Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristianp | Hacker News Reader

I wish our local postage carrier was more efficient. Amazon provides next day delivery, whilst other online stores dispatch your purchase within 2-3 days and the package arrives is a further 2-5 days.

View on HN

Your local postage carrier doesn’t build massive warehouses filled with items that people who have to pee in bottle grab off of shelves.

Some of you may die... and that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!

I noped out of Prime a long time ago when it became clear they were training the population to treat all their purchases as instant gratification impulse buys.

That’s a bit interesting. Do you have similar ideas about commercial air travel?

No, because taking a week out of my life to go by train instead of plane is impractical. Making myself wait a few extra business days for my books to arrive is not. I apologize if you had a better point you were trying to make and I missed it.

The point might have been that booking travel online is now fairly easy and seamless, to the point where people might impulse book international vacations when they might otherwise have stayed close to home.

Sure, I'm not a fan of the environmental footprint of casual air travel, but offsetting that there are positive effects of the world having become smaller. My subscription to Prime would only be an unnecessary convenience.

How much of your spending requires instant gratification?

Presumably nothing they buy from Amazon.

If they wanted instant gratification, they'd buy it from a local store and get it immediately rather than having to wait a couple days.

Stupid Best Buy had to have a 5090 in stock and available for me to purchase within one hour. Otherwise I'd probably willing to run me 3080 into the ground. For some reason Amazon next day delivery doesn't check my "instant gratification" box, but I'm a sucker for hour availability.

Quite a bit, I usually try not to buy anything other than groceries, but when I need something I usually really need it because something has either broken or a sudden need has arisen. That said I do try to get it locally first.

It can be about predictability as well. If Amazon says two days, it is usually two days. I arrange the purchase for a day when I don't work or work a short shift. If it is a valuable product that requires someone to receive the parcel, I don't have to deal with shippers who force people to use a pickup point that is a 15 minute drive away. (I don't drive, so that is usually problematic.) At the end of the day, in my case, it is more about receiving the product than getting it right away.

All of my restaurant purchases for sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com