On-line Stores & Sellers

Started by Expresso, July 02, 2007, 09:09:12 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Ratliff

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on January 20, 2020, 04:38:49 PM
Yeah, that's frustrating. It isn't just Amazon though. 2 weeks ago, I ordered 2 used disks from 2 different Amazon vendors. The one from Oregon showed up in my mailbox in 3 days. The one from Houston, TX, about 150 mi. south of me, took 9 days. Our local PO is supplied by North Houston Distribution Center. This packet went from there, to Dallas, sat for 3 days, then went to every little PO on the way down (200 mi.) before it finally ended up in the mailbox. Point being, the shipping/delivery companies can screw up all they want, the sender has little control over it. :-\

8)

Did the vendor in the latter case send the item "media mail" to save money? Media mail is cheap, but given the lowest possible priority by the postal service.

Ratliff

Quote from: JBS on January 20, 2020, 04:47:18 PM
Quite true. But in this case Amazon is both vendor and shipper.

Wrong on many levels. In the case of amazon marketplace amazon is neither the vendor or the shipper, it is a listing service. The marketplace seller is the vendor and the shipper (unless they choose to use amazon fulfillment). The problem Gurn report was the fault of neither the vendor nor the shipper, but of the courier service.

JBS

Quote from: Ratliff on January 20, 2020, 05:14:46 PM
Wrong on many levels. In the case of amazon marketplace amazon is neither the vendor or the shipper, it is a listing service. The marketplace seller is the vendor and the shipper (unless they choose to use amazon fulfillment). The problem Gurn report was the fault of neither the vendor nor the shipper, but of the courier service.

Just to be clear. I was talking about my order, not Gurn's. I ordered this directly from Amazon US, not a Marketplace vendor, and it's shipped via Amazon's fulfillment service to an Amazon Hub location.  Meaning at least until it gets to the Hub locker, it's completely under Amazon control.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Ratliff on January 20, 2020, 05:11:23 PM
Did the vendor in the latter case send the item "media mail" to save money? Media mail is cheap, but given the lowest possible priority by the postal service.

No, both 1st class. And this is far from the only time this has happened to me, it's not a 'one-off', more like a 'twenty-one-off'. :-\

FWIW, even if it had shipped media mail, it went from the Houston PO to North Houston Dist Center anyway (that showed on the tracking trail): why turn around and send it to Dallas from there instead of to Lufkin like it should have done? Just that many more times they had to handle it.  ::)

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: JBS on January 20, 2020, 06:18:01 PM
Just to be clear. I was talking about my order, not Gurn's. I ordered this directly from Amazon US, not a Marketplace vendor, and it's shipped via Amazon's fulfillment service to an Amazon Hub location.  Meaning at least until it gets to the Hub locker, it's completely under Amazon control.

Who do they use for that? If it had been coming here, it would have been UPS, but for a big metro area, was it someone else?  In any case, that's just wrong, clearly not getting what you paid for.

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Ratliff

#1285
Quote from: Ratliff on January 20, 2020, 05:14:46 PM
Wrong on many levels. In the case of amazon marketplace amazon is neither the vendor or the shipper, it is a listing service. The marketplace seller is the vendor and the shipper (unless they choose to use amazon fulfillment). The problem Gurn report was the fault of neither the vendor nor the shipper, but of the courier service.

Ooops, sorry for the misunderstanding, I thought you were referring to Gurn's situation. My personal experience with Amazon's own fulfillment service is much better. 99% of the time they meet their shipping estimate. Maybe 1/4 of the time it arrives earlier than promised.

Amazon shipping is weird. When they say it has "shipped" often that means they have started shuttling it around between different amazon warehouses, before it is dropped at a nearby post office at the last minute. They have a frighteningly efficient order fulfillment system.

