My favorite is I ordered dog food. It was scheduled for 2 weeks (with prime). It arrived next day. Amazon still said it wasn’t shipped yet. To this day “expected delivery date is currently unknown” in the Amazon app. I ordered it in May. It does give me the option to request refund but I haven’t done it as the food was actually delivered and this seems like some employee forgot to scan the sticker at some point.
At the beep, it has been 7 months and 19 days and Amazon still has not found my camera.
Beep.
I know where it is. You know where it is. Amazon shipped it loose in its manufacturer’s packaging which plainly broadcast “steal me” to the entire universe and their third party totally-not-an-employee contractor delivery driver stole it. But they’ll totally refund me any day now. Juuuuust as soon as it makes it back to their warehouse!
Instead I charged back my credit card. I’ll never make a big ticket purchase on Amazon ever again.
In May Google unveiled a shopping cart that works across various merchants that would eventually be integrated into Gmail as well,
No thanks, sounds like a privacy nightmare. Not to mention probably pushing for more consumerism, which no thanks to that too.
Amazon has also been plugging away at AI-powered shopping features of its own, like price tracking and automatic purchasing. Alexa for Shopping is built into the Amazon app, and shoppers can query the chatbot for product recommendations and comparisons
Yes, let’s let the hallucinating plagiarism machine buy stuff and recommend stuff and track pricing data. Oh, did I mention the planet killing chat box is owned by Amazon, the place that makes money on selling you shit? what can possibly go wrong??
Let alone the predictive pricing.
"Oh you usually run out of shampoo mid month? Well guess what, shampoo prices double on the 10th and just happen to drop back down on the 25th. "
Google has had a feature variant of this since at least 2014. Back when Google Now was a thing (before LLM’s took off) there was a significant outcry about privacy because Google was scraping your emails to tell you when your packages shipped and when they would be delivered, to remind you when your flight was and what time you needed to leave for the airport and if your gate changed etc.
The thing that bothers me about this is, at that point it could be a opt in thing (on the email providers side), and it shouldn’t be up to Amazon to use “customer protection” as a reason to enshittify their services so that they can continue to be anti-competitive.
“the user is signing in with an email address from a company whose terms they accepted - let’s get in the way and tell the user only we get to do those things”
AI won’t help for pricing anyway because the company actively tries to get you to buy the less quality more expensive products, as outlined in a John Oliver episode.
Yeah sorry I knew that, obviously it does help pricing, their pricing, dynamic pricing coming to you soon!
CCTV cameras will know who everyone is and digital tags can give a price based on their metrics, or online with different prices. It’s already started. Consumer Reports outed Instacart for doing it online already, a firm that operates shopping carts on multiple websites as a vendor.
I really wish more people would include short summaries in their posts so I don’t have to read 12 paragraphs of bloat on a heavy webpage.
”As customers shop with us more frequently, including on their phones, and use the ‘Your Orders’ page in the Amazon app to get real-time, consolidated order details and delivery status, we’ve simplified several order-related emails to direct customers to our app and website for the latest information on their orders,” spokesperson Maxine Tagay said in an email. “This also reduces customer information shared outside the Amazon app and website to further improve customer privacy.”
In other words: It’s a way to hedge against the DoorDash problem by hiding the meaty information on Amazon’s properties, and to keep customers visiting the retailer directly.
Yet again it’s another thing AI is ruining and another way for companies to claw back value for themselves at the expense of their users.
Not adequately. They simply say there’s some vague “need” to get people to visit the app/site, but they don’t outline WHY that’s harmful to the company if people can get the information directly.
My guess? It’s about data protection. Amazon doesn’t want Google via gmail to learn exactly what you’re buying. By holding it in house they can better target you than anyone else, and also sell this “high value data” to data brokers
They don’t care about email scraping (which would be illegal)
They simply want people to install the app because it exfiltrates a lot of tasty data to them.
An email might “only” contain ab invisible image to track views and unique links for tracking clicks, while if the user opens the app they way more data.
From the APK I see they can get stuff like
All the contacts of the user, all email addresses and phone numbers
GPS location
Camera and photos
Microphone
Your phone number, your device IMEI and your unique advertising id, for cross tracking you better around other sites
Send push notifications for FOMO promotions like “OMG it’s the last one buy now before it gets sold out!!!”
Most of this scraping (like Google indexing your emails) is legal if the user is informed (an in EU if they can disable it)
The team problem the article hints at iis doordash and Amazon claims the customer relationships and hides the customer from the real company that actually made the sale. They make themselves a middleman to displace others as much as possible and use their size to manipulate the market in their favor (like demanding higher margins than other retailers)
fuck amazon. i literally just built an email scraper so i can use this exact email as a way to understand where my disposable amazon spending is going. because of course they don’t offer any way to export your purchases to analyze your spending.
Same. Pretty often I want to pull up the specs on some computer part, but these days nothing is clearly labeled with a part number. I don’t think my motherboard has one at all, certainly none where I can see. I would just search my email for “motherboard” and the most recent result was probably the one I wanted.
Ever since I realised that corporations are allowed to engage in fraud, and a litany of other crimes, without consequence I started archiving things directly using a combination of the SingleFile browser extension and full page screenshots, placing them in a web-archive folder.
Every time I purchase anything I save the product listing and order page, along with all associated info, naming all files based on the date of the purchase; the larger the purchase the more I’ll save (product page, warranty, user manuals, etc), and sometimes even a note.md file to document specifics (filter changes, spare parts and part numbers, etc).
I also use this method to snapshot various account pages or interactions like web chat; pretty much anything that future me could possibly need to reference.
Amazon is the shop, I go to when I can’t find it literally anywhere else.
The search is dysfunctional. The shipping information assumes a Prime subscription. There is constantly some try-hard upsell-advertising. And Amazon is usually not even competitive on price. The emails don’t even matter - I download the invoices.
Don’t forget the fact that you absolutely, positively cannot trust the quality of the item that will arrive. At this point, you’re much more likely to get some third party knock off with a lot of popular items.
Usability-reducing features like this do me a favor by giving me yet another reason to use Amazon less and less.
If you order via AliExpress, chances are the quality is the same or better. It just takes longer to arrive. But at least you won’t have to gamble if you receive a new or already used item
And they are 100% using AI to make the classifications. Last weekend I ordered a biscuit joiner and a pack of biscuits to go with it. The joiner got labeled a tool, and the biscuits got labeled “arts and crafts”.
I hate this change so fucking much that as soon as it went into effect I spent a good 30 minutes looking around my account settings for a way to switch it back. Have you visited your Amazon account settings recently? It’s a nightmare to try to find ANYTHING.
Well, they don’t need AI to fuck things up. That they could do way before that.
I once looked for an electronic part. I entered the part number, and got a crazy amount of irrelevant options listed, like female hygiene products, vases, clothing, and, somewhere in the list, the chip I was looking for.
Just for fun, I clicked some of those other articles and searched the page for the part number. No matches whatsoever. I don’t understand what made that algorithm presenting completely irrelevant stuff when there was one article in the list that matched my search term.
For me its quite funny to discuss Amazon.. I live in a country where Amazon does operate, but its not a main thing at all. I dont think they even have their own delivery vans here, its all done via third parties because it doesnt make sense enough to have their own systems for the 43 people who use it.
Some time ago I was discussing Amazon with an American and said that I have never needed Amazon for anything in my life. Then they asked me “well where do you go when you need dog food, a new drill bit set and bathroom cleaning products” and I just said “to the shopping center 700m away from me?” I dont know if Americans have forgot that malls are a thing, or have malls disappeared from there completely, but based on that guys response, it was like I was talking about going to a different planet. Some people are way too deep into these things… Its pretty concerning, in my opinion.
I mean I’m an American. Shit I live in Florida, that’s like the pinnacle of American madness to some extent.
My answer to where I would acquire that assortment of random items you mentioned?
Walmart dude! Never Amazon. What the fuck! Lol
We have a mall near me but it is dying and half empty, Walmart and Target and Costco etc are what fills the need for “Mall/shopping center.”
The rise of online shopping essentially helped accelerate the decline of malls in the traditional sense.
They would end up withering away during the fallout of the recession in the late 2000’s, the geographic distance an high cost of gas, along with the ridiculous pics gaulging malls were doing contributed as well
We totally have strip malls and big box stores
“Shopping centers”
The funny thing is that a huge problem with online shopping is something people swore Amazon had gotten past, the inability to gauge the quality of the item before buying has come back in full force, people are just so used to garbage materials when buying in Amazon they don’t realize it now
Its funny how “little” things like a shopping mall can be so different. In America, they are usually places you drive your vehicle to, spend the day (or something close to that nature, I’ve been lead to understand). Over here, theres one huge shopping mall (I think its like 1 kilometer long and 400m wide or something silly like that), it has a giant car park, its right next to the motorway, its in the middle of nothing, theres no housing close by, the only thing is a Lidl on the other side of the street and some car shops. But other than that, its “in the middle of nowhere”. Its about 10-15 minute drive from the nearest city. Its very easy to get to with a car. The mall has been struggling since day one. Sure, during Christmas shopping its full and whatnot, but outside any sales campaigns or events, its pretty quiet. I know, because I used to stop there for a coffee and bun, when I was driving trucks, and I liked places that were quiet. I even joked about it with the coffee shop owner, she said “well, for the sake of my wallet, I do hope you stop coming here” and I wished the same for her. Sadly I stopped going there for unrelated reasons and the café had to close because of lack of customers.
Anyway.. The city that is close to the out-of-the-way shopping mall, has like 4 shopping malls in the center, all thriving. The newest one was built a few years ago and is a great success. All because the center of the city is extremely accessible with public transport and its walkable. You can walk from one mall to the other in like 4-10 minutes. You have all the shops you need within a 20 minute walking radius. And you dont need to drive your car anywhere, you can enjoy the benefits of the city, you can go have a picnic… Malls that you have to drive to are just silly in my opinion lol.
The funny thing is that a huge problem with online shopping people swore Amazon had gotten past, the inability to gauge the quality of the item before buying has come back in full force, people are just so used to garbage materials when buying in Amazon they don’t realize it now
This is the main reason I just cant deal with online shopping. I don’t care if the shop has a excellent return policy or whatever. If I have to walk to the post office to mail the package back, I might as well walk to the shop that sells the thing in the first place, choose one that is not damaged or defective and live happily ever after.
My city has a lot of malls, several which are quite large by European standards, and they’re all thriving except the one (there’s always one), and this isn’t even a big city by the same European standards. But it’s a walkable one with a lot of foot traffic, and two of them are just next to train stations.
That’s so weird. I haven’t gotten any of these vague confirmation emails. Oh, that’s right. I remember why. Because I don’t buy a thing from that fucking oligarch’s website.
Same, but it takes effort. Even when items aren’t Amazon exclusives, Amazon still contractually requires the seller to give them the best price, so we all still pay the Amazon tax. Also, even if you order direct from the manufacturer’s website (for the ones that still have a website instead of just a Facebook page), it’s often shipped or fulfilled by Amazon. Or, if you find a decent alternative store like jet.com or woot.com, Amazon just buys them.
I do this thing where if I need something, I go to a store and buy it. It has resulted in a lot less buying of useless stuff that I didn’t really need and ends up just taking up space. YMMV
Fair enough and I’m sorry if I sounded judgy. I I know it doesn’t apply to everyone, but I think a major reason for Amazon’s success is that they’ve made acquiring things too convenient. A lot of people (I know I did) fall into the trap of over-consumption. I’ve come to conclude that spending my money ought to come with a little friction.
It’s a damn good trap, and they make it work bafflingly well.
