Is Amazon the Wal-Mart of the Web?

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
4,646
That’s the question the NY Times is asking and it’s a good one. It’s no secret that Amazon is growing far beyond its humble bookseller beginnings, selling things from cloud computing services to cloud wall transfer murals. It’s a long article but it’s definitely an interesting look into Amazon the retailer and how its competition is trying to keep up.

Its relentless ambition to sell more of everything is constantly on display these days. In July alone, Amazon introduced separate hubs on its site for outdoor sporting goods and cellphones and wireless plans. Then it capped the month by buying an emerging competitor, the online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos.com, in a stock exchange now worth more than $930 million.
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I don't shop at Amazon unless I can't find it anywhere else. Their prices are to high and it takes them to long to send it. I use newegg.com because they have great prices and ship the things I order and within 3 days it's at my door step.
 
No sales tax=Amazon or TigerDirect for me here in Cal. ;)
 
I get gift cert for Amazon from cashing in CC points. I just ordered a Blu Ray drive for almost nothing after the gift cert.

They have my business on many a thing. As a father to be, wife and I found out diapers are the cheapest on Amazon.... and free shipping ;)
 
I hate to hurt local stores here in SF but Amazon is amazing. Their prices are dirt cheap and their selection is huge. The fact that I get my items in 1-2 days everytime is also amazing.

I pay the $75 yearly fee for prime which IMO is a huge bargain considering I get free 2day shipping which sometimes comes overnight. Plus 3 people can use it.
 
CopyCat said:
I hate to hurt local stores here in SF but Amazon is amazing. Their prices are dirt cheap and their selection is huge. The fact that I get my items in 1-2 days everytime is also amazing.

I pay the $75 yearly fee for prime which IMO is a huge bargain considering I get free 2day shipping which sometimes comes overnight. Plus 3 people can use it.
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Yep, Amazon has decent prices on many many things and combined with free shipping on tons of stuff and even better free shipping with Prime (like you I get some things in one day even if I selected two day) = me saving on tax/gas and getting the price I want.
 
With an online store it's alright to continually increase the number of items you sell. With actual stores, they either do this past the point that they've run out of actual floor space, or their store becomes so big and out of the way you generally don't want to go there anymore.
 
I thought walmart.com was the Wal-Mart of the web... But I mainly use Newegg, because they have an awesome RMA selection, and alot of things come with free 3 day shipping.
 
Amazon are great, I've actually started buying more of my hardware from them instead of Newegg. I pay $80 a year for the Amazon Prime unlimited two day shipping, I don't pay sales tax (up to 10% here in CA now), their prices are extremely competitive, and if I need to return anything defective it is free shipping (Newegg's return policy sucks bigtime in this regard). Everything else being the same, it costs less and I get better customer service buying from Amazon instead of Newegg, pretty amazing.

I buy everything from them now, even cleaning supplies, all their prices are dirt cheap. Best Blu-ray prices (always 35%-70% off MSRP) and specials (seemingly constant buy-2-get-1-free deals) too, gotta love it. Amazon are one of the few companies out there that has gotten better in terms of prices and customer service as they have gotten larger and more successful.
 
Honestly, the quality of service they offer cannot make me believe they are the Walmart of the web. Not to mention the fact that they treat their employees extremely well and they actually try to promote capitalism and give customers what they want as opposed to telling them what they want.
 
If only Amazon had as many retail storefronts as Wal-Mart, we could see the abomination of Wally World disappear off the earth forever...
 
RussianHAXOR said:
Honestly, the quality of service they offer cannot make me believe they are the Walmart of the web. Not to mention the fact that they treat their employees extremely well and they actually try to promote capitalism and give customers what they want as opposed to telling them what they want.
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QFT. If anything they seem to be much closer to Costco in terms of how they conduct themselves as a company and treat their customers. Hell, at this point I consider my Amazon Prime subscription as something like a Costco membership. :)
 
RussianHAXOR said:
Honestly, the quality of service they offer cannot make me believe they are the Walmart of the web. Not to mention the fact that they treat their employees extremely well and they actually try to promote capitalism and give customers what they want as opposed to telling them what they want.
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Yup. This a million times.

Amazon.com keeps getting my money simply because of their insanely good customer service. They really go out of their way to make sure you're happy.
 
Ya I am not seeing Amazon and Walmart begin at all related, except being large. Walmart's thing has always been low prices at all costs. They screw over suppliers, employees, whoever to try and get the lowest price. Along with that comes a reputation for cheap junk. After all, if you want to offer extremely low priced items, those items will often be of lesser quality to their higher priced counterparts.

Amazon's thing is just to be an easy, one stop shop for anything you want on the web. They try to have any and every thing you can think of, from the cheap stuff up to the premium items, in every category. Along those lines, they actually work with other merchants to increase the amount of things you can get. Amazon doesn't carry item X, but some other company that works with Amazon does, well you can buy it through Amazon.com, Amazon pays them, the other company will ship it to you, and everyone is happy.

Their prices are usually good, but rarely the lowest. They are about convenience, not bottom dollar.

So Walmart is where you go when you want a $10 DVD player, and you don't care how bad it sucks, only that it is $10. Amazon is where you go when you want a $4500 Blu-Ray player, a digital oscilloscope, some coffee, and some truck nuts, all from one place and without bothering to put any pants on.
 
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Sycraft said:
Ya I am not seeing Amazon and Walmart begin at all related, except being large. Walmart's thing has always been low prices at all costs. They screw over suppliers, employees, whoever to try and get the lowest price. Along with that comes a reputation for cheap junk. After all, if you want to offer extremely low priced items, those items will often be of lesser quality to their higher priced counterparts.