The new erato

Who of you have so much free time and so few CDs that a couple of weeks delay are a major issue? Not me for certain.....

steve ridgway

I've been mostly buying used CDs from third party sellers on Amazon and they nearly always arrive before the estimate. It might help that the delivery office is in the next street :P.

JBS

I picked up that Amazon order thus afternnom from the local Hub.
But two things I ordered from Rarewaves have not yet shown up, even though the normal interval for orders from them is past. (Still within the official promised dates.)

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

vers la flamme

Quote from: JBS on January 21, 2020, 12:01:07 PM
I picked up that Amazon order thus afternnom from the local Hub.
But two things I ordered from Rarewaves have not yet shown up, even though the normal interval for orders from them is past. (Still within the official promised dates.)
That's too bad. Rarewaves always beats my estimate by at least a couple days, and they're international for me. (Usually gets to me in 10 days or less, which is amazing for an international vendor). They also have amazing prices on everything, on eBay especially, they list many items lower than they have on Amazon.

JBS

Quote from: vers la flamme on January 29, 2020, 03:32:45 PM
That's too bad. Rarewaves always beats my estimate by at least a couple days, and they're international for me. (Usually gets to me in 10 days or less, which is amazing for an international vendor). They also have amazing prices on everything, on eBay especially, they list many items lower than they have on Amazon.

The Rarewaves orders got to me a few days after I posted that.  But my usual experience with them matches yours.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

Traverso

Quote from: Mandryka on January 20, 2020, 12:35:40 AM
My experience is that when it comes to books, music and indeed electronics,  Amazon is rather good and often competitive.

Amazon prime is interesting because it provides some assurance about delivery timescales, I'm often prepared to pay a premium for that, though maybe less so for CDs than for other items.


Clearly amazon downloads and streaming is utter shit.


On the other hand, in my experience eBay customer service is impeccable, and I greatly value PayPal buyer protection. I feel totally confident about buying items for many thousands of pounds from eBay, I know that if there's a problem PayPal will support me. Unfortunately PayPal is about to be replaced . . . I haven't explored the buyer protection policies which will then be applied.

Both amazon and eBay seem infinitely superior to any physical store, easier and safer to deal with, and often better value for money. If I have a problem with an item in a bricks and mortar store I may have to take the store to court, which is boring and time consuming and incurs a cost and is uncertain (will the courts be able to recover?) . . . All that just doesn't need to happen with PayPal.

This is what I found


One of the most legendary partnerships in the technical industry is coming to an end.

EBay announced today that it will stop working as PayPal as a back-end payment service in 2020 and move a small percentage of its payment volume to a new partner later this year.

Instead of PayPal, eBay has concluded a long-term agreement with Adyen, an Amsterdam-based payment company that was established in 2006 and has included companies such as Uber, Netflix and Spotify worldwide as its customer base.

The activities of Adyen are solely focused on offering back-end payment services, such as credit card processing, to companies, so that you do not see Adyen payment buttons appearing on eBay. But Adyen becomes the primary payment processor for eBay sites around the world.

After the existing eBay PayPal agreement expires in 2020, PayPal remains a payment option for shoppers on eBay, but it will not be prominently displayed before debit and credit card options as it is today. PayPal will stop processing card payments for eBay at that time.

PayPal's share fell by no less than 12 percent on the news in the after-market trade.

With eBay, the move is billed as a way to gain more control over the critical payment experience that other giant online shopping destinations such as Amazon and Alibaba have, while offering more payment options to eBay shoppers. Adyen supports more than 200 payment methods around the world, eBay said in a blog post announcing the news.

The move is also expected to add $ 2 billion in revenue to the eBay business, as the company will charge eBay sellers for the payment service; PayPal does that today.

That said, "most sellers can expect their payment processing costs to be reduced after they have switched to eBay's brokered payment model," eBay said in its announcement.

For Adyen, the eBay deal is a huge win for a company of its size; Adyen registered a net revenue of $ 178 million in 2016 compared to nearly $ 11 billion - yes, with a B - for PayPal.