I can get up, get dressed, commute to a store, buy the item I need and commute back home, or I can push 3 buttons on my phone and have the item delivered to me in a few hours for 35% less than it would have cost at the store, without the added fees for travel.
… Ah, fuck, I’m one of the Wall-E universe people, aren’t I?
I currently have a different problem with Amazon. I ordered a graphics card four weeks ago. No high end thing, a simple one with a price tag of €132. They confirmed sending it, then something happened, and shipping was delayed. I got the offer to cancel my order. Nope. I want that card. That’s why I ordered it. They currently have 10 of them in stock, but now priced €199. If I would cancel and order new i would have to pay the new price.
Yeah. Shit like this sorta reminds me of the reports I’ve been hearing about warranty replacements on drives. They don’t send you a replacement because that drive is worth twice what it was so they refund your money you originally paid. It’s almost like it’s turning into eBay and the highest bid.
I’ve wondered that for years, email was/is a privacy nightmare even before google got in the way. I wish more companies reconsidered what they’re sending via email.
I’ve started getting these. Its a little odd. The latest one I received told me it shipped “2 camera and 1 kitchen item”. The camera items were a baby monitor and a mount for the baby camera and the kitchen item were coffee filters. So I guess it’s accurate but kind of a useless description.
Same, I’m not sure who thought this was actually going to be helpful. Instead it just means I need to figure out exactly which item it’s talking about in the email
They don’t want Google having access to all of the juicy customer behavior/interests and product pricing information. Any privacy benefit for end users is purely coincidental, but very welcome. Though, I’d hope anyone that cares about privacy even a little bit is staying far away Gmail and others like it.
Fuck amazon, but also this kinda sounds like the beginnings of ai companies fighting for control and I have a small sliver of hope that they will just destroy each other.
Anyone else remember when they used to give you a refund if it didn’t come in 2 days? Lol
My favorite is I ordered dog food. It was scheduled for 2 weeks (with prime). It arrived next day. Amazon still said it wasn’t shipped yet. To this day “expected delivery date is currently unknown” in the Amazon app. I ordered it in May. It does give me the option to request refund but I haven’t done it as the food was actually delivered and this seems like some employee forgot to scan the sticker at some point.
They would give u the refund tho.
At the beep, it has been 7 months and 19 days and Amazon still has not found my camera.
Beep.
I know where it is. You know where it is. Amazon shipped it loose in its manufacturer’s packaging which plainly broadcast “steal me” to the entire universe and their third party totally-not-an-employee contractor delivery driver stole it. But they’ll totally refund me any day now. Juuuuust as soon as it makes it back to their warehouse!
Instead I charged back my credit card. I’ll never make a big ticket purchase on Amazon ever again.
Yeah, my order was like 30 dollars not almost a grand.
Yea that was to kill small businesses that couldn’t compete.
And now that they’ve done that (or acquired them), poof! You get it when you get it! A familiar pattern.
Sees headline: is it ai?
Sees uri: looks like it.
Reads article: what can I say but yikes.
No thanks, sounds like a privacy nightmare. Not to mention probably pushing for more consumerism, which no thanks to that too.
Yes, let’s let the hallucinating plagiarism machine buy stuff and recommend stuff and track pricing data. Oh, did I mention the planet killing chat box is owned by Amazon, the place that makes money on selling you shit? what can possibly go wrong??
Let alone the predictive pricing. "Oh you usually run out of shampoo mid month? Well guess what, shampoo prices double on the 10th and just happen to drop back down on the 25th. "
Google has had a feature variant of this since at least 2014. Back when Google Now was a thing (before LLM’s took off) there was a significant outcry about privacy because Google was scraping your emails to tell you when your packages shipped and when they would be delivered, to remind you when your flight was and what time you needed to leave for the airport and if your gate changed etc.
The thing that bothers me about this is, at that point it could be a opt in thing (on the email providers side), and it shouldn’t be up to Amazon to use “customer protection” as a reason to enshittify their services so that they can continue to be anti-competitive.
