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Maybe some of have already seen this, but I hadn't seen it until it bit me in the ass today. Amazon is listing some of its standard products as Prime only, meaning only Prime members are allowed to buy it. Prime is an Amazon subscription service that gives you free 2-day shipping (to your local post office, not to your door), streaming services, and a bunch of other 'benefits'. They have gone to great lengths to push this $99 a year service on people, including delaying normal shipments and preventing you from buying what you want. I no longer qualify to reorder a SSD I bought last week since I'm not willing to become a member (nor can I try the 30 trial as I did that back when Prime was new). All that SSD research time wasted.
We were worried about net neutrality. It seems in the future we'll have to worry about subscribing to every store we want to do business with just to have the privilege of buying from them. I'll bet money within a couple years you won't qualify for sales like Cyber Monday unless you're a subscriber. I can easily see that spreading to every store: "Pay $10 at the door for big savings on all our in-store, on sale items." Stores used to give you discounts for going to them, now you'll have to pay for the honor of shopping there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @11:09PM
I have no problems with them running their business the way they see fit, as long as the communication is above board. It's not like we have no alternative source for these items.
I'm not a prime member - I always try to buy enough to qualify for free shipping, and then wait for it to arrive.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 13 2016, @11:25PM
It's just another game to play. Back in the day you'd look on Amazon for a Tommy Gunn Penis Extender [amazon.com] and the price would be 40 bucks. But if you continued looking, you could find the exact same product for 20. Now (according to that link) it's a little over ten, and well worth the investment. Which means that I, even suboptimally, achieved a 50% cost savings because I wasn't lazy or gullible and could have achieved more had I been even less lazy or gullible.
Recall the lessons learned (you did learn lessons from it, right?) from Franz Kafka's books -- You don't just stop and resign yourself to that fate just because somebody told you to, right?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @02:15AM
So... Did the Penis Extender make it longer than 2 inches?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 14 2016, @01:35PM
I wouldn't insult any individuals mom, but AC being a polymorphic c++ object I didn't feel so bad. I'm language-ist that way.
And just to head it off at the pass because I'm sure its on the way, "Who still programs c++, your mom?" yeah yeah very funny.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 14 2016, @05:37PM
It's used to cure his chronic whiskey dick.
(Score: 1) by gmrath on Monday November 14 2016, @12:48PM
So, here I thought a penis extension included a full suspension lift kit, 40-inch diameter tires, light bars, air horn, 500+ CID engine and a six foot step ladder to get into the thing to strap it on. Huh.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 14 2016, @01:49PM
Amazon sells all those parts, although maybe you need Prime.
Reminds me of my first "what the fuck are you doing on the internet" parenting experience with my daughter who was trying her best to order a complete "hello kitty" car makeover kit from amazon, the five hundred dollar one which is apparently no longer for sale, with Hello Kitty floor mats seat covers and door decals and license plate holder and steering wheel cover, window tint kit and a ton of other probably gray market branded stuff. Certainly I would have had the cutest car in the city. I was kinda torn between actually helping her buy it vs the parental version of there are certain activities not allowed on the internet etc...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 14 2016, @02:25PM
FYI . . . the state of Arizona has a limit of 2 dildos per household. Does this item qualify fall under the scope of that law? Or can I order as many as I want?
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday November 14 2016, @07:58PM
"Ma'am, your neighbors called to inform us that you were making noises akin to copulation. We are agents Richard Long and Muai-Beeg Dong, from the Dildo Intrastate Limit Dedicated Organization. We have to search you, and optional partners, to makes sure nobody is currently over the legal holding limit. Please step aside and put your guns back in their holsters, you may retain any butt plugs, this should be really quick"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @02:26AM
> I have no problems with them running their business the way they see fit,
They can run their business anyway they want and you can still have a BIG problem with the way they run it.
Its like you are deliberately trying to miss the point.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Francis on Monday November 14 2016, @04:45AM
Right now they have about 30% of the market in the US. This move is obnoxious, but at least you know they're doing. There was a story a while ago about them changing the search results to make the deals worse if you weren't a member of prime. That's a completely different matter.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @07:54AM
That's a completely different matter.
Granted. So why are you so rude as to bring it up?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tfried on Monday November 14 2016, @08:36AM
The problem is not so much in Amazon making a jerk move. It's that apparently they think they are in a position to be a jerk and still get away with it. And I'm afraid, they're probably right, too. Why?
1. Amazon has become the one stop place to get everything, for the most part at competitive prices. 2. Due to 1), a scary amount of customers will look for product X on Amazon, only. 3. Due to 2) no vendor can really afford not to have their product listed on Amazon, while there is no immediate benefit to selling on competing platforms. GOTO 1.
So a couple of years and many jerk moves later, everybody will hate Amazon, but nobody can actually get around Amazon. Pretty much like ebay is today...
I do hope I'm wrong and this move will instead offer an opportunity for an equal rival to emerge and restore actual competition.
(Score: 2, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Monday November 14 2016, @03:37PM
They've always been jerks like this to partners, vendors, suppliers. It's just the customers have mostly been insulated from this until recently.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 14 2016, @07:03PM
So a couple of years and many jerk moves later, everybody will hate Amazon, but nobody can actually get around Amazon. Pretty much like ebay is today...
