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Author
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Topic: E-Commerce Shoppers -- What Are You Looking For?
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Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 06-26-2001 07:37 PM
   
Amazon's latest plan to try and actually make some money has them announcing free shipping on purchases of two or more books, CDs, DVDs or videos while simultaneously raising the list price on many items to match or almost match the MSRP. Is this likely to have any effect on your online shopping habits? Why or why not? What are you looking for in an online shopping experience?I doubt it'll change much for me -- if I order from Amazon, it's more about the convenience than the price, these days. |
Kevin Ott
True Believer
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posted 06-26-2001 09:58 PM
Agreed. Unless I order in just the right volumes, my prices at Amazon usually wind up being similar to what I would have paid had I gone to a bricks-and-mortar place, since the shipping cost balances out the discount I may have gotten by buying online.I'm kind of an impulse shopper when it comes to Amazon and other web outlets. Living where I do, there aren't a whole lot of opportunities to buy the kinds of books and music that I want to buy, so lots of times I'll go with Amazon. It'll usually be if I decide I have to have something right now and can't wait for a trip to Philly or Pittsburgh. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 09-05-2001 03:58 PM
And of course Amazon quickly decided this free-shipping was a bad idea, especially when people started ordering two-cent books in order to get free shipping. Now they're back to plugging discounts.I gotta admit, I just got an 18-item shipment of books, CDs and DVDs from Amazon, and it was pretty sweet to open up the box and see all that stuff there. On the other hand, I got the same thrill walking out of the comics store with six graphic novels on Monday. Perhaps I need help. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 09-05-2001 05:03 PM
I'm gonna go out on a limb and sugest that you just like buying stuff. Doesn't matter how, you just like to do it. [This message has been edited by Pattie Gillett (edited 09-05-2001).] |
Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 09-06-2001 06:47 PM
On the other hand, for those of us who live in the precise geometric middle of absolutely nowhere, e-commerce is just about the only option, pricey or not.I wish Amazon would settle on a gimmich and stick with it, personally. The more changes they make, the more it looks like they're just making it up as they go - and that could cost them some confidence from potential customers.
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Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 09-07-2001 07:28 AM
I hate to break this to you, Earl, but Amazon is the Chris Carter of online retailers. There is no master plan. They simply try what they can and see if the customers (and more importantly, their investors) will let them get away with it. Granted, some of the stuff works (like the lovely Associates program, for example  ) but it is very hard to keep up those gimmicks and sustain a healthy balance sheet. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 09-10-2001 07:49 AM
It's gonna be an interesting holiday season, isn't it?I should point out, though, that to my considerable surprise, I placed an 18-item order from Amazon a week or so ago, and the entire order came in one box. I'm not sure if that's ever happened to me in the era of multiple distribution centers. |
Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 10-24-2001 06:51 PM
So now it looks like, out of the ashes of September 2001, one of the few benefactors of the many scares involving the mail could be e-commerce. Is the e-commerce sector really going to have a resurgence, or are uncertainties about the safety of the mail going to sink that ship even further? |
slgorman
One of the Regulars
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posted 10-25-2001 08:51 PM
A few weeks ago a friend and I were discussing the "worst case scenario" regarding the possible insecurity (or public perception of) the postal service. I was thinking what a boon that may be to the USPS new eBillPay functions. Especially since the only viable alternative we could think of was no more mailboxes for depositing mail, having to have postal workers verify return addresses and/or ID when you drop off your mail at a Post Office to have it sent, what a hassle that would be for working people or shut-ins, blah blah blah panic-cakes. If I was a conspiracacy theorist, I might think something fishy was going on. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 11-15-2001 04:51 PM
Right now I'm looking for some free shipping deals. There's a distinct lack of them this year. By this time last year, I had made my giant Amazon gift order and it was on its merry way to me. The only one they have is for toys, $150 worth at that! It will be a long while before I spend $150 on toys at Christmas - at least for the baby. Toys for his/her dad are a different story. |
Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 11-15-2001 05:42 PM
Make sure you include the baby's dad's fellow toy-collecting friends in that, Pattie, and we may cook up a $150 toy order yet!I don't think we're going to see as many free shipping deals this year. And y'know what? I'm okay with that. That means they're starting to smarten up and hedge their bets a bit, err on the side of caution and all that. When my web site's fate is so closely tied to Amazon.com's, I'm okay with that. Not sure how the average Joe looks at it though. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 11-17-2001 12:58 AM
You may have spoken too soon, Earl. Amazon lowered the threshold on the free-shipping-for-toys-only orders to 99 bucks, and now has a similar offer for everything-but-toys. Hope that doesn't indicate sales are slower than expected. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 11-17-2001 08:24 AM
OK, Earl, now say that I'm never going to find the perfect gift for my Mom. Go ahead, say it. |
Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 11-18-2001 02:22 AM
OK, if Pattie's right and I've become a nigh-prophetic purveyor of reverse psychology, let's stretch these new powers of mine to the limits.1. Pattie, you're not going to find that perfect gift for your mom. Sorry. 2. "VIP" will not be cancelled soon. 3. Babylon 5: Legend Of The Rangers will not go to series within a year of the pilot movie. 4. The Herbal Essences ad agency people will not finally realize that the joke that all of their TV commercials have relied on for the past 3-4 years has passed its sell-by date and has turned green and grown hair in the fridge, and may well have developed its own primitive language by now. 5. I won't stop getting sixteen metric buttloads of junk e-mail every day. And yes, metric buttloads. Lousy English buttloads don't do justice to the volume of spam in my in-box. I hope I didn't push it too far. |
Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 11-20-2001 06:42 PM
On the other hand, there are some e-commerce non-horror stories. In April, I pre-ordered something from Amazon.co.uk using gift certificate funds that more than covered the order, with the full knowledge that the price might fluctuate a little bit and that it wouldn't be released until August at the earliest.The release was pushed back to mid-November, and so I settled in for a long wait. It was also announced, in the interim, that this item was now a limited edition with only 2,000 copies in circulation, period. When I started seeing reviews of this item on a mailing list I subscribe to, I got a bit nervous. In the wee hours of this morning, I logged on to Amazon.co.uk to check my order, and it turns out that the item had been assigned another number, and my order had been cancelled. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I'd been waiting for this literally all year long, and now there was a good chance I'd missed out on it. I found the item under a different number, still in stock, and placed a new order - only to find that the system had lost track of my gift certificate credit, so it was now going to cost me the equivalent of $25. I fired off a rather anguished e-mail to their customer service department, and got a very quick response: the item was still in stock, they tracked down my credit, and it was being fast-tracked to shipping. They even put a temporary freeze on new orders while they contacted other people in my predicament whose pre-orders had been cancelled. They weren't aware there had been a glitch in the notification process. Now THAT'S service. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 11-23-2001 01:24 PM
That's the sort of customer service Amazon built its reputation on here in the States, too, but it seems to be missing over the last year -- they've even stopped printing their customer service telephone number on their receipts. I had some issue with them last year, and my e-mails got no response -- I eventually had to hunt through old receipts to find the telephone number and, after a ten minute wait on hold (at 3 AM EST) the problem was solved. Here's hoping this Christmas season is a little smoother. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 12-29-2001 11:51 AM
OK, this a relatively minor thing but it's annoying nevertheless:Why in the world does Amazon.com's recommendation software think that if I've rated a book a "5" - their highest rating - that it is somehow profitable for them to recommend me the Cliffs Notes for that very same book?!!! I've obviously read it and enjoyed it, why would I want to read the gutted version in Cliffs? This has happened to me several times in the past week! Add another battle in the ongoing war between me and various types of marketing research software.
[This message has been edited by Pattie Gillett (edited 12-29-2001).] |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 12-29-2001 01:16 PM
I once spent an hour rating albums on Amazon to see what it recommended. After telling it that I owned every REM album, it suggested that I might like . . . REM singles. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 12-29-2001 03:22 PM
OK, Dave, you win. That sucks more. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 12-29-2001 03:34 PM
Just popped over there to add my new Mavericks CD (by the way, it was a crime against music that they ever broke up but this has been partially rectified by the fact that Raul Malo just put out an awesome solo album) to my collection and Amazon informed me that people who bought that CD also bought "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."No *$#&! Everyone bought that book. God bought that book! You could buy a drill bit set in the hardware section and Amazon would recommend that book. Don't ask me how I know that but it's true. I need to lie down; this is bothering me too much.
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Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 12-31-2001 03:23 PM
I've seen the same phenomenon with Amazon several times - stuff which, while completely and utterly unrelated to what I'm interested in, was nonetheless insanely popular, wound up on my list. I'm not too terribly surprised.And I too have experienced the "REM effect" Dave mentioned earlier, only with ELO. I liked it when they suggested I try the reissued albums from the band's back catalog, and when I went in to adjust my recommendations to account for the fact that I'd already gotten them, it then decided to recommend the original pressings to me. You just can't win. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 12-31-2001 09:48 PM
Clearly, the only solution is to not follow a band whose name is a set of initials.Happy New Year, everyone. See you all on the flip side. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 08-26-2002 02:20 AM
Thought I'd pop this back up to the top now that Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been hawking the free shipping for purchases over a certain threshold for a while. Has it increased anyone's tendency to make purchases online? It's certainly made me wait and aggregate purchases to meet the cutoff, but that also tends to mean that I tend to get stuff I want right now from local sources. Still, it probably works out for Amazon in the end. At least, I hope it does, or I'm gonna have a lot of library links to recode. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 08-28-2002 04:10 PM
Just thought I'd share this because I was pleasantly surprised. I ordered two oxford work shirts from JCPenney.com on Saturday and chose the lowest possible shipping option to save money. Well, the items came today! I was sure UPS Ground would take much longer than 3 business days. Cool!But, they do get a thumbs down for not offering all of their sale prices online. This week they were charging less for Dockers in the stores than they were online. That's not fair. I'm already paying for shipping, why not offer me the best available price? [This message has been edited by Pattie Gillett (edited 08-28-2002).] |
slgorman
One of the Regulars
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posted 08-29-2002 12:46 AM
Yeah, well Amazon has moved to my pissed at list. My roommate ordered a video to show in class this week and as of today it's one day late even with the more expensive, faster shipping. This is the second time they've pissed me off and considering the number of alternatives they had better watch it. |
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