the point of amazon is the customer service.

i buy a TV at a random retailer. the tv breaks. i need to take the TV there, they send it to the manufacturer for repairs, 6 weeks later i maybe get my tv back.

a tv ordered at amazon breaks, they collect it, bring a replacement and deal with the problem themselves.

for me, and a lot of other people, amazon has quit competing on price. we buy there for the convenience, not because its "cheap".

Walmart is known for their generous return policy as well. 15+ years ago my roommate worked at Walmart customer service desk. She told me she was instructed to basically never not process a return. I don't know if it's still that way, I haven't returned anything to Walmart in probably a decade. I'm sure walmart.com would be similar.

maybe its like some other post in this thread said. maybe amazon isnt all that special in reality. but in our minds, it is.

shopping at amazon is seamless. even when you order something and then dont want it. i dont have to accept the package and then send it back, i just tell the postal person that i dont want it, they return it, amazon accepts that as a return and ships the money back without asking questions. not probing questions. they just dont ask. they do the thing i expect them to do without even bothering me with an email. it doesnt bother me at all. thats whats so good about it.

i get that thats first world problems. but hackernews IS about spoiled software engineers being spoiled.

amazon has this weird concierge service built in. it just works for me.

How is that different from any other online retailer?

What sort of concierge service is Amazon providing you?

Are you european by any chance? We enjoy reasonable return policies by default - sure, Amazon adds a few benefits like extended return periods, but as a european you get the basic return options anywhere. Returning items without any questions asked isn't magical here, it's required and expected. It is my understanding that the return policies in the US very much depend on the seller which turns Amazon into the shining gold standard, I guess.

Nope, American.

This is true. You can return anything - obviously abused/ broken stuff, even items purchased from other stores. Items purchased from Walmart.com can also be returned to any physical Walmart location, no questions asked.

Yeah, my roommate said she processed returns that were obvious scams at the Walmart Service Desk but she still was still supposed to process them anyway. Guess they accepted the scams were a just a cost of offering a great return policy.

> Also the yearly membership locks people to amazon to an extent.

True, but I see that as a strike against Amazon. I was really pissed off recently when I found Amazon were selling the DVD/BD of a popular recent movie as a Prime exclusive; non-Prime customers can't buy it from them at all, unless they want to roll the dice on that wretched hive of scum and piracy which is the Amazon thirdparty market.

If Prime becomes effectively unavoidable, and Amazon's sticker prices get to amortize the Prime fee as "discounts", then they no longer have much of an incentive to compete on true price. As a customer, that's not even a tiny bit compelling.

> non-Prime customers can't buy it from them at all, unless they want to roll the dice on that wretched hive of scum and piracy which is the Amazon thirdparty market.

Doesn't Amazon use shared inventory between first party and fulfilled-by-Amazon third party sellers, so that the first party market is potentially as much a hive of scum and piracy as the third party market. I'm quite sure that's been raised as an issue many times with regard to counterfeits.

Do they really? That's horrible! It would also explain so much bad/strange behavior where Amazon gets caught selling fraudulent merchandise.

For a good example of this, look up reviews on CR2032 coin cell batteries sometime. In a nutshell, regardless of which brand you pick or who you buy from on Amazon, it seems you're very likely to get re-packaged and possibly counterfeit goods.

Yep..... as a FBA seller on amazon you have to explicitly specify to not co-mingle inventory.

Look at the do a search for amazon comingling and look at the FBA forums

I mean, there are plenty of products that you can get at both Amazon and Walmart today, and you could get those at Walmart instantly. Prime just allows you to get that product from Amazon in two days, without worrying about the cost of extra shipping, the hassle of actually getting to a Walmart (traffic, parking, weather, etc.), having to wait for someone to go get it, etc. Amazon just pushes all those unpleasant 'wait' factors to the experience of the deliverer, not the receiver.

But "the cost of extra shipping" has to be offset against the annual Prime fee, and all the perks you list apply just as much to vanilla (non-Prime) Amazon.

In recent years I've found myself swinging back towards buying things in brick-and-mortar shops, mostly because the delivery experience can be so horrible. Maybe things are better in the US, but in the UK getting things delivered is non-trivial when you work during the day, and even if you're at home, it's very common for UK postmen to not bother even bringing your parcel with them; they just leave a "while you were out" card forcing you to arrange redelivery. Delivery woes of various kinds have been a staple of /r/britishproblems since the start.

I like to buy big/heavy items from Walmart.com. Buying a full weight set from Amazon would not have free shipping. I can have the heavy stuff sent to any Walmart store for free and go pick it up. And yes, Walmart.com has a huge amount of stuff that isn't sold in their stores.