Amazon is the fucking worst

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Amazon is the fucking worst

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

in canada they are slowly phasing out home delivery in favour of putting in those big community mailboxes

bitch all you want about usps but if they ever start losing money have fun fighting them when they put one of those communal mailboxes on your front lawn and you come home to piles of junk mail all around it

(luckily for me i'm next to an apartment building so they'll probably put the mailbox beside that but other people in older, densely packed neighbourhoods are pretty hosed)

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 14:57

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:23

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

we'll still get parcels delivered to our door though because they sure as poo poo can't risk losing business to ups and fedex

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 14:58

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

sorry i assumed you were all cool and lived in inner city neighbourhoods where communal mailboxes aren't a thing yet :smug:

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 15:24

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

computer parts posted:

that's because they've been constrained anytime they branch out

like literally the joke on seinfeld about email killing the post office is only true because congress made it illegal for them to offer email addresses

we sorta did the opposite in canada, companies can email bills securely via this thing called epost run by canada post

lots of companies don't use it and since it costs money a lot of the companies that do are trying to get their customers to switch to logging into company site directly for bills instead

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 17:41

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

Shaggar posted:

yeah it would be stupid to do it through the usps when you can do it thru your own company's existing customer web zone.

it's great for the customers because i can file the bills how i want and keep them for years even if the company goes out of business and for some places i don't even have a web account but still get my ebills

but for the businesses it's a tough sell even though it's cheaper than snail mailing bills

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 18:02

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

gift wrap available

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 19:17

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

thank loving christ

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 19:17

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

i'm going to drop $300 on a food processor at amazon.ca because that's like $100 less than buying it at sears

so i guess sears is actually the loving worst op

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 19:20

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

Just-In-Timeberlake posted:

huh, sears still exists then

ya in the technical sense of the word

i think a lot of olds still shop there

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 19:27

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

hahaha oh yeah that article was linked here before

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire

The invisible hand waves bye-bye to Eddie Lampert, whose business plan has run Sears into the ground

lol

lmfao

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 20:27

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

from a different but related article

quote:

Rioters destroyed storefronts in downtown Oakland, California five months ago, filling the area with sadness and boarded-up windows. All of the businesses have fixed up their public faces except one. One retailer�s huge building still has boarded-up windows and looks abandoned. Local residents call the blighted storefront �depressing,� and the city issued a citation for �blight.� The blighted business? Sears.
It�s easy to make fun of Sears, and we often do. In this case, the issues are much more complex than just assuming that Sears doesn�t care about its stores. A whole building of broken windows is a bigger problem than a few stained carpets or empty racks here and there.
The real problem is Sears� legacy. Specifically, that huge building that a very different company called Sears, Roebuck & Co. built in the 1930s. Yes, technically Sears Holdings and Sears Roebuck are the same company, but every American consumer knows that they aren�t really the same company at all.
The city issued a blight citation, but Sears says that it can�t fix the storefronts. The problem is the age of the building: the company can�t just run to Home Depot to replace custom windows that date back to the 1930s.
Tipster Gordon let us know about the situation, observing that the pictures in the article are terrible, and things look even worse in real life. �This is a huge, currently-operating Sears location, but from the outside you could be forgiven for thinking it had been abandoned for decades,� he writes.
When the city told Sears that it couldn�t leave unfinished plywood on its windows, the company�s solution was to paint the wood. That solved the problem
�It really affects the quality of life in that area because the building�s such a huge presence there,� one neighbor told the San Francisco Chronicle. Retailers are supposed to cheer us all up with their holiday displays at this time of year, not depress us with their blight.
The city has given Sears another month to replace the windows. You can safely make a bet that the plywood will still be there then.

tl;dr:

quote:

When the city told Sears that it couldn�t leave unfinished plywood on its windows, the company�s solution was to paint the wood.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 20:30

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

duTrieux. posted:

everybody needs to make sure to read the linked Bloomberg piece, all of it, because it is a glorious case study in how to destroy a profitable and trusted brand

sears has been going so badly that the guy has lost significant reputation in wall street

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 20:40

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

quote:

And yet former executives in Sears�s digital group say that while some of Lampert�s suggestions were forward-thinking, he barraged the department with quixotic demands. Lampert constantly cooked up ideas: BlackBerry apps, netbooks in stores, and a massive multiplayer game for employees. He ordered the IT department to build a proprietary social network, called Pebble, which he joined anonymously under the pseudonym �Eli Wexler.� (An Eli refers to someone who attended Yale.) Lampert�s intention, former colleagues say, was noble: He wanted to engage with employees and find out what was happening across the company.

It quickly became clear that Eli Wexler was a little too engaged on Pebble. He left critical comments on other people�s posts, according to more than 20 former employees; he even got into arguments with store associates. Word got around that Wexler was Lampert. Bosses started tracking how often employees were �Pebbling.� One former business head says her group organized Pebble conversations about miscellaneous topics just to appear they were active users. Another group held �Pebblejam� sessions to create the illusion they were using the network.

sears

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 20:56

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

Sagebrush posted:

"american manufacturing" as an indicator of high quality is kind of a half-truth. american companies made plenty of crappy quality things back in the 1930s and 50s and whatever. the reason we think of old things as better-made than new things is mostly because all the crappy old things were thrown out. so our picture of old technology is from the things that lasted.

same with music, movies, etc. there was a poo poo ton of unmemorable garbage music that came out in the 1960s but we only remember the really good bands so it seems like a better time than it was.

also lots of older poo poo was more repairable than now

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 21:11

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

i'm not even being conspiracy theory about it

especially now that everything is using integrated electronics... miniaturization, multilayer pcbs, smt, etc etc means it is inevitable that poo poo is harder or impossible to repair

and that's aside from whether it's cost effective or not

uncurable mlady posted:

lots of older poo poo had components the size of a baby's arm that were available off-the-shelf in more generalized forms; speciality manufacturing, relentless cost-cutting, and the relative ease of custom fabrication has killed that dream

yeah exactly

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 21:14

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:23

Cold on a Cob: Feb 6, 2006; i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually; College Slice

Sagebrush posted:

i saw a really good article somewhere talking about middle class purchasing power in the 50s vs. today. in the 1950s, something like a pair of work boots would cost the equivalent of three hundred bucks today. just good leather boots. you can buy the same three hundred dollar boots today and they'll be just as good or better and they'll last forever. there wasn't another option in the 50s -- you got the boots from the cobbler in your hometown or maybe you drove to the big city for a day to go to the fancy store.

today have another option: you can buy boots for 59.99 from china. and they'll be pieces of crap and fall apart after a year. but your purchasing power has gone up five times! and the same goes for basically every consumer good -- clothes, electronics, furniture, etc. even though real wages haven't increased (or have greatly fallen) since the 50s, you can now be living at the poverty line and have a closet full of clothes and a decent sized tv because we exploit the hell out of east asia, so people can point to this as "hey look quality of life just keeps getting better"

tl;dr basically the good quality stuff still exists -- wal-mart has just simultaneously skewed everyone's ideas of how much something actually costs and how long it should last

ya this is true and why i'm looking at spending $400 on a food processor (but not until i know if i'll have a job next year or not lol)

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 21:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Amazon is the fucking worst