Amazon is getting worse for non-prime users. They've increased their free shipping limit, longer shipments, and kept pushing their deals onto Prime users only.
I've bought more from Jet.com this year than Amazon in the last two years and Jet was faster with its free 2 day shipping than Amazon's free shipping.
There could be an opportunity for a competitor depending on how some Amazon issue play out over the next year or so. A lot of commentors are focused on the tech (which makes sense, being HN and all), but Amazon has some issues with counterfeit products, unequal product commingling, and unreliable third-party sellers.
Right now those issues are mostly side-line grumpling, but I could imagine a few big incidents could possibly blow up into a substantial reputation issue. The unknown, of course, is can/will Walmart do any better.
I just moved from the UK to the US. It is quite surprising how useless Amazon just became for me.
So far, every item I wanted to buy has $49 min spend for free shipping attached to it, which is not something I have had to deal with - except for a few add-on items.
So I just switched to eBay sellers instead.
I realize the price may end up being similar but I want to know what that price is while browsing, not "add $5.99" at checkout.
Amazon is getting worse for non-prime users. They've increased their free shipping limit, longer shipments, and kept pushing their deals onto Prime users only.
I've bought more from Jet.com this year than Amazon in the last two years and Jet was faster with its free 2 day shipping than Amazon's free shipping.