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Comment by toasterlovin | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, Amazon isn't measured against some platonic ideal of what an online retailer could be. They are measured against their competition. And, as far as I can tell, there is no credible competition.

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I agree. I find myself dissatisfied with Amazon, but whenever I order from somewhere else I end up regretting it half the time. Amazon's making a lot of mistakes, especially with knockoff crap and comingling inventory. But they're still better than walmart.

I ordered a "survival" order from Walmart to restock my pantry back in early March after returning from a long trip. I made the mistake of including milk and some grocery items. Not only did I have to pay the delivery, but it took two weeks and by then they didn't have any of the things I ordered in stock anymore.

At that point I temporarily had a vehicle so I just went to Costco.

I've been using Whole Foods app for grocery delivery for a little while, and I tried using the QFC one the other day, figuring Amazon needed some competition. It was a complete joke. Half the items in the store said they were only available for pickup, not delivery (why?), and there was no way to filter for delivery items only. And then even when I filled my cart, when I went to check out it removed half the items in there because they were out of stock or because they weren't actually available for delivery after all. Why did you show them in the first place? This app was worse than having nothing, in that it wasted so much of my time.

It's hard to see how Amazon will ever be challenged when the competition is so bad.

FWIW, I'm optimistic that the grocery stores will get better. We use the Fred Meyer app to schedule grocery pickup (Fred Meyer is a grocery chain owned by Kroger, like QFC). They have consistently improved the app and the pickup experience. I think the key to any real competition for Amazon is some high ranking exec being measured by the right KPI. From what I've seen, it seems like that process is well under way at Kroger. But they're coming from way behind, so I think it'll take a while.

FYI Whole Foods is wholly owned by amazon.

I know, that was my point.

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