Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Prime | Hacker News Reader

Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Prime

cnet.com

123 pointsjbredeche145 comments

So. I’m a little surprised that if Walmart has had this plan in the works for some time, why did they sell off Vudu? Why not leverage that somehow into a service included with Walmart Plus, if not only to include just the Vudu free-with-ads stuff initially. Just rebrand it into Walmart Plus.. Wouldn’t this have helped to compete with Prime more? Then they could include the paid Vudu stuff just as video results-to-purchase inside of Walmart.com, much like Amazon does, to drive more users and purchases of the Vudu paid content, but basically all rebranded to Walmart Video content inside of Walmart.

They must have explored this idea yeah? How could they not have? I guess that Vudu was just too valuable for cash and was a good time to sell?

In an organization this big the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing.

If you’ve ever worked for Walmart, you’ll realize they’re #1 because they’re a monopoly, not because they’re particularly smart.

But they weren't the first. They got to be number one by being very smart. Whether they can remain smart enough to stay number one is a different story.

Walmart is not a monopoly at all.

I'd argue they are smart. I shop a lot at Wal-mart, but rarely step in the store. I shop online, do their free grocery pickup and their in-store (non-grocery) pickup. The last one is technically walking into the store, but the non-grocery pickup is just inside the front door, so I'm not really going to the main part of the store. Plus, the times I do go into the store, they have a really nice automated checkout with a lot of stations. In my experience, Wal-mart automated checkouts are the smoothest and least likely to be broken compared to other stores I've used automated checkout at. Wal-mart does a great job getting my business without requiring me to actually interact with their employees and other customers or wait significant amounts of time for anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

Walmart has competitors in every market I've seen. Small towns seem to be more likely to have chain dollar stores than a Walmart.

In my small city of 50k, Walmart doesn't exclusively cover any category other than maybe toys. There are other grocery stores, other automotive stores, other clothes stores, jewelry, drugs, blah blah. You go to Walmart because it's cheap, not because it's the only option.

It's not that Walmart is the cheapest place, as you mention dollar chain stores are usually available, but Walmart offers a wide selection of goods, at reasonably cheap prices, at a level of quality which is typically not terrible.

So if the question is where do I go to get some random item where it won't break immediately and I won't overpay, Walmart seems like a reasonable choice.

Of course, Walmart is not alone in the category of wide selection, reasonably cheap, not terrible quality, Target comes to mind, and I think Kohls too, although I rarely go there so I might be wrong about that. Anyone know any others?

So I agree Walmart is not a monopoly, even if you are looking for apples-to-apples comparisons it is not unique.

It would seemingly make sense. Although I question whether anyone actually gets prime because of the streaming.

It certainly makes the decision to continue paying for Prime easier. If it was just fast free shipping, I'd have to add up how much I was saving (or spending extra) every year.

But throw in the next season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I no longer really care. That show is that good.

The coverage of this has been misguided IMO. The headline here should be, "Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Fresh".

The benefits you get are really just delivery of in-store items to your house, it seems your walmart.com experience doesn't change much. Based on what I've seen on Amazon fresh, you'd probably make up your $98 pretty quick if you moved all your grocery shopping from fresh to WM+.

My local Walmart has iPads, gas generators, and loctite thread locker (etc.) in addition to groceries, blenders, baby clothes and charcoal briquettes.

But even more competitive with Amazon, the Walmart in Van Horne, Texas has all that available for same day delivery too even though it’s 200 miles from El Paso and even further from Dallas.

The kind of household willing to regularly pay the premium for same-day/1-day groceries and/or shipping is an upper middle class household. How is Walmart going to shake the branding of being cheap and low quality with the segment of price insensitive consumers? Your middle middle-class household is not a Prime member, and the services Walmart and Amazon are competing on will only expand their TAM (Total Addressable Market) if costs go down. Median households don't have the budget for these services.

its weird you assume that upper middle class households don't shop at walmart.

