Amazon Prime

We use Prime. We just randomly had a game called What Do You Meme show up at our house. I suspect my 3 year old ordered it with Alexa somehow.

 

I'm the same way - not EVERY day but 3-4 days out of the week something arrives.

Today it will be:




It's my son's 8th birthday tomorrow - he's really into magic tricks lately. Got him a bunch of other stuff not from Amazon too but had to supplement with some Amazon stuff. It's amazing how expensive a couple pair of kid's Converse can be. =(

 

No Alexa for me though. Not interested

 

Prime member for 8+ years. Over the last 2 years I have found myself having to contact them for late packages or cancelled orders more frequently.

I have learned to screen shot my order confirmation when it shows a GUARANTEED delivery date. I have had packages show up 2-3 days after this date. Last year I let a few slide, then I lost my patience. I have started to contact customer service with my screenshot showing my guaranteed delivery date when my packages arrive late. Don't promise or guarantee me anything if you can't hold up your end of the deal. Sometime they credit me a month or two of prime, other times they tell me to go pound sand. They'll blame UPS, USPS, or FedEx. But ultimately those are all subcontractors of Amazon, Amazon is the GC. If a plumber was working on your new house under a GC and they messed something up, you'd hold the GC accountable right?

I will X2 the different prices for different people on different devices. Example: my wife is placing an order, she asks if I had anything saved on a list, i say yeah and give her the item to look up, my amazon app on my phone shows $127.48, she pulls it up on her phone on her amazon account and it shows $134.90, same exact item, same exact seller, 100% apples-to-apples. This might be an item that Amazon knows that I really want or an item that has been sitting in a saved list for a few weeks so the price is a little lower on my app to try and get me to pull the trigger. But for someone who is making an impulse buy or buying a random gift for someone else, it seems that amazon is trying to squeak out an extra 5-15% if they can get it. I have learned to sit on everything, especially bigger ticket items, over 1/2 the time the price drops within 2 weeks. Your phones and Alexa listen to everything you say and track every keystroke you make, everything on your Amazon app is custom tailored to your habits, including the prices.

My biggest gripe is this, this has happened on multiple occasions over the past 2-3 years. I will order something that is prime and fulfilled by Amazon, even though it might be shipping from a 3rd party. These are companies and suppliers that Amazon has entrusted so much that they give these items the Prime designation. I will place an order and the next day I will get a message that my item was cancelled because the supplier was out of stock and failed to notify Amazon. I will immediately jump on my Amazon app and find that the item IS in stock but that the price has increased a considerable amount. I end up calling amazon only to be told that it is because it is being sold by a different supplier with a different price than the previous supplier. This is a failure on Amazons part, but then they immediately try to pass this additional cost on to the customer. Not a good way to do business. They tell me that they have refunded my cancelled order and that I will need to place a new order. At that point I call bullshit and tell them that they will honor the original purchase price of the item and that they will be handling the new order placement in-house. Then I get transferred to their boss, transferred to their bosses boss, and so on, until someone finally says "oh that shouldn't have happened, I don't know why the last 3 CSR's all told you to place a new order for a higher price even though the item is the same, we'll take care of it".

Bottom line. Amazon is having serious growing pains and their back office can't keep up with the front office. Suppliers and deal makers can't keep up with the output. This makes the front office look bad since they usually take the easiest way out until someone raises hell.

I have started to use Ebay a lot more. Most prices are the same or better. Most shipping is free. And I've had ZERO issues with promised delivery dates. I use Ebay for garage, RV, golf cart, dirt bike, and truck items, usually bigger ticket items for a project I might be working on. Recently purchased a full sheet of 1/4" HDPE, got here in 2 days and for 12% less than Amazon. We have also started to price shop Wal-marts app a lot more and have found very competitive prices to Amazon, sometimes lower or higher, but it seems to all even out. I want to see Wal-mart gear up and create serious competition for Amazon.

I was always an Amazon cheerleader, use it at work, buy literally everything I needed. But in the last 2 years I have become so angry with them on so many occasions that I've been having flashbacks to when we had a cable TV provider.

 

Ours is currently just on the FireTV. My in-laws have one, and my son LOVES to talk to it.

 

Hearing one woman’s voice in the house is enough for me

 

I hear that. I changed my Siri on my phone to a male. I don't need another woman telling me what to do when I use my GPS

 

My son loves to make Alexa play music.. He's discovered he's a huge Steve Miller Band fan thanks to Alexa..