“the user is signing in with an email address from a company whose terms they accepted - let’s get in the way and tell the user only we get to do those things”
AI won’t help for pricing anyway because the company actively tries to get you to buy the less quality more expensive products, as outlined in a John Oliver episode.
Oh no, doesn’t help you for pricing. The company! To figure out just how much they can charge for just how shitty a thing!
Yeah sorry I knew that, obviously it does help pricing, their pricing, dynamic pricing coming to you soon!
CCTV cameras will know who everyone is and digital tags can give a price based on their metrics, or online with different prices. It’s already started. Consumer Reports outed Instacart for doing it online already, a firm that operates shopping carts on multiple websites as a vendor.
I think this is the article: https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-practices/instacart-ai-pricing-experiment-inflating-grocery-bills-a1142182490/
The future fucking sucks.
I really wish more people would include short summaries in their posts so I don’t have to read 12 paragraphs of bloat on a heavy webpage.
Yet again it’s another thing AI is ruining and another way for companies to claw back value for themselves at the expense of their users.
Does the article explain what the “DoorDash problem” is?
Not adequately. They simply say there’s some vague “need” to get people to visit the app/site, but they don’t outline WHY that’s harmful to the company if people can get the information directly.
My guess? It’s about data protection. Amazon doesn’t want Google via gmail to learn exactly what you’re buying. By holding it in house they can better target you than anyone else, and also sell this “high value data” to data brokers
They don’t care about email scraping (which would be illegal)
They simply want people to install the app because it exfiltrates a lot of tasty data to them.
An email might “only” contain ab invisible image to track views and unique links for tracking clicks, while if the user opens the app they way more data.
From the APK I see they can get stuff like
Most of this scraping (like Google indexing your emails) is legal if the user is informed (an in EU if they can disable it)
The team problem the article hints at iis doordash and Amazon claims the customer relationships and hides the customer from the real company that actually made the sale. They make themselves a middleman to displace others as much as possible and use their size to manipulate the market in their favor (like demanding higher margins than other retailers)
Yes
fuck amazon. i literally just built an email scraper so i can use this exact email as a way to understand where my disposable amazon spending is going. because of course they don’t offer any way to export your purchases to analyze your spending.
I hate this.
I’ve always kept my “ordered” and “delivered” emails in order to have a searchable database of what I ordered and when.
Without the item name, making that discovery is a lot more challenging.
Same. Pretty often I want to pull up the specs on some computer part, but these days nothing is clearly labeled with a part number. I don’t think my motherboard has one at all, certainly none where I can see. I would just search my email for “motherboard” and the most recent result was probably the one I wanted.
Ever since I realised that corporations are allowed to engage in fraud, and a litany of other crimes, without consequence I started archiving things directly using a combination of the SingleFile browser extension and full page screenshots, placing them in a web-archive folder.
Every time I purchase anything I save the product listing and order page, along with all associated info, naming all files based on the date of the purchase; the larger the purchase the more I’ll save (product page, warranty, user manuals, etc), and sometimes even a note.md file to document specifics (filter changes, spare parts and part numbers, etc).
I also use this method to snapshot various account pages or interactions like web chat; pretty much anything that future me could possibly need to reference.
It comes in handy extremely often.
Amazon is the shop, I go to when I can’t find it literally anywhere else.
The search is dysfunctional. The shipping information assumes a Prime subscription. There is constantly some try-hard upsell-advertising. And Amazon is usually not even competitive on price. The emails don’t even matter - I download the invoices.
Don’t forget the fact that you absolutely, positively cannot trust the quality of the item that will arrive. At this point, you’re much more likely to get some third party knock off with a lot of popular items.
Usability-reducing features like this do me a favor by giving me yet another reason to use Amazon less and less.
If you order via AliExpress, chances are the quality is the same or better. It just takes longer to arrive. But at least you won’t have to gamble if you receive a new or already used item
And they are 100% using AI to make the classifications. Last weekend I ordered a biscuit joiner and a pack of biscuits to go with it. The joiner got labeled a tool, and the biscuits got labeled “arts and crafts”.