Walmart is cheap, but often high quality for staples. They have a good to great organics food section, their toiletries section carries high quality diapers, their toy section has legos and other luxury toys etc etc etc.

even their clothes are of good quality (although no luxury brands).

Walmart actually has nicer stuff than Target a lot of the time.

It's not weird, it's a fact. Different income groups skew towards different stores.

"Target-exclusive shoppers are more likely to be female, younger and richer. For example, Target-exclusives had an average household income of about $85,000, compared to $57,000 for Walmart-exclusives, according to a 2005 survey." https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/...

Even at the slightly lower price point ($98/yr for WalMart Plus vs $119/yr for Prime), this new offering feels rather anemic. It gets you fast (sometimes same day) delivery of a popular subset of their catalog. Prime has music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc in addition to fast delivery.

> "We're not launching Walmart Plus with the intent to compete with anything else," Whiteside [Walmart's chief customer officer,] said when asked about Prime. "We're launching it to meet the needs of our customers."

Sure.

My mom doesn't care about Prime music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc.

And my mom shops at Wal-mart NON-STOP. There are a lot of people like here. This is for them.

Agreed, my parents are the same way. She refuses target, and I don't know why. The 5% card discount doesn't even convince her, nor the empty lines, wider aisles, etc.

I can't handle Walmart's anymore, maybe it's pandemic times, but they're overstretched, overcapacity, multiple of people in one place and a frenzy. They weren't always like that too.

probably the same reason I don't shop at Target: because they went full SJW

I shop at both and what annoys me most is when they have self-checkout lanes but they don't make them larger sections: they have a bunch of closed up register lanes, it wouldn't kill them to ditch 1 more lane or two to make a larger self-checkout lane section. Target feels like they're much more guilty of this than Walmart from past experience.

One thing that did annoy me is now after COVID Walmart employees complain if you have more than 10 items in the self-checkout lane, but there's no sign suggesting self-checkout is for a small amount of items. One lady was being loud and obnoxious about it, even when nobody was talking to her.

If Walmart and Target will let me pay from an app and just walk up to a machine to print out my receipt, I'd be using their app a lot more. I don't even care about having to bag up my stuff, I got my own bags for groceries in my car already. I guess the trickery is for grocery items that must be weighed.

Scan and Go is included with Walmart Plus.

Out here Target went hardcore on self checkout a while ago. Now you'll see like 2 registers open, kinda sucks if you have a lot of items.

I dunno about where your parents live, but out here where I live, Target kinda took Walmart's place. There are very few Walmarts, and so the Targets are about as bad as Walmart is in other places I've lived in the past lol.

It's like the experience doesn't scale. Long lines, filthy (often broken) carts, and they don't restock the shelves often enough. Of course, that was all pre-COVID. I haven't been in a store since March.

Same, can't go into a walmart anymore. They started right before the pandemic with treating everyone like a criminal. I get they have higher theft, but if you watch me checkout with a cashier, you don't need to go through every item in my cart and scan them with the hand scanner. I can't imagine their scan and go working any better.

I highly doubt you are under any obligation to let them do this. If I were you I would have told them to get lost and would never return.

Yep, that's what I've done and they end up calling security and it ends up being a huge hassle since theres always cops outside. That's why I just wont go back.

The bifurcation of where the lower middle vs upper middle shops for general household items which both groups need is a notable trend. I typically shop at Target, but went to a Walmart for the first time in years. Everything is locked down. It's a demonstrably different experience, and it feels part of the trending inequality.

I’ve been into some targets that were really locked up. Depends on the area, but you’re absolutely right.

It's really location specific. In smaller towns where there are few big box retailers, the Walmart experience is great. But in big cities? For a long time I didn't understand why people complained endlessly about Walmart until I visited a Walmart in California, then it all made sense.

That’s funny, I love visiting Bay Area Walmarts because I get to feel like I’m in a low budget consumerist Mad Max movie, wandering among heaps of clothes and appliances strewn across the aisles, not an employee in sight.

You can also share prime for free with your family. Not just on the same account. I don’t think it includes the TV etc but you do get the free 2-day shipping.