Amazon's thing is just to be an easy, one stop shop for anything you want on the web. They try to have any and every thing you can think of, from the cheap stuff up to the premium items, in every category. Along those lines, they actually work with other merchants to increase the amount of things you can get. Amazon doesn't carry item X, but some other company that works with Amazon does, well you can buy it through Amazon.com, Amazon pays them, the other company will ship it to you, and everyone is happy.

Their prices are usually good, but rarely the lowest. They are about convenience, not bottom dollar.

So Walmart is where you go when you want a $10 DVD player, and you don't care how bad it sucks, only that it is $10. Amazon is where you go when you want a $4500 Blu-Ray player, a digital oscilloscope, some coffee, and some truck nuts, all from one place and without bothering to put any pants on.
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You forgot sweet wolf t-shirts: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_1...d-keywords=wolf+t-shirt&x=0&y=0&sprefix=wolf+
 
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I wont lie, some of the product reviews on amazon make my day. Overall, i do enjoy giving them my business. especially considering that whole deal where i don't pay taxes... which is probably why i'll get my 360 from them if the dell deal doesn't pan out.
 
i dont use amazon, there are always better prices on the net, but i must say that i do use amazon to look at things i might want every now and again, but most of the time i know exactly what i want. Because of that i haven't been to amazon.com in a few months
 
Serpico said:
QFT. If anything they seem to be much closer to Costco in terms of how they conduct themselves as a company and treat their customers. Hell, at this point I consider my Amazon Prime subscription as something like a Costco membership. :)
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This is so true. The wife has an Amazon credit card, that gets the amazon gift checks, and combined with a free Amazon prime membership, they usually work out by far to be cheaper than most websites for us since shipping is free with Prime + no tax.

Purchased many a things from them. They had the best price when i ordered my VelociRaptor 300GB drive, beating out Newegg by about $30. Also purchased a 46" 1080P Samsuing LCD from them when they had a ridiculous sale on them, beating out local stores by about $600 on the same model.
 
I used to have prime, but no longer shop because they changed their policies too many times. Not a big deal anyways.
 
MotorMouth said:
I don't shop at Amazon unless I can't find it anywhere else. Their prices are to high and it takes them to long to send it. I use newegg.com because they have great prices and ship the things I order and within 3 days it's at my door step.
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newegg does not carry anywhere near what amazon does and i shop at both......stuff usually arrives within 4 days using their free shipping option......about the same amt of time as newegg.......
 
Not at all, Wal-Mart carries certain brands, mostly Chinese crap. Amazon carries everything from anyone.
 
Amazon Prime + Amazon Chase Visa = Goodness. I use the Visa for both business and personal purchases. Enough that I had over $1000 in gift certs last year. Couple that with all the free 2nd day shipping and I have paid back my $79 Prime membership multiple times over.
 
My wife just ordered us a new microwave from Amazon (ours bit the dust with a cloud of ozone smelling smoke and a POP).

2-day shipping too, which is good, because we need a frickin microwave.

We ordered a $220 Sharp Convection oven / Microwave / Toaster Oven combo. Not even sure if I could find one around here - Target, Meijer and Walmart didn't carry something like it for sure.
 
Amazon is like the wal-mart of the web only without all the negatives of wal-mart.
Ive ordered from the maybe 150-200 times over the years and only one time was an order less than perfect.
 
amazon is MUCH better than wal-mart.... better prices, better selection, and in my case, 100% better customer service.

heck, to be honest, even target has better prices 90% of the time (and great clearance prices)

the only time i'd bother with walmart is whhen it's 3am and i need something (cables, food, etc)
 
I have ordered about 500 items from Amazon over the last 3 years and in all of those orders I have had zero (0) issues with shipping, billing, damaged or badly packed product etc.

I <3 Amazon.
 
I've bought from Amazon tons of times over the years and they've only let me down once with double charging on a cell phone or service or something (don't remember anymore). I've also bought from Walmart b&m a ton of times, especially since it's the closest store to me now that I live in the middle of a bunch of cornfields. Sure I can buy cheap crap from Amazon, but it's sometimes easier to just go to Walmart for my cheap crap. Nice, expensive crap on the other hand cannot be had at Walmart. For that I use Amazon (and other etailers). They form a sort of symbiotic relationship lols.
 
Evil_SPanKY said:
Purchased many a things from them. They had the best price when i ordered my VelociRaptor 300GB drive, beating out Newegg by about $30.
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The other nice thing about Amazon versus Newegg: If that drive happened to be defective, Amazon picks up the cost of return shipping while you'd have to pay for that with Newegg.

The only advantage Newegg has at this point is selection, and even then it isn't such a big deal. The parts for my upcoming i7 860 are all coming from Amazon and I'm saving a ridiculous amount of money based on there being no sales tax (otherwise 10% here in CA) and covered 2-day shipping that has already paid itself off multiple times with my Amazon Prime subscription. They literally have every part I need for less money, including my awesome new Corsair Obsidian 800D case.
 
Yep, I have to say that you can find good quality stuff on amazon, N&U. Not so with WM, just N&U. :)
 
For general merchandise, I prefer Amazon over Wally World.

I don't miss having to stand in long lines for the 4 self checkout lanes because there are no humans actually working at the 75 other regular lanes.
No wasting gas to drive to the store for the opportunity to stand in those lines.
Etc, etc....

Now for computer related items, I don't go to Amazon or Wally world.
Then it's newegg or similar type vendors on the web.

What's better is not having to get dressed to make purchases or worrying about store hours.

:cool:
 
The only time I don't buy something from Amazon is if it can be found elsewhere for significantly cheaper, or I need it right away.

Having Amazon and Costco memberships = win!
 
I always price check on websites. Try to find which online store sells the cheapest. If it is amazon selling cheapest, I would use amazon.
 
Free shipping to Hawaii! Newegg loses all my business to Amazon due to that one fact.
 
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