I hate this change so fucking much that as soon as it went into effect I spent a good 30 minutes looking around my account settings for a way to switch it back. Have you visited your Amazon account settings recently? It’s a nightmare to try to find ANYTHING.
Well, they don’t need AI to fuck things up. That they could do way before that.
I once looked for an electronic part. I entered the part number, and got a crazy amount of irrelevant options listed, like female hygiene products, vases, clothing, and, somewhere in the list, the chip I was looking for.
Just for fun, I clicked some of those other articles and searched the page for the part number. No matches whatsoever. I don’t understand what made that algorithm presenting completely irrelevant stuff when there was one article in the list that matched my search term.
Amazon absolutely fucking sucks
For me its quite funny to discuss Amazon.. I live in a country where Amazon does operate, but its not a main thing at all. I dont think they even have their own delivery vans here, its all done via third parties because it doesnt make sense enough to have their own systems for the 43 people who use it.
Some time ago I was discussing Amazon with an American and said that I have never needed Amazon for anything in my life. Then they asked me “well where do you go when you need dog food, a new drill bit set and bathroom cleaning products” and I just said “to the shopping center 700m away from me?” I dont know if Americans have forgot that malls are a thing, or have malls disappeared from there completely, but based on that guys response, it was like I was talking about going to a different planet. Some people are way too deep into these things… Its pretty concerning, in my opinion.
I mean I’m an American. Shit I live in Florida, that’s like the pinnacle of American madness to some extent.
My answer to where I would acquire that assortment of random items you mentioned?
Walmart dude! Never Amazon. What the fuck! Lol
We have a mall near me but it is dying and half empty, Walmart and Target and Costco etc are what fills the need for “Mall/shopping center.”
The rise of online shopping essentially helped accelerate the decline of malls in the traditional sense.
They would end up withering away during the fallout of the recession in the late 2000’s, the geographic distance an high cost of gas, along with the ridiculous pics gaulging malls were doing contributed as well
We totally have strip malls and big box stores
“Shopping centers”
The funny thing is that a huge problem with online shopping is something people swore Amazon had gotten past, the inability to gauge the quality of the item before buying has come back in full force, people are just so used to garbage materials when buying in Amazon they don’t realize it now
Its funny how “little” things like a shopping mall can be so different. In America, they are usually places you drive your vehicle to, spend the day (or something close to that nature, I’ve been lead to understand). Over here, theres one huge shopping mall (I think its like 1 kilometer long and 400m wide or something silly like that), it has a giant car park, its right next to the motorway, its in the middle of nothing, theres no housing close by, the only thing is a Lidl on the other side of the street and some car shops. But other than that, its “in the middle of nowhere”. Its about 10-15 minute drive from the nearest city. Its very easy to get to with a car. The mall has been struggling since day one. Sure, during Christmas shopping its full and whatnot, but outside any sales campaigns or events, its pretty quiet. I know, because I used to stop there for a coffee and bun, when I was driving trucks, and I liked places that were quiet. I even joked about it with the coffee shop owner, she said “well, for the sake of my wallet, I do hope you stop coming here” and I wished the same for her. Sadly I stopped going there for unrelated reasons and the café had to close because of lack of customers.
Anyway.. The city that is close to the out-of-the-way shopping mall, has like 4 shopping malls in the center, all thriving. The newest one was built a few years ago and is a great success. All because the center of the city is extremely accessible with public transport and its walkable. You can walk from one mall to the other in like 4-10 minutes. You have all the shops you need within a 20 minute walking radius. And you dont need to drive your car anywhere, you can enjoy the benefits of the city, you can go have a picnic… Malls that you have to drive to are just silly in my opinion lol.
This is the main reason I just cant deal with online shopping. I don’t care if the shop has a excellent return policy or whatever. If I have to walk to the post office to mail the package back, I might as well walk to the shop that sells the thing in the first place, choose one that is not damaged or defective and live happily ever after.