I wish there was a version of Prime that had all the unrelated fluff removed

I only want the store features, I don't care about the rest, and when they keep raising the price to subsidize their content creation it makes me have to re-decide every time if it's still worth the cost.

Sounds like a burgeoning cable company

I canceled Prime recently for those same reasons.

A lot of items still have free shipping. Amazon will give very pessimistic delivery date estimates and try to upsell Prime at every opportunity, but packages still get here fairly quickly. More often than not, an order arrives in 2 or 3 days even without Prime, almost always faster than the estimate given at checkout.

Ymmv, but it seems clear to me that Prime is more about manipulating purchasing behavior to buy more and the add-ons like video and grocery delivery than about the advertised free 2 day shipping.

> My mom doesn't care about Prime music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc.

I don't care about any of those either.

Another post in this thread mentioned Walmart's sale of Vudu as premature in light of this offering, but I prefer an unbundled, single-purpose service. I don't want groceries from my television provider.

I'm excited by this.

I don’t know how she finds anything on their website it’s an excruciating experience, like using bing as your primary search engine e

Maybe Walmart is betting on the idea that most people would rather use Spotify, Netflix, don't have a Kindle, and don't live near a Whole Foods.

If they can keep X% of people out of their store happily, that makes for a better shipping experience for those that actually do go to the store. Even better, that’s potentially more shelf space for other products.

Wal-mart doesn't commingle inventory, right? So long as you don't buy from third-party sellers, it's guaranteed to come from Wal-mart itself, with all the non-counterfeit guarantees that implies?

Yes hence why we buy kids stuff there or target

I have a higher tendency to trust things from Walmart (in terms of fakes) compared to Amazon. Though I order from Amazon more because it's just too convenient. I would be tempted to cancel my Prime subscription if they have good delivery and prices (I do not use much of the Prime benefits besides shipping)

I've only ever ordered from Walmart/Ebay once each before and both times I had a poor experience and returned the item (something wasn't working or the item wasn't what was advertised). I trust a lot of these brick and mortar stores when shopping in person but online, Amazon just works a lot better and when it doesn't, it's easy to return.

Amazon is starting to get worse as of late, but it still has the most reliable online delivery so far.

Did you try the next day delivery items? The items were packed pretty well and was exactly what I expected. Also, there's free returns too for Walmart (for some items). But the best shipping quality was Target but takes a while compared to others and generally more expensive. Everything was packaged so nicely but we have had issues with missing items.

Fwiw, I've been using eBay and walmart a lot more lately after getting burned by counterfeits from Amazon. I'm just sick of the hassle. Their support sucks for anything that takes an actual human. With walmart I can go in store and speak to a living human being if I get a counterfeit. EBay and PayPal almost universally side with the buyers. So while I'll never sell anything with eBay or PayPal I'm less annoyed to use their services instead of Amazon. I'm kind of over free two day delivery. If it's not worth expedited shipping, or getting off my ass to buy from a store then I'm waiting for it or not getting it. Most people probably don't need their 37th trendy widget in two days. But their addiction certainly pads bezos pockets.

Unfortunately Walmart’s in-store selection is often junk. For example, I bought some rope to tie down furniture in a truck; they at least had some braided nylon cable, or so I thought. When I cut it to length, it had a foam core and the “braiding” was just a deceptive sheath around the cable. I went back to the store and there were no other options. Given their extreme pressure on suppliers, I don’t trust their food offerings either.

Yeah, I don't really trust Walmart for their quality but I do trust that their stuff is genuine from the supplier/manufacturer. There's some household items that I decided not to get from Amazon. The issue got so bad that good LED lightbulbs are fake too even ship and sold by Amazon. Another big problem is toys especially big brands like Fischer Price. I would order the same set of toys and my friends/family can have a completely different set (in terms of plastic quality). It's crazy.

> I don't really trust Walmart for their quality but I do trust that their stuff is genuine from the supplier/manufacturer.

