The context of the below is that (as shown below) the pending purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon provides spaceship owner/Amacrat Jeff Bezos another chance to effectively probe Uranus regarding both Prime and non-Prime members.
An insomnia-fueled 1:30 a.m. check of the status of an Amazon order prompted a sleepless night (not in Amazon home town of Seattle) on finding that this online retail giant once again delayed an order by waiting to combine it with another for shipping; this was despite the company never allowing adding items to a pending order that is not close to shipping. The method behind that non-madness by non-Prime Amabuyers is to avoid having to meet the free-shipping threshold twice by buying things that he or she really does not want.
The aforementioned policy was especially irksome in the not-too-distant past in which the free shipping minimum was $49. Placing three orders (each of which included items that were added to meet the free-shipping threshold) during Black Friday weekend only to have Amazon hold up two of them to send them with the third, which was delayed to the extent of having it sit in a truck until that vehicle filled up two days later, was extremely aggravating. This under-handed tactic is part of the evil scheme of the Lex Luthor clone (complete with aforementioned spaceship) Bezos to coerce people into buying Prime memberships at the cost of $99/year.
Amaprimes are not subject to free-shipping thresholds and have their orders timely sent out at the expense of the warehouses neglecting the orders (and delaying the promised delivery date if Prime orders overwhelm them) of Amasteerage.
The added insult to this injury, is that your not-so-humble reviewer often waits months beyond the release date for pre-ordered DVDs because Prime orders cut the line in terms of being fulfilled first; this often requires those who ordered very early to wait for a second shipment, which can be much more than a month after the release of the title.
This is not to mention Amazon refusing to act when any customer buys any item from any reseller; the twisted logic is that the item purchased on the Amazon site through an account with their company is not a purchase from them.
The aforementioned late-night musings soon turned to SPECULATION regarding how Amazon will operate Whole Foods assuming that the almost certain purchase of that company occurs. The first assumption that Amazon will offer online ordering of Whole Food products in the same manner that disadvantages folks who opt out of paying Bezos $99 in annual tribute.
One can easily imagine as well that an in-store experience includes special check-out lines for Prime members at least during periods of peak demand. It is also POSSIBLE that Amazon will offer Prime customers preferential pricing in the manner hat it currently does online and at its brick-and-mortar bookstores. One difference is that the high expenses of operating a physical grocery store and the low profit-margin associated with that industry likely will require making non-Prime members absorb the lost revenue associated with the Prime discount. Let them eat gluten-free, dairy-free (taste-free) cake indeed.
On a related note, industry experts predict that the new owner will require that Whole Foods be a ruthless negotiator with its suppliers, who will need to make up that lost revenue somehow. Recently purchasing a large container of Whole Foods macaroni-and-cheese that was at most 10-percent macaroni seems to be an omen of things to come.
The bottom line is that history indicates that the amount of power acquired is proportionate to the related corruption; granting more control over our daily lives to a company that is known to place profit well above people cannot be a good thing. The extreme result will be America being Jeff Bezos' world and its citizens merely the people who live there.
One can only hope that a Lfyt-style company arises to effectively challenge the current uber-retailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment