that Amazon was not very confident in the Postal System. They told
us that we would never be able to meet their delivery standards. I can tell
you confidently that we have. We really surprised Amazon.

If you are a PRIME member and order something on a Friday, it will be at
your door on a Sunday -- delivered from the United States Postal Service.
Where our company was looking to go from 6-day to 5-day delivery, suddenly
we found ourselves in the 7-day delivery business. Yes, the Post Office delivers
Amazon Prime on Sundays.

Why is the Post office doing it? It's obvious. Our business is crumbling. We
needed Amazon as a client to boost our package delivery.

I can tell you that when Amazon mail comes into our office every morning, we
stop what we are doing and we process that mail before anything else, making
certain it gets out on the carrier's route THAT DAY. Any Amazon that is accidentally
left behind is driven out to the carrier by the Supervisor.

We cherish Amazon and what it can do for USPS.

We knew the drone delivery plans they were looking at would never come to
fruition. However, their own delivery network? That's bad news for the Postal
Service.
 

Josh Steinberg

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Ronald Epstein said:
To me, this is very scary news for the Postal Service, a company I work for.

Over the past year we took Amazon away from UPS. UPS didn't work out
well for Amazon over the Christmas rush.

I know that Amazon was not very confident in the Postal System. They told
us that we would never be able to meet their delivery standards. I can tell
you confidently that we have. We really surprised Amazon.
I've been really happy with the quality of deliveries that have come from Amazon via the postal service.

Only once did an order that was shipped USPS not make it's "guaranteed delivery date". I'm not sure exactly what the hiccup was, since they left a "signature require" notice at my door that day for an item that didn't require a signature - something must've been mismarked on the package, or perhaps it was a newbie at the Post Office that day. Either way, item showed up the next day without me needing to sign anything. And that's the one and only mistake I can think of. (And I always could have walked over to the Post Office that afternoon if I couldn't have waited.)

To me, partnering with a service like Amazon Prime, and doing seven day a week deliveries, seems to make perfect sense. UPS and FedEx don't do weekends. The Post Office is dropping mail off at my house everyday anyway. I've yet to get a Sunday Amazon Prime delivery from the postal service but I would be very excited about that. As it is now, I do get Saturday packages from them, which I don't think I used to get from the other services.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Thanks, Josh.

And anybody that has bad Amazon from the Postal Service, I am interested
in hearing about that as well. I won't take it personally.

Just being on the front line, I can tell you that we put a lot of personal effort
into making sure every single Amazon package that comes into our facility
in the wee hours of the morning gets out to you that same day.
 

Josh Steinberg

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Ronald Epstein said:
Just being on the front line, I can tell you that we put a lot of personal effort
into making sure every single Amazon package that comes into our facility
in the wee hours of the morning gets out to you that same day.
It really shows!

At the moment I'm living on Long Island in a smaller town, and my area of town is so small and out of the way that getting something as simple as a pizza delivery is easier said than done. And yet, every Amazon package I order that comes via USPS, is always there ontime (with the tiny, one-time-only exception noted above), and usually there around noon. Can't recall any issues with packages being damaged or anything like that either.

A friend of mine lives in NYC and has been helped by the USPS/Prime combo as well at her apartment. For UPS or FedEx, she has to sign for their packages at the door, so if no one's home, the package isn't delivered that day (UPS/FedEx can't get into the building to drop things off). On the other hand, the Postal Service mailboxes are in the building and the post office has keys, so any Amazon package shipped via the Postal Service gets put into her box regardless of whether or not she's there at the time of delivery. That's a major plus.
 

Chuck Anstey

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I don't want to see the USPS go away as I think they supply a valuable service but giving Amazon absolute priority sure doesn't seem like mail neutrality. So Amazon gets a privilege that no one else has access to and doesn't have to pay extra(?) for it? I would expect the 2-day package I shipped treated equally with all other 2-day packages.
 

Sam Posten

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With a side dalliance in B2B:
But there’s one thing Bezos hasn’t been talking about: AmazonSupply, an e-commerce site targeting the unsexy but hugely lucrative wholesale and distribution market. His silence is especially surprising as the site has the potential to turn into the most important development in the company’s history since it started selling books. Yet Bezos has uttered only 28 words in public–ever–about AmazonSupply, describing it in passing as “an incredible category” during the company’s 2012 annual meeting.“You can get industrial motors, flanges, valves, fasteners, materials, janitorial supplies,” he said. And that was it, before moving on to proudly tell shareholders that the world’s largest gummy bear, a 72-ounce sugary beast, was for sale on Amazon.com. Whether the lack of hype is a deliberate part of a stealthy rollout or Bezos just thinks selling rubber gloves to dentists lacks p.r. value, wholesalers are taking the threat seriously, and it’s easy to see why.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/05/07/amazons-wholesale-slaughter-jeff-bezos-8-trillion-b2b-bet/
 

KeithAP

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Ronald Epstein said:
We knew the drone delivery plans they were looking at would never come to
fruition.
I don't think Amazon ever intends for drones to deliver goods directly to consumers. However, a much more workable scenario could see drones moving items from warehouses to nearby Amazon locker locations. This would make safety much easier to ensure by having controlled, secure landing locations.

Still, even if that is the plan, I am sure it is a ways off.

Back on track, Amazon is adding more cities to its Sunday delivery list.

-Keith
 

Sam Posten

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Good interview by Blodgett, who I am not a big fan of usually:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazons-jeff-bezos-on-profits-failure-succession-big-bets-2014-12
HB: What was the mistake with the phone? Or are you saying there is no mistake?
Jeff: I think it takes more time to analyze something like that. Again, one of my jobs is to encourage people to be bold. It’s incredibly hard. Experiments are, by their very nature, prone to failure. A few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work. Bold bets — Amazon Web Services, Kindle, Amazon Prime, our third-party seller business — all of those things are examples of bold bets that did work, and they pay for a lot of experiments.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Sam Posten said:
And now 1 hour delivery:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-com-launches-superfast-delivery-in-nyc-1418903192?mod=e2tw

Any faster and you're gonna need a teleporter, captain!
From the article: "The service, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is available in parts of New York, though Amazon said it would expand to other cities next year. Amazon will charge $7.99 for delivery within an hour, though two-hour delivery is free, according to a statement."

So, who would pay $7.99 for one hour delivery when just another hour would be free? That must be a misprint -- must have meant two-day delivery is free.
 

Patrick Sun

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The holidays are killing shipping times for me this year. A small package was supposed to arrive 2 days ago from Amazon, still in transit today, hopefully it'll show up tonight, but I needed it yesterday. Blargh...
 

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