I don't; Walmart courts brands, tempting them with access to thousands and thousands of stores. As soon as an irreplaceable proportion of the brand's revenue comes from Walmart, they start turning the screws, lowering the price they sell the product at, forcing the supplier to reduce costs. This often ends up with the brand producing a different product, with the same name, to sell at Walmart.

I can't find fault in any party's decisions in these scenarios; consolidation is the inevitable result of capitalism.

https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart is one example of a company that saw what was coming and refused to go along with it.

That's still not what the commenter is talking about. The problem on Amazon is that you can buy a product that is listed as "CompanyX microSD Memory Card" and you will receive something that was not actually manufactured by CompanyX. AFAIK that will happen rarely if ever at Walmart. But yes, it's possible that CompanyX will make lower quality products in the future.

This practice isn't really unique to Walmart. You have to be wary of this at pretty much every major box store including Amazon. Target seems to have this down to a science. You have to know the exact model of the thing you want. The whole thing sucks because most of the time I would be happy to make expensive purchases direct but they don't want to make enemies of their resellers by undercutting them so they won't even price match.

Costco > Target > Walmart > Amazon is my order of trust. Costco has quality products and a great return policy but lower selection. Amazon has a good selection and browsing/searching is pretty good but the quality is unknown.

Walmart's returns section is also (deliberately?) frustrating.

Yes Amazon returns are much more streamlined. I could drop most returns off at my local Kohls. Just show the person my barcode on the phone to scan, give them the item and done in 10 seconds.

Walmart's actual return policy has always been better though. I've taken stuff there that I don't even know was purchased there and got a credit. This was some time ago so not sure if it changed, but they used to give you a few receiptless returns per year.

Walmart forces manufacturers to sell them items at fixed priced points. To the point they extort manufacturers to hand over bill of materials and demand certain prices or face repercussions, they are in very much worse than Amazon and literally run like a mafia. The end result is manufacturers make separate SKUs of the same product especially corner-cut just for Walmart.

>they are in very much worse than Amazon and literally run like a mafia

...except that you can refuse to do business with them and they're not going to kneecap you or burn down your business

Arguably they do 'burn down' small local businesses through aggressive price-cutting competition and supplier relationships, which a lot of people object to.

I'm not among those complainers, having grown up in a small town where you couldn't get anything without mail-ordering it until Wal-Mart came in. But I could certainly be swayed to their point of view if Wal-Mart starts selling counterfeit or extremely low-grade crap like the rope ericbarrett purchased.

Target with redcard works well for me. FS on a lot of general items else FS on $25/35 for grocery items.

There is a whole lot of middle america that would love this. For all of Amazon’s extensive collection, a lot of users still spend a lot more on groceries and household goods monthly than on Amazon.

I think this will be popular in those places where Walmart is the retailer of last resort which encompasses a lot of mid-west and even the south.

Even with the $35 min? Amazon doesn’t have a min. I can order $4 item and have it show up the next day.

I think that's the deal breaker for me. If I order $35 worth of stuff I already get free 2-day shipping. I use Prime because I don't have to think about order totals or shipping - it just shows up the next day.

The problem is a ton of items Amazon sells aren't Prime eligible. And that seems to include any lower prices items. Then you're back to getting a cart minimum, which at that point you might as well drop Prime entirely.

Buying habits are different when you live outside a city, or when you have a family. A $35 minimum doesn't feel like a deal-breaker to me.

I think this also falls on generational lines; ordering a handful of things at once and getting one package is my goal.

On demand 1 thing at a time can be nice ordering something niche online, but when you have a whole fresh grocery, just add some steak or toilet paper.

No the $35 minimum on Walmart.com doesn’t require a subscription. Walmart+ is for scheduled delivery from the store closest to you (so it’s only stuff available in that store). Great for groceries

In theory you can order a $4 item with free shipping. In practice Amazon is charging $3-$4 to the seller for "fulfillment" aka shipping, plus some other fees. An item that should cost $0.50-$2 probably costs $6-$8 instead.

