Posted on 07/19/2017 5:25:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
At 9 p.m. Eastern time on July 10, Amazon initiated its annual show of force: Prime Day, a 30-hour exercise in the fullest possible expression of what Amazon can do. The sale, timed to the company’s ‘‘birthday,’’ is marketed with an urgency bordering on panic. What’s for sale? Basically anything. Where is it for sale? Wherever you are. Some sales last the whole prolonged day; others last a few minutes. A car seat. Golf clubs. Jeans and a screen door. Turmeric extract. A gallon of Elmer’s glue. An Amazon product — the voice-controlled Echo, which can order more products from Amazon. Makeup brushes. Jumper cables. A tablet computer. The shopping experience is at turns euphoric and anxiety-inducing, Amazon’s already-busy interface teeming with decontextualized blinking numbers: Sunglasses by “Hulislem,” $16.79, down from $115.95 after a previous discount to $28.99, 86 percent off, ends in 2:08:51, 63 percent already claimed. No? Next. Pro Series Waist Trimmer: $15.16-$18.96, 22 percent claimed, ends in . . . 0:00:43. Damn. Time is running out.
As far as holidays go, Prime Day is contrived, crass and extremely effective (the company’s ‘‘biggest day ever,’’ it says). This is not a venue for voting with your wallet or cultivating a consumer identity. It’s about clicking a button that initiates a mysterious process carried out by teams of invisible laborers and automated processes and results in a package at your door within two days. That package will contain one or more products that were probably built in a special economic zone in a faraway country; transported by ship, truck or perhaps one of Amazon’s newly leased ‘‘Prime Air’’ planes; warehoused and waiting in one of the company’s gargantuan and strategically placed fulfillment centers....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Amazon’s service is great. Any issues? Send it back. Period.
Deals, deals, deals. Free shipping with Prime. Hope the yearly price doesn’t go up next year.
Moral of the story? Same moral as this generation: retail sucks. Lowest rung in the private market ladder. And yes, I worked retail on two different occasions in my much younger days.
What retail used to offer pre-Amazon was an opportunity to gain critical insight into human nature via its customer service demands, the kind you could not get in a classroom or book. Now the computer gathers the information and doesn’t pass it along.
I like their customer reviews. Very helpful. And I like the “save for later” function.
I have started using Zulilly a lot for clothes for my granddaughter but they offer a wide variety of stuff
When I order something from Amazon, it creates jobs.
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