 

That sucks - I haven't experienced most of what you've stated here but I have had a few late deliveries and it does seem like the guaranteed delivery date changes on their end without any notification to the user.

That being said, the few issues I've had with orders being wrong or broken, which is literally only a few over hundreds and hundreds of purchases, have all been resolved very quickly by Amazon. I realize that they aren't always the cheapest either, but the convenience is worth the extra few dollars it costs. I thought I would stop using them when they started collecting tax for Utah residents (I hate taxes.. ahem) but still find the convenience is worth the additional cost.

I hate eBay. I used to have a pretty successful eBay store and eBay/PayPal are extortionists. I will still order from eBay but only very rarely.

 

I have been using prime since 2012. My first order was my 3 ton OTC floor jack. I have the Amazon credit card and save up the points to get money off of my purchases. Got ya daughter a pair of under armour sneakers for 15 bucks. Recently, I have been using Google express. Free shipping on orders over a certain amount with no yearly subscription fee.

 

Siri and myself don’t get along. Had to change her voice to Australian, now we’re friends

 

Never enough boots!

 

Has anyone done Amazon's Treasure Truck?
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=15020057011
We have one in our area, i'll get a text with a deal on 1 item and you can go pick it up.

 

Ah, the simple pleasures you cannot have when you live in small town, WV.

 

Got on Prime in 2012, when I was in college. The free year for students is what got me in, been addicted to it ever since. During the winter (my slow season), I probably order at least 2 books a week from them. Thankfully, I’m realizing I’m not as bad as some of you Idk how many of you guys use Prime Instant Video, but it’s the shit. I think I have around 100 movies and tv shows bought on there.

 

Siri acts like she doesn’t even know me

 

Amazon and be defaut Prime only got good here in Canada a couple years ago. The prices on Amazon.ca were and sometime still are ludicrous ($339 + $89 shipping for a single Uni ball pen is one i remember...). But the prices are alot better now, often better than our local retailers.

I got Prime a year ago. Its already saved me a ton of money. Hell, we bought a laser printer for $129. It arrived two days later. Same printer in town was $250+. I'm an Amazon convert for sure. All my stuff has arrived within 2 business days so far. I average about 2 orders a month. Pretty sure if we lived in the US I'd rarely set foot in a brick and mortar store again...

 

One thing I didn't see mentioned is AmazonSmile. If you haven't already, link your account to your favorite charity. It doesn't cost you a thing. Amazon donates 0.5% of qualified purchases you make on your behalf. I've got my account linked to Room in the Inn in Nashville. I volunteered there to tutor homeless people trying to get their GED. They've received $889 from Amazon on my behalf as of November 2017.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_rspo_laas_aas

 

That's awesome.
I have mine linked to the Capt. Nicholas Whitlock Foundation. He was a fraternity brother of mine who died while serving as an Air Force pilot during OEF. One of the best men I've ever known.

 

Who knew!! Nice one. Will use this. cheers

 

Lo and behold, just went to Amazon and a window popped up for Amazon Smile

 

Who knows about making returns from Amazon at Kohls? are they partners? or whats going on here? Yesterday i saw this big yellow sign in front of the kohls.

 

There is such an abundance of homeless population in Nashville. I did a service trip there in college and still remember one particular guy named Clarence that we ran into several places throughout. I will have to check out this program.

 

There is indeed. I'm glad I could help out a few people who were really making an effort to get back on their feet.

 

My 10 year old grandson told me what he asked Siri...OMG

 

It’s getting pretty common. The two day delivery is only about 50/50 now. I think they changed the description to two days once it ships. They have handled any problems I’ve had pretty promptly. I had some Chemical Guys soap come in with a leaking bottle a few weeks back. About 25% of it was gone. They credited my account, but didn’t want it back. I can still use it, but didn’t want to pay full price. Ended up getting a mostly full bottle for free.

 

The Smile program is pretty great. I chose Gold Star Dads of America. It’s a group of men who lost children in the line of duty. They help veterans suffering from PTSD, along with helping families who lost members in combat. If you have the opportunity, please look them up and help out. Camp Hope here in Houston is another worthy cause. They house veterans with PTSD, and I’ve been lucky enough to help them build their facilities here.

http://goldstardads.org/

http://ptsdusa.org/camp-hope/


That said, there is a huge problem with the Smile program that they haven’t addressed. It doesn’t work on the app. You have to log in through a browser. Most people I know use the app, it’s much easier, so a lot of money is being spent that could help these causes. No excuse for this in my opinion.