Walmart has less depth but if you can get store prices you're in a significantly better starting place.

This is nowhere more obvious than when comparing Monoprice vs Amazon.

> There is a whole lot of middle america that would love this

Unfortunately, middle america is spread out that I doubt any kind of delivery system would be effective there. Biggest benefit might be avoiding the checkout lines, but even then, in middle america those lines aren't that bad.

Sounds like this mostly benefits dense suburbs.

From the press release [0]:

> In-store prices as fast as same-day on more than 160,000 items from tech and toys to household essentials and groceries.

For people who live in dense urban areas without Walmarts (e.g. SF, Chicago, Seattle, NYC, etc.), there's a genuine value prop there. Walmart sells pantry items for less than basically everyone.

[0]: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-in...

A lot of comments seem to be from people who aren't aware that Amazon's delivery network kind of sucks in huge swaths of America. If you're not in a major metropolitan area, Prime delivery took about a week pre-Covid, and things have only gotten worse since then.

Compare Walmart store locations [1] to Amazon fulfillment centers [2] and you'll see that delivering from their stores enables them to cover a lot of rapid-delivery territory where Amazon just isn't.

1 https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-content/uploads/maps/Wal...

2 https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-Wa...

That's really it.

I live in Puerto Rico which is one of those places where Amazon kind of sucks. Items used to take over a week to get here and I was OK with that because I understand geographic limitations. Now they often take a month, which I'm willing to accept because of current circumstances. But what puts me off is that they flat out refuse to sell me many items. I have a Prime subscription but my last phone didn't come from Amazon. It came from Walmart online. Even eBay serves my region better.

About Walmart, I have a Walmart owned supermarket within walking distance of my house, a Supercenter about 9 miles away, and there's a Sam's club right next to it. My groceries and my medicines come from a store owned by Walmart and they're everywhere. If I didn't have the time or the energy to buy my parents their groceries I would get them delivered to them from Walmart.

Now, I don't expect to use their service (if it becomes available here) because most of my online shopping consists of items that I can't find locally, but for people in areas like mine who can't visit or who don't like to visit physical stores this service would be great.

This is actually something I am very interested in. There are certain categories of items, I am worried about buying from Amazon due to counterfeits. I don't want to have to worry if my phone charger is actually UL certified or not and if it will electrocute me or burn my house down. If I can get free delivery from Walmart, and not have to worry about counterfeits, it would be huge for me.

I prefer walmart for the same reason, I have a lot more trust in their supply chain. And the free delivery times are about the same, coupled with easy returns to the store. I would guess my Target and walmart online orders are 10x my Amazon orders. But I wouldn't pay for prime or walmart plus simply for the faster shipping, the free tier is already plenty fast

IME, Walmart has the worst in store returns experience in any retailer, which I why prefer not to shop there.

Every time I've had to return something, it has taken at least 20 minutes as there is either no employee or is understaffed with a 5+ person queue.

My experience has been quite good recently. I start them through they app and they have an express returns spot in the customer service area. I'll start the return before I even set out to the store, sometimes they'll just comp it and refund my money without returning.

Walmart online store includes third parties. It's not going to be any better.... They will absolutely move to copy Amazon's zero liability selling strategies.

I've used mint.com for over 12 years so I have purchase history going back that far from both WM and Amazon. I consider myself a relatively heavy user of Amazon for small ticket items with a few big ones mixed in (with 65 orders YTD) and I'm in Smalltown America so no Whole Foods grocery delivery.

It's actually an interesting exercise to look at long term spending at stores. In the past 12 years I've spent $37k @ Amazon compared to nearly $50k at WM. Big numbers, but averaged out that's not all that much. Most of my grocery spend in recent years has been at WM due to it being the closest grocery store and is within walking distance of my house.

I just don't see how this will compete with Amazon or Amazon Prime.

You only get free shipping with orders $35 or more. I haven't checked recently but I thought you get that at Amazon without paying for Amazon Prime.