You would then assume that there is a good chance that eBay will take a shareholding in Adyen in addition to the commercial agreement, so that it can take advantage of the benefit that this entails. For now, the company does not say whether that is the case. It is reasonable to wonder if Adyen had to make financial concessions to win the company from an eBay-sized platform.

Adyen is expected to apply for an IPO this year.

PayPal became eBay's premier payment provider in 2003, a few months after eBay took over the company in a deal worth $ 1.5 billion. The two companies split into separate public companies in July 2015 and signed a five-year operational agreement to maintain a close relationship until mid-2020.

Around the time the companies announced plans for the split in 2014, eBay accounted for more than 30 percent of PayPal's sales and more than 50 percent of profits, the combined company said at the time.

PayPal has tried to diversify its activities since the companies went their own way, but it does not disclose how many things come from eBay. Today, PayPal is worth $ 102 billion; eBay is valued at $ 42 billion.

Paul_Thomas

Presto have launched a customer survey, with 5 winners receiving a £50 voucher.

The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete, and is about your classical music listening habits and audio equipment as Presto consider launching a classical streaming service alongside their CD sales and downloads (they won't be stopping selling CD's or downloads).

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/3146--announcement-take-our-classical-music-listening-survey

Brian

It looks like Amazon DE is starting to halt direct classical CD sales - I purchased some stuff from them a few days ago but now many of the other items I looked at are only available from third-party sellers. Many new or future releases went from saying "will be available (x date)" to saying "this item is not available."

Possibly the manufacturers' supply chain is starting to fail and, probably, Amazon DE wants to ship only necessities and home goods rather than spending these world-historic times sending employees to the warehouse to ship classical CDs.

Kaga2

Quote from: Brian on March 21, 2020, 11:30:13 AM
It looks like Amazon DE is starting to halt direct classical CD sales - I purchased some stuff from them a few days ago but now many of the other items I looked at are only available from third-party sellers. Many new or future releases went from saying "will be available (x date)" to saying "this item is not available."

Possibly the manufacturers' supply chain is starting to fail and, probably, Amazon DE wants to ship only necessities and home goods rather than spending these world-historic times sending employees to the warehouse to ship classical CDs.

Amazon announced they are prioritizing certain items such as cleaning and household items, pet supplies etc. They have demoted the rest, including books. Many items can no longer be ordered at all.

Pohjolas Daughter

I did also receive an email from ArkivMusic saying in essence that there might be delays in shipments due to being able to get ahold of some items during these times--which is certainly understandable.

PD

p.s.  That's also presuming that they are not forced to close for a while too by either their state government or the federal.  :( Hard times.
Pohjolas Daughter

ritter

Following a ruling by a court in Nanterre (resulting from a lawsuit filed by a trade union), Amazon in France has had to stop operations in its French distribution centres. The platform continues to operate, but relying "on the strength of its worldwide distribution network and third-party vendors". Whatever appears as "available" in the website can be ordered (in any category of products). I would imagine that this will impact on products originating in France sold by Amazon sites in other countries.

MusicTurner

Quote from: ritter on April 16, 2020, 06:46:33 AM
Following a ruling by a court in Nanterre (resulting from a lawsuit filed by a trade union), Amazon in France has had to stop operations in its French distribution centres. The platform continues to operate, but relying "on the strength of its worldwide distribution network and third-party vendors". Whatever appears as "available" in the website can be ordered (in any category of products). I would imagine that this will impact on products originating in France sold by Amazon sites in other countries.

Interesting and very useful information, thanks. I've only been buying from associated dealers, not Amazon themselves, for some time now, due to the criticism of working conditions etc.

Madiel

Shrug. Amazon refuses to sell Australians most things anyway.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

listener

I just got a discount coupon from jpc today.  Alas.they are not shipping to Canada.
"Keep your hand on the throttle and your eye on the rail as you walk through life's pathway."