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posted by on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-wizard-of-omaha-is-never-wrong dept.

When Buffet speaks, people listen:

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has sold off $900 million of Walmart stock, choosing to invest billions in airlines instead.

The sale, which leaves Buffett with nearly no shares in Walmart, comes as the US's largest traditional retailer has been rushing to catch up to Amazon and other online competitors.

Amazon's market value is now $356 billion, compared with Walmart's $298 billion. Last year, Buffett acknowledged that traditional brick-and-mortar retailers were struggling in the face of competition from the e-commerce giant.

Yes, but is he still long on Big Cola?


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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Saturday February 18 2017, @01:33AM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Saturday February 18 2017, @01:33AM (#468448) Journal

    Sitting in your comfortable recliner, in your pajamas, you go to a website, where you quickly search for the exact item(s) you want. You know immediately if they are in stock. You click a couple of times and purchase your item(s). Two days later, a nice person delivers them to your front door.

    SMH/LMFAO. That's true of Newegg and many other online shops, but certainly not Amazon.

    <RANT>

    With Amazon, it's more like order from my couch, wait two weeks, wonder why the tracking number says it was delivered successfully to Italy (I'm in the US), complain, get a different tracking number that now says the item I just ordered was shipped six months ago, finally get my items a month and a half after I ordered it, in six different boxes half of which are damaged, that I have to retrieve from a block down the street since they can never seem to get it to the correct address. And this is after specifically limiting my search to items with both "Fulfillment by Amazon" and "Free shipping by Amazon" -- apparently adding both of those options is still no guarantee that the item is sold by Amazon or is actually shipping from their warehouse. (Last time I mentioned this here, someone questioned if I was REALLY sure I selected those options. I wasn't, so I started paying more attention. And I found after choosing those options I still got stuff direct from China. Of course, you can tell when you get to the order confirmation and it suddenly tells you that you have to pay six different shipping charges, but there's no real way to filter it out up front...so you either accept it or delete your whole cart and try again...usually with the same result.) And even when the stuff DOES actually ship from their warehouse...I can get an entire PC worth of components delivered from Newegg, and it all comes in one box, two days after I placed the order. With Amazon, I order ten tiny bolts, the one order ships in two separate boxes from the same damn warehouse in Texas, and takes two weeks to arrive. When I specifically requested as few shipments as possible. Even Amazon customer service got confused trying to figure out how the hell that one happened...

    These days I mostly use Amazon when I don't care so much when or even if the item ever arrives. Cheap garbage that I simply can't find elsewhere (other than Ebay or Alibaba, which are even worse than Amazon...) Or when I don't know exactly what I need -- since Amazon has such a large selection, you can usually type any random crap into the search bar and eventually find what you want. But the only thing I'm confident about when it comes to Amazon is that I can get my money back when (not if) there's a problem. It's safe -- possibly safer than brick and mortar since they rarely question a refund or return -- but it's far from reliable.

    They were fantastic before they started adding all this marketplace crap, but now these garbage shops with garbage products have infested the entire site and that place is not just going downhill, it's fallen right off a cliff.

    </RANT>

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  • (Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Monday February 20 2017, @04:34PM

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Monday February 20 2017, @04:34PM (#469305)

    I've never had an experience with Amazon as bad as what you describe, but I agree that it would be very frustrating to have that sort of thing happen.

    The one thing I can totally agree with you on is the quality of some goods ordered via Amazon. I've received a couple of items that were pretty crappy and obviously Chinese knock-offs. Amazon definitely needs to do something about that.

    Since those two bad experiences I have started getting careful about who I purchase from, rather than just clicking on the least expensive seller. I haven't had any bad experiences for a while now.

    Additionally, to be fair, Walmart sells some pretty crappy stuff too. I've noticed, among people making small talk, there are three "safe" topics for discussion: 1) The Weather 2) Your latest DIY project 3) The most recent thing you've had to return to Walmart because it didn't work.

    :-)

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday February 20 2017, @05:33PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Monday February 20 2017, @05:33PM (#469340) Journal

      Additionally, to be fair, Walmart sells some pretty crappy stuff too. I've noticed, among people making small talk, there are three "safe" topics for discussion: 1) The Weather 2) Your latest DIY project 3) The most recent thing you've had to return to Walmart because it didn't work.

      I'm sure they do...although I stopped shopping there about ten years ago. Not that I was shopping there much at the time to begin with, but it was the only place I could find in my hometown to buy a decent pair of sunglasses (it was a small town...) Then I discovered the pairs I was paying $20 for at Walmart could be found online for $7...for a three pack. So that was the last time I went to Walmart...