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Cyber Monday and Amazon's Online Dominance
sturgeon writes "A report out this morning pegs Amazon with a whopping 14% share of all daily Internet users — almost twice the nearest competitor (Ebay). And this number does not include all shopping sites absorbed by the growing Amazon empire. The original report has interesting graphics comparing Amazon to other retailers like Best Buy."
....they want your netbook back.
Fine, but your best bet for Twinkies is still ebay.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I've started buying components from Amazon instead of Newegg. For my state, almost every online retailer charges sales tax. As a Prime member, the shipping is of course way better.
The major difference for me, though, is that Amazon's return policy is so much better. I've gotten both a drive and memory from Newegg that arrived DOA. The return procedure is a bit of a pain, they don't cross-ship (last I knew), and you're charged for shipping. You also have to get a replacement, rather than a refund, or pay a 15% restocking fee. If an item from Amazon is DOA, they'll ship you a new one immediately (second-day, generally) and pay for shipping the old one back. Return or refund, no fee.
I just don't feel like paying someone to send me broken items, especially when better options are available.
I love the comparison of Amazon to Ebay's sales. The biggest complaint I regularly see about amazon is when they ship some tiny object in a giant box. (Which is can also be interpreted as Amazon trying really hard to make sure things aren't broken) whereas I read at least one complaint about ebay and or Paypal every day. Ebay has managed to anger the sellers by being totally one sided in disputes while at the same time they do little to clean up the listings to make ebay easy to use. If I want a part for an iPhone (say a new glass screen) I have to scroll through page after page of the same crap like cases and screen protectors. I want a raspberry pi yet it is just page after page of cases. They have no easy mechanism to clear out the crap. Basically all those cases are spam. I suspect that for any search that results in 1000 results that people are buying 4 or 5 of those results over and over and that they other 996 are just making people angry.
The only thing that ebay has improved as far as I am concerned was when they allowed you to sort by lowest price plus shipping. This then eliminated those people who were selling the $20 item for $1 plus $19 shipping.
Amazon has stumbled on a super secret business formula: treat the customer the way you would want to be treated. At least it seems to be secret as few other businesses appear to know about it especially ebay.
Yeah, the search and presentation of results is really horrible on Amazon. What I've been doing lately is using Newegg to find the exact mix of features that I want and then searching Amazon for that model number to get free shipping via Prime.
They could do even better if 9 out of 10 products they sell didn't spit out "We are unable to ship to your address" for Canadian buyers. I am all but given up shopping on Amazon for that reason... they can't even provide a way to filter out items they can't ship to you!
Bow before me, for I am root.