You get free shipping on $35 on walmart.com without WM+ so this isn't an added perk.

The difference is 2-day versus 1-day.

Which doesn't sound that compelling to me.

Agreed.

I think the cnet article may have that point wrong, or at least confusingly worded. I can't find anywhere where Walmart says the order must be $35 to get free delivery with this program, and I know that without subcribing to anything Walmart already offers free shipping on orders over $35. However even on Walmart's own pages it really isn't clear what exactly you get in regards to shipping costs with this program.

I've seen multiple articles mention $35 minimum order.

For example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-prime...

If that isn't true then they aren't getting their message out on why this is a compelling service.

Yeah, it's definitely not clear to me why I might sign up for this even if I always bought from Walmart. Seems to more of a donation to Walmart at this point.

You sort of do on Amazon but they intentionally slow the shipping speed by quite a lot when you opt for that in order to make Prime more appealing.

I'm convinced the slower delivery options are outright lies. After I dropped Prime, I'd see the same threat of a 5-7 day delivery time for an order using free shipping but most of the time it still arrives in 2 or 3 days.

How can walmart compete without the ecosystem tie-in that amazon prime has? Amazon prime has movies, music, twitch, etc. What does walmart plus offer?

It's incredible that amazon's market cap is now 4X walmart's. Amazon is well on its way to becoming the 2nd 2 trillion dollar company after Apple. Bezos and his ex-wife's shares are now worth $260 billion. Bezos is the world's wealthiest person and his wife is the world's wealthiest woman. Of course it's mostly all on paper at the moment, but the run the big tech companies had in the past 5 years is breathtaking. Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble?

What's interesting is that it took AAPL and AMZN decades to become a trillion dollar company. It took AAPL a few months to add another trillion to their market cap. AMZN is on track to do the same.

> Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble?

It's both IMO. The whole market is in a giant bubble due to various fiscal policies and decisions, but the big tech companies have substantive/reasonably solid businesses within the bubble.

How much gravity does their ecosystem really have? I know some people clearly use it, but anecdotally, most people I know bought prime for the shipping.

It's all anecdotal on my end to, but video seems to be the biggest sticking point in my circle of people. I don't really keep Prime for free shipping, especially when you can still get free shipping on $25+ orders, and their performance during covid has made it even less appealing.

I keep Prime for Video mostly (kids titles), but We use the free Prime music (not unlimited) quite a bit.

I recently discovered Prime books with kids titles which end up being convenient for car rides or times when carrying many books is inconvenient, but libraries have plenty of assortment for kids ebooks these days so that's not really a selling point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...

Walmart is a behemoth. Also Walmart has the advantage of local stores to deal with returns etc

That's a pretty weak advantage. My closest walmart is much further than my local ups/usps/amazon drop off. Also, don't forget that Amazon grew 30-40% last quarter y/y.

walmart is the only retailer in some areas

I'm lucky to live near one of those Amazon locker stores and the process has been pretty good. Just show up with the item, print out your return label at the koisk, put it into one of their bags, and drop it in the slot. Very little hassle.

I don't really use movies, music, or twitch, yet I've been on this site for a long time. Amazon's prime movie/TV content hasn't ever been anything that I've felt the need to click on. I've enjoyed the shipping and the ease of purchases.

I'll most likely switch.

Amazon movies and music are junk. You can use twitch without prime. Photo storage is probably good but I dont trust them enough to spend the effort. I'm regularly surprised how many people pay the Amazon Prime tax. Its easy to live without.

I mean $100/yr to get faster shipping and not have to batch orders in groups of $25 for an entire household is pretty okay value.

I don't listen to music but Amazon Prime video is not junk. They make high quality tv shows and have good international content. It's comparable to Netflix.

We must somehow have completely different Amazon Prime video services because the one I have only has 1 or 2 ok original programming shows and a limited selection of mostly at best B tier movies.

> We must somehow have completely different Amazon Prime video services

Or different tastes.

