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A View From Under the Long Tail
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a funny article by James Boyle in the Financial Times on what it really feels like to be part of the long tail economy." From the article: "Where Amazon's normal customer service seems to be run by suspiciously cheerful MBAs from Stanford, who break off from counting their stock options to write apologies and deliver refunds, 'Amazon Advantage', the ironically named system for selling wares, is clearly based on the last days of the Soviet system. The problem with their representatives is not that their native language is not English, it is that their native planet is not Earth."
The article, which was written by a guy, whose name is James, who shares the first name of a President, who helped create the constituion, which was written a long time ago, which is quite as old as when Communism was envisioned, which we can blame the Greeks for, which make great olive oil, which comes in extra virgin, which covers the majority of the slashdot crowd. . . .
Oh wait, what was I talking about again?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I have no idea why people insist on using confusing examples for the Long Tail concept. THIS is the Long Tail. Brand new games created for a system that's 30 years old, with a very specialized fan base. In a traditional market, you would NEVER be able to make money off of this. But in an Internet-enabled environment, you can theoretically reach every member of this esoteric market in every region in the world, with a very small advertising budget.
The only reason why Amazon keeps coming up is that they collectively sell lots of esoteria, thus managing to hit a farther end in the population dropoff (i.e. the longest part of the tail) than a business like AtariAge could reasonably profit from.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Fund/find an alternative, and you will see Amazon fix itself.
A major point of the article is that this is not possible because of the network effect - people who want to buy a book online go to Amazon, because Amazon has all the books and "just works".
As the article puts it:
As an academic, I am very interested in network effects - the curious economic features of networks, which increase in value as they increase in size. Does this mean that customers will be "locked in" to the system that achieves ubiquity? (...) Does this threaten the efficiency that the networked economy was supposed to provide? As a vendor, I fume and rant, but am unable to convince myself that we can shift distributors: will the people who want our books trust an unfamiliar name?
Looks great at first, then you realize they've changed one middleman for a different, 'internet based' one. The only folks who come out ahead on this deal are UPS, FEDEX, and USPS.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
"find an alternative, and you will see Amazon fix itself." too true. I have had very poor service from Amazon when I have used it as a (customer in the UK.) First I bought a usb thumb drive which arrived late because the vendor claimed "Amazon never passed on the order". Then I ordered a book on Python for my little geeklings (my children) who were showing interest in learning some programming. Strike while the iron is hot I thought. However this thought was not shared by Amazon. After a month I received an email saying that the book would be delayed a further 6 to 8 weeks. So I cancelled and instead went to http://computermanuals.co.uk/ who managed to get me the book delivered to the Scottish highlands next day! Guess who I am using for my tech books now. found my alternative.
Dear Amazon
Because of your piss-poor service I have not bought anything from you for two years. I use your website to find books and then go to my local English bookstore to place the order. DVDs are obtained in a similar way by browsing your site and then walking round the corner to my local video rental shop. I am sure that I am not the only person who does this.
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
There is a house in Steatham on the A11 in the UK that does its own ebaying - whenever I drive past they have a range of goods sitting by the side of the road with hand drawn price boards.
The road transport system = the new ebay. People could club together to sell things and you could call them -- Oh I don't know -- Markets or Shops....
Amazon's service is quite overrated actually. It usually works fine, and if there is a problem they usually fix it, but there are times when talking to amazon's rep is like talking to a wall.
An example: For large orders, Amazons usually splits the items in several boxes - at no cost for the customer. This is usually fine, except for the fact that each box lists the contents of the whole order.
If you are overseas, this means that you will have to pay taxes for the value of the whole order for each box.
Last time my order was split in 3 boxes. I have to pay 16% VAT, so the net result is that I had to pay 48%.
Add to this that UPS has a policy of dealing with customs without talking to the customer first - they pay the taxes (VAT, custom fees, etc), and then you pay them upon delivery. So talking to the customs officials is not an option, since by the time you know about this the boxes are already out for the delivery. Refusing to pay taxes is not an option, since UPS will not deliver. You can't tell UPS to return everything to Amazon, since they paid for the taxes and will keep the stuff hostage.
In the end, I had to pay triple taxes. And still, Amazon refuses to acknoledge that the problem is that they don't write the actual contents of each box in the sleave.
nobody's ever given up because something was difficult.
This statement sounded suspicious to me, so I tried to think up a counter-example, but after twenty minutes I quit because it was too hard. I guess you were right!
I'd rather be lucky than good.