Ask HN: How does Amazon Local fit into Amazon's strategy?
It seems to me that everything else Amazon is doing is trying to push more and more customers online, where they know they can dominate. Why Amazon Local? Just because they could?
On the UI side, mind shooting me an email at [email protected]? I can share some stuff we're working on!
(I work at Stripe)
Although it’s kind of proving your point that the API could be easier to use/better documented, here are some simpler ways to do what you’re looking for:
* Upgrading a plan (no cancellation needed): https://stripe.com/docs/api#update_subscription-plan
> `curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/subscriptions/sub_foo -u sk_test_bar: -d plan={new_plan}`
* Canceling a subscription at the end of the billing cycle (no need to handle on your end): https://stripe.com/docs/api#update_subscription-at_period_en... > `curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/subscriptions/sub_foo -u sk_test_bar: -X DELETE -d at_period_end=true`
* Anchoring subscription to a date (sorry! :( , this is undocumented but should be out soon): https://stripe.com/docs/api#create_subscription > `curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/subscriptions/sub_foo -u sk_test_bar: -d billing_cycle_anchor={timestamp}`
That said, agreed overall that our subscriptions support needs some love. We're starting to spend more time on exactly this, so would love any feedback you (or anyone else reading) are willing to share. I'm [email protected].As an extension (and this is potentially where the money is), I can think of an intermediary service (a-la Google Voice call widgets) that allows entities to contact me without ever giving away my phone/address/etc.
It seems to me that everything else Amazon is doing is trying to push more and more customers online, where they know they can dominate. Why Amazon Local? Just because they could?