Hey I like B grade movies, but most of the ones on Prime dont make that cut. :)

The service I have has a couple highly enjoyable original series, a pile of random stuff arguably worth watching, and an unfathomably endless tail of truly surprising garbage.

I don't think they can compete on ecosystem. However they can win on not having a problem with fakes and actually handling all of the orders themselves instead of being a marketplace for third party sellers.

I hate to disappoint but Walmart.com has the same 3rd party seller problem.

Walmart+ only applies to in store items as far as I can tell.

If I want to buy items where the origin or authenticity doesn't matter and pay rock bottom prices, I can go to eBay which makes no pretense about what they have to offer.

Amazon continues to pay lip service to the fakes problem but it's a major reason I only buy items there when there aren't other good options now.

I honestly don’t get the point of this. It’s nearly as expensive as Prime but gives you a lot less.

Their inability to explain the value proposition when asked that question by a reporter isn’t showing a great deal of confidence in the offering.

it's a new name and the addition of non-grocery items to their existing grocery delivery service. presumably they have some customers for this already. letting them order other store items seems like a fairly obvious move, even if the whole program doesn't look that attractive compared to prime.

Or from another perspective, it's the price Prime used to be, with the features Prime used to have.

Look up the price of items on Amazon that are $1 or so in the local Walmart. Basically they are more likely to be $4 or so--because the Amazon seller has to build the cost of shipping into product price in order to provide the "free" shipping.

Americans sure do love giant mega corporations. It doesn't have to be this way, guys.

As far as delivery goes I'm pretty sure it does. To compete with amazon/walmart you need billions of dollars of capital to invest in logistics. Small companies just aren't efficient enough.

I find that smaller sellers (or the manufacturer themselves) on eBay can be competitive with Amazon/Walmart on price. Shipping is usually a day slower, but for most things, I don't find it to be an inconvenience.

Unlike Amazon, which uses its own logistics and/or a homegrown gig-style delivery system, Walmart uses Doordash to deliver groceries @7.95+/delivery.

Plenty of other grocers/retailers could go the Doordash route and be competitive.

Seems like that might be why walmart has the minimum and amazon doesn't. I've tried services like instacart and found the experience to be horrible and expensive. Amazon works much better because they've created strict guidelines so I always get what I expect. Doordash food is consistently cold. Instacart buys the wrong stuff half the time. I don't really trust people to make good decisions most of the time.

Yes, there was a discussion a few days or week ago about trade offs between efficiency and security.

Consumers will generally choose efficiency (manifested as lower prices) over security (local stores with local owners resulting in redundant supply chains).

Why do you need absolutely everything delivered? Have you ever stopped to consider the environmental effects of having everything you purchase delivered in its own individual package?

Have you considered that he might have a disability? Or people that live with him are in a risk group for COVID?

Because it’s easy?

Well this is a thread about the delivery business. I actually almost never use delivery services.

Look, I agree with you in principal but at scale it's not really that big a deal. In my neighborhood the USPS and UPS make one run a day to our apt complex of a few hundred people. On average that's doing waaaay better than if we all went to the store one day a week. Throw the cardboard into the recycling bin and call it a day.

Agreed to a certain extent. I use local grocery delivery (CSA) for both meat and my produce which I recommend to everyone if its available. But for all else like household goods like toothpaste, it's pretty hard to find something as convenient and competitive as mega corps. I recently tried to buy a pair of headphones. It's pretty hard to find a reputable seller that's an authorized reseller and price competitive.

If you can come up with a way to give mom and pop shops the efficiency and capabilities of a large megacorp then you should get to work and make a few billion dollars.

Browbeating people into accepting a less-efficient alternative, regardless of how you think the morality stacks up, just won't work.

> Walmart will face an uphill battle against "subscription fatigue"

So much this. I'm guessing the next phase of this will be subscription aggregators who will package these services into bundles e.g. netflix, prime, uber eats along with a bunch of fringe services for the low-low-monthly-price of just $199.99.

Is it weird that Amazon has gotten so big that I cheer for Walmart just to make sure there’s competition?

