(I like your idea about USPS parcel service though :))
I see this all over HN, news articles, and reddit ... yet I've never experienced it. Nor has anyone in friend/family circle. I don't doubt it happens, but it makes me wonder what kind of purchase bubble I'm in that prevents such an observance. Is this more prevalent with certain types of goods?
That being said, there is a lot of stuff on amazon I'm honestly surprised is worth the space it takes up in their warehouses. And I have knowingly bought some low-quality stuff on amazon. But perhaps with the critical caveat of knowingly, I have yet to have a counterfeit foisted upon me.
Fires from bootleg phone chargers and the like. (Google for "phone charger fire" to see how often this happens.)
Explosions from bootleg batteries.
Sickness from bootleg water filters and food.
What if you bought CO/ALR receptacles to bring a home with Aluminum wiring up to code, but the terminals weren't made from Indium?
What if you bought a marine battery for your sump pump backup, but it failed to perform and/or failed to notify you of its impending death?
I can continue from here, but I think you get the point.
I live in a city that is stereotyped with rusting factories and falling down houses. We don't really have a petty theft problem because there's still political will to not tolerate petty theft. The police resources to proactively go after it don't really exist but they come if called. The thieves here are really clumsy and tend to break ribs and get black eyes slipping on ice in June or falling down one stair so that tends to dissuade people from making a regular income stream out of it so you're just left with opportunistic theft. When the police do happen to catch a thief they prosecute.
Yeah, it sucks that you may have to go through this process one or more times, but at least it's there.
Trend for half a decade has been to push private companies to fill the gaps and why the rise of DHL etc a few decades back. For any goverment to go against that grain would be a very expensive nightmare, even without the social and buisness politics.
Besides, if any western goverment had a service that good, the push to break it up would be emence and that's even presuming that such a service could be run cost effective to make it appealing.
I'm struggling to think of any country that has anything comparable and drawing a blank. Though mindful that the costs of shipping from china, sure do seem to be a huge factor in helping buisness's operate there. I've had items that have shipped from China to the UK at a price in which would just cover the packaging and to ship the same item using the UK postal service, just across the road would of cost me more than the item and postage.
In many ways Amazon do open their services to others, though to do that you have to operate from their sales store and as we have seen with mobile app stores - you can drag things on for ages, even with blatant issues.
This isn't about quality. It's about competition.
When Walmart or Amazon is an effective monopoly, even in a given region, they have massively outsized power to affect the way things are done there.
It doesn't matter if you're the best retailer in the world; that doesn't mean we, as a society do or should give you license to take over from every other retailer.
We're already halfway there.
Where I lived until recently, Amazon rented/contracted to use USPS trucks for last mile deliveries after Postal Service hours.
It was always amusing to see one of those little USPS trucklings roll up to my house, stuffed with Amazon packages, late at night, on a Sunday, or on a Postal Service holiday.
I search in vain a memory of mom and pop store, where I did not have to spend inordinate amount of time to resolve any issue.
Amazon was successful, because it filled a need that Bezos noticed that it could be better.
Heed my words. Aliexpress was faster, more pleasant experience back in 2010 than it is now, both as a website, and a service.
A lot of their features were copied almost 1-to-1 by Amazon, just for them to later be deleted on Aliexpress.
Most famous, being the inventoryless fulfilment (vs. inventory carrying fulfilment used at the time by Amazon.) They dropped it around 2013-2014 in most markets, and Amazons started rolling it out at around 2015.
I notice that everyone puts all product details in the title of their product because the filters are next to useless. It's like going into a supermarket where all of the products are now on one giant shelf and you have to manually search through the entire shelf because the store doesn't put any effort into putting them into effective aisles, or mandate that the sellers put them in the appropriate aisle.
I'd rather see more competition here, not government-subsidized systematic elimination of all competition.
That said, in my area usps is great, but FedEx not so much.
Sort of. People just shopped differently in those days. If your local stores didn't have what you wanted, you ordered from a catalog.
But the difference is that today, people don't bother checking their local stores first. They just go straight to Amazon and put their neighbors or of business.
Walmart was the pioneer of long term hassle free returns
Not really. High end department stores were doing it for generations. Six months later and no receipt? No problem. My mom used to do this all the time.
Walmart just brought it to the masses.
People aren't obligated to shop anywhere, and it isn't their fault if their neighbours' businesses aren't viable. You can't say the customers who have nothing to do with your business and no desire to go there are the ones who 'put you out of business'.
Yes I'm heavily involved as a leader in my local community and spend about 70 days a year volunteering in it and supporting the people who live in it. How does that compare to you?
Supporting your local community doesn't mean propping up unviable businesses. It's a luddite argument, like paying people to dig holes and fill them back in again.
If I opened a store next to your house selling last week's newspapers and you never buy any is it your fault I went out of business? Nonsense.
Lol you asked me if I did anything! I didn't say anything until you specifically asked!
Amazon didn't become dominant because of their low prices. They became dominant because they are the everything store. It's a single place to buy disparate items rather than needing to check out at seven different marginally-cheaper speciality shops.
Buying from Amazon just shunts money to Seattle. Not everyone lives in Seattle.
Similarly, Amazon is succeeding because it is genuinely a much better experience than going into a store. You order things, they show up at your door. If there is a problem Amazon refunds your money.
If the government should do anything its invest in a same-day/next-day shipping infrastructure that can be used by any business (say, via the post office or maybe a new package logistics agency).