My city has a lot of malls, several which are quite large by European standards, and they’re all thriving except the one (there’s always one), and this isn’t even a big city by the same European standards. But it’s a walkable one with a lot of foot traffic, and two of them are just next to train stations.
That’s so weird. I haven’t gotten any of these vague confirmation emails. Oh, that’s right. I remember why. Because I don’t buy a thing from that fucking oligarch’s website.
Very proud of u
Same, but it takes effort. Even when items aren’t Amazon exclusives, Amazon still contractually requires the seller to give them the best price, so we all still pay the Amazon tax. Also, even if you order direct from the manufacturer’s website (for the ones that still have a website instead of just a Facebook page), it’s often shipped or fulfilled by Amazon. Or, if you find a decent alternative store like jet.com or woot.com, Amazon just buys them.
I do this thing where if I need something, I go to a store and buy it. It has resulted in a lot less buying of useless stuff that I didn’t really need and ends up just taking up space. YMMV
I do that when I can, but local selection is often pretty limited.
Fair enough and I’m sorry if I sounded judgy. I I know it doesn’t apply to everyone, but I think a major reason for Amazon’s success is that they’ve made acquiring things too convenient. A lot of people (I know I did) fall into the trap of over-consumption. I’ve come to conclude that spending my money ought to come with a little friction.
No offense taken, I completely agree.
It’s a damn good trap, and they make it work bafflingly well.
I can get up, get dressed, commute to a store, buy the item I need and commute back home, or I can push 3 buttons on my phone and have the item delivered to me in a few hours for 35% less than it would have cost at the store, without the added fees for travel.
… Ah, fuck, I’m one of the Wall-E universe people, aren’t I?
What about when you purchase an item and then 24 hours later, you get an email to purchase the item you’ve already purchased.
How about just stop buying shit from Amazon? My confirmation emails haven’t been existing for the last 2 years.
I currently have a different problem with Amazon. I ordered a graphics card four weeks ago. No high end thing, a simple one with a price tag of €132. They confirmed sending it, then something happened, and shipping was delayed. I got the offer to cancel my order. Nope. I want that card. That’s why I ordered it. They currently have 10 of them in stock, but now priced €199. If I would cancel and order new i would have to pay the new price.
Yeah. Shit like this sorta reminds me of the reports I’ve been hearing about warranty replacements on drives. They don’t send you a replacement because that drive is worth twice what it was so they refund your money you originally paid. It’s almost like it’s turning into eBay and the highest bid.
I’ve wondered that for years, email was/is a privacy nightmare even before google got in the way. I wish more companies reconsidered what they’re sending via email.
They could let users register a PGP pubkey and encrypt their emails, which would also avoid third parties harvesting data from them.
I don’t see this in my case. All the emails that I get show the actual product.
I’ve started getting these. Its a little odd. The latest one I received told me it shipped “2 camera and 1 kitchen item”. The camera items were a baby monitor and a mount for the baby camera and the kitchen item were coffee filters. So I guess it’s accurate but kind of a useless description.
I recently ordered a wall adapter and the associated cable.
Amazon emailed me to confirm my order of two wireless items.
Same, I’m not sure who thought this was actually going to be helpful. Instead it just means I need to figure out exactly which item it’s talking about in the email
Maybe it was a privacy thing? Like they don’t want to put “we shipped your ENORMOUS DILDO” in the subject and body of the email.
Or for a more reasonable example, stuff like contraceptives to people in places with repressive governments like Kansas.
They don’t want Google having access to all of the juicy customer behavior/interests and product pricing information. Any privacy benefit for end users is purely coincidental, but very welcome. Though, I’d hope anyone that cares about privacy even a little bit is staying far away Gmail and others like it.
Yeah, I've made a rule that just marks them as read and archives the. right away, no point seeing them at all when they're so useless.
Trying to get people on the app?
Nah. Trying to keep our order histories away from competitors and analysis.
Fuck amazon, but also this kinda sounds like the beginnings of ai companies fighting for control and I have a small sliver of hope that they will just destroy each other.
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