I recently ordered something from Walmart, and they will still sell stuff that isn't stocked and then you have no idea when it will actually ship when it appears to already be in stock. I hope that eventually they can at least provide accurate shipping dates.

Is this fist party or 3rd party? They are two very different processes.

Much of walmart.com is now filled via 3rd party - same as Amazon (except perhaps more likely to seller ship vs be marketplace fulfilled).

I am still trying to get my 12.99 product that was shipped a month ago but never moved. Trying to get anything resolved is impossible. I regret not using amazon.

Was it first party or third party?

Third party. Any tips for successfully resolving this?

This was sold and shipped by Walmart.com

Amazon just did this to me. I ordered books 3 weeks ago and they still haven't shipped.

It is past their order confimation "Arriving" date? If so, just contact CS, they'll usually give you money back in the form of credit. I've had a few issues with long ship dates because of COVID, but in general Amazon has been flawless.

the arriving date is for the end of september. which is why I'm assuming one of the books wasn't in stock but they sold it anyway.

Wal-Mart wants $98 a year to tell me they are out of stock, don’t ship to my area code, and I need to come to them? Prime Video alone is worth the cost of Prime, never mind that Amazon sells everything I want and need, and ship it to my home next day for free. I did my first Amazon Fresh order recently, loved that they used frozen water bottles to cool perishables, got fresh bread for the first time since the pandemic started. Now if the liquor stores will just deliver - there are 19 liquor stores within a three mile radius of me, only three have web sites, only one delivers (and only through Drizly), selection is limited. Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day.

> Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day.

You can thank the Progressive Era[1] for giving the US Prohibition[2], the legacy of which is the insanity of present-day US drug and alcohol laws.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...

Yes, that is a whole topic in itself. My sister-in-law lives in Utah where not only do you have to buy all alcohol from the state owned stores, the state waters down all alcohol over a certain ABV. It makes her very easy to shop for on the holidays - grab some bottles of the good stuff from another state on the drive over, but still crazy stuff like that still happens in this age.

Yeah I saw some dumb laws in Colorado when visiting. I think it was just the grocery stores with the 3% stuff. So ridiculous. Looks like Colorado allowed > 3.2% in grocery stores starting in 2019. [1] Not too long ago you couldn't buy beer in Indiana on Sunday. Archaic.

[1] https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-ki...

Yup, I spend a lot of time in Utah.

And what your sister is doing is actually illegal in Utah, but also largely unenforced.

Which is also another topic -- too many laws, most of which aren't enforced, and need to go away.

Must be state by state. I've ordered booze through Amazon before. The white wine even came chilled!

Twenty years ago I wondered why WM didn't dedicate a section in their store to computers and put Best Buy out of business. Or for that matter, any competitor of theirs. Sure, they must have thought about who shops in their stores, but if the prices are good enough, the BMW's will show up. Right?

In my hometown, Porsche put their dealership right next to Walmart. 15 years ago.

> to include more items and more perks, like shipping as fast as same day for orders of at least $35

Walmart shipping is already free with a $35 dollar order, it's just 2 day instead of 1 day.

I hope they would have lowered that minimum order amount if you paid for their service.

more like walmart plus takes on target delivery

walmart is dirty, gross and depressing. I don't want some horrible crap from walmart delivered. Your life has take a serious wrong turn if you shop at walmart. Walmart has lost the plot, Seriously just look at what target is doing and try to keep up. Walmart needs to stop dreaming about competing with amazon, they are not even the same orbit. Walmart sucks!

I have grown weary of supporting Bezos' empire and ordering as much as I can from Walmart in recent months once I noticed that his media arm (WaPo) was fueling the flames of COVID hysteria and BLM's destruction, which only helped Amazon and other Big Tech players strangle small American businesses in favor of offshore, mostly Chinese companies.

Next step is moving my company's cloud from AWS to Azure. Not sure yet what to do about the surveillance devices (Alexa) as I want something that can run without an internet connection to a Big Tech company.

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