I do hope I'm wrong and this move will instead offer an opportunity for an equal rival to emerge and restore actual competition.
What are you talking about? We already have an equal rival: it's called Ebay. You mentioned it yourself right here. In the past year, I've already shifted a lot of my purchases from Amazon to Ebay because Amazon's prices are frequently not that great, and the high minimum order to get free shipping is annoying. I'll also look for other vendors for things to make sure I'm getting the best price, and to avoid Amazon getting too much business. I still stick with Amazon for many things because so many vendors sell through them, and they'll have the best prices for those things, but it's not universal by any means; it really pays to shop around.
I've even found vendors that sell on Amazon, but sell for a lower price on their own website. One place I saw like this offered some easy-to-get coupon so the final price on their website came out to be significantly less than the Amazon price.
So I still use Amazon a lot for researching products and seeing what's available, and seeing peoples' reviews of them, but the final purchase frequently will go somewhere else.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday November 14 2016, @09:00PM
That's actually the problem. eBay isn't competing with Amazon, Amazon is attempting to become eBay. They're fundamentally different models -- one is a storefront, the other is an auction. Which is why I don't use eBay, because I don't want to wade through a bunch of "RETAIL BOX ONLY!" and "HALFWAY FUNCTIONAL" and "PARTS ONLY" and "MIGHT SHIP IN THREE MONTHS" listings to find what I'm looking for. But now you're starting to see that same crap come up on Amazon.
So I'm trying to start moving away from Amazon too because of that. And because their shipping is a mess -- I've literally had two of the exact same item, part of the same order, shipped from the same Amazon warehouse, shipped on the same day, arrived in two separate boxes on different days. And it's not even like they were big items, it was two ten packs of bolts. The packaging was far larger than the item itself. I even contacted Amazon support and they couldn't explain it either. And they're SLOW and getting SLOWER. I order from other companies and even the "5-7 day" shipping never takes more than three days. With Amazon the "3-5 day shipping" takes a week or two. Add in Prime Only and Marketplace and Add-On Items and you end up paying five separate shipping fees trying to buy three damn items. And when you try to filter those out, the filters don't work -- you can search specifically for "fulfillment by Amazon", but you'll still have shipments coming from China if you don't double and triple check that order. And they've got a checkbox on the checkout that specifically requests that they try to group stuff into fewer shipments, but that doesn't seem to do a damn thing either anymore. They've got so many products shipping from so many different sellers and different warehouses and they just dump whatever crap anybody in the world wants to sell into one big listing and make YOU try to make sense of it all yourself. If I'm buying something online I'd like to know what I'm buying and who I'm buying it from, but when you order from Amazon even Amazon doesn't seem to know! Obviously eBay has the same issues, for the same reasons, which is why I don't shop there.
But I don't know where else to go for the weird and random stuff. Those odd sized bolts I couldn't find locally I found a good online store for, but the random electronic stuff is a lot harder, and I don't wanna have to order each item from a separate site anyway. I heard AliBaba was good for that stuff but last time I tried to order anything there they asked me to write my own invoice for it, so I'm not sure if they're looking for big commercial/industrial customers or what...it was all very confusing though, they give a per-unit price but then specify that it's only sold in packs of ten (so is that price each or for ten?) and then when you go to order they ask you what the total price should be...I don't know because you didn't label it well enough, but if you're the one selling it shouldn't YOU be telling ME the price??
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:05PM
You're right about Amazon, but you're totally wrong about Ebay. It sounds like you haven't used Ebay in at least 5 years; you should check it out again. Ebay is not an auction site any more; that stopped being the case years ago. They still have auctions, but most sales these days are "buy it now", from very high-volume sellers. You can still re-sell your used stuff on there (and there's plenty of that), but it's basically taken a back seat to the high-volume sellers. For a lot of things, it's a much better place to go. I just bought some odd-sized bolts on there not long ago, for probably about a dollar (from China). You can buy all kinds of weird stuff on there, for cheap prices, both from US and Chinese sellers (the Chinese ones take a while to arrive obviously, but the stuff is super-cheap, even with shipping). It's easy to filter stuff too: new vs used, worldwide vs US-only, etc. I've bought batteries on there for next to nothing, when I needed some CR2012 coin cells. There's people in the US who buy them in bulk, and then sell them in lots of ~5 on Ebay for perhaps $1.50-2.00, and send them to you in an envelope with a single stamp. I needed some 3M "Dual Lock" velcro, and got some small pieces from an Ebay seller for $1 (looks like a retired guy in Florida). You just won't find odds and ends like that on Amazon, especially not at such cheap prices. And it's a lot better than buying some retail-packaged version for $20 that has 20 times as much product as I really need, or some massively overpriced retail-packaged item that's expensive just because of the costs of retail overhead (as with batteries--coin cells are very expensive when you buy them at CVS in a 1-pack).
Right now, Ebay IS the go-to place for weird and random stuff. AliBaba is for commercial stuff in high quantities.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 14 2016, @02:27PM
> I have no problems with them running their business the way they see fit
If you meant 'ruining' their business, then I would agree.
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