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A comment on Amazon and Google are on a collision course. Parent comment

Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by dewitt on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @03:19PM (#5676246)
> If I can't buy it via Amazon, I probably won't buy it.

This was 100% true of me as well for a decade or more. But getting into the Google Shopping Express beta changed everything. Same day delivery (i.e., even faster than Prime), competitive prices, up-to-the-minute order and delivery tracking, and sharply dressed and exceptionally polite and courteous couriers, means that for a large portion of "just use Amazon" products I'm now going with Google instead. See http://google.com/shopping/express/about/.

Selection and availability are of course the caveats of the early Google tests (limited to just San Francisco and parts of the Bay Area for now), and I was skeptical at first, but boy is this a game changer if we can pull it off. I've averaged almost an order a day since we started.

Granted, Amazon's use of OnTrac in San Francisco for Prime is also a factor. I may not renew my Prime membership for the first time since it launched as a result of OnTrac's poor service here.

(Ob. disclosure: I've worked at both companies.)

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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by bitops on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:15PM (#5676606)
> I may not renew my Prime membership for the first time since it launched as a result of OnTrac's poor service here.

I've resorted to having stuff delivered to a location where I know that OnTrac is less likely to be used. They do such a shoddy job of delivering on time and seem cheerfully incapable of reading delivery instructions.

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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by dewitt on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:24PM (#5676668)
OnTrac recently "lost" a 75 llb package of mine while on the truck out for delivery, and took several days to admit it was missing, and only then after about a dozen calls and emails. There's not a doubt in my mind it was either stolen (most likely) or the delivery person simply didn't want to lift the box and kicked it out the back of the truck. Amazon had to eat the cost of replacing it, and I subsequently required that they use FedEx or UPS (which they did).

OnTrac will sink Amazon Prime.

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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by mitchty on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:51PM (#5676845)
As someone from an area without OnTrac, how could this company even have gotten a contract with Amazon? They sound worse than "play football with your packages" FedEx and UPS. And I have to admit that is an impressive feat.
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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by bcoates on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @05:18PM (#5677029)
IIRC OnTrac uses contractors, mostly of the "some guy with a truck" variety, of wildly varying quality, and is very cheap. When they're good there's nothing wrong with them but the bad ones do things you would never see a UPS or FedEx guy doing.
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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by potatolicious on Thursday May 09, 2013 @11:53AM (#5681085)
Money. OnTrac is substantially cheaper than UPS and FedEx in their respective service areas. This was always a sore point amongst many people when I worked at Amazon - the company internally prides itself on being absurdly pro-consumer, and the use of OnTrac (among other sketchy small-time delivery operations) was a very big slap in the face on that philosophy.

It's a pretty blatant case of acting against your customer's interests to save a buck, something Amazon has traditionally prided itself on not doing.

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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by acheron on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:53PM (#5676866)
I have never heard of OnTrac and I order from Amazon Prime all the time, so I doubt OnTrac is going to "sink" it.

Googling I see it's some west coast shipping thing, for those curious.

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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by will_work4tears on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @11:13PM (#5678580)
Thankfully it must not be Western Washington, because I've never heard of it, and order Amazon several times a month (several subscriptions).
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Re:Amazon and Google are on a collision course by illuminate on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:50PM (#5676841)
I lost complete faith in Google product search when they cut out all the unpaid aggregation and all the decent prices I seem to find for electronics, musical equipment, etc seem to come from generic ecommerce templated vendors who have no physical presence, but no earthly location or contact information to be found.
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