That was me! I came across the Reddit post yesterday too and figured it would make for a fun weekend project. I'm not sure when I'll get the opportunity to build it though so if you're interested in the domain, shoot me an email.
Because "AWS Free Tier includes 50GB data transfer out, 2,000,000 HTTP and HTTPS Requests with Amazon CloudFront" presumably.
For small websites you can often find ways to fit inside free tiers these days. If this site is just static files you could use similarly use netlify (100GB/month free). Or you could use a free tier VPS from GCP/AWS and cloudflare to cache traffic (to keep you under the free tier bandwidth limits). Or so on.
Yup, CDNs and object stores are a dime a dozen these days. If one's too expensive or unreliable just move on to the next one. I believe this free tier doesn't run out after 12 months either.
Most companies are not customer obsessed, that's why they fail. Let me give you an example;
I've bought a sofa set from Coleman, and supposedly I needed to measure the door, if the sofa can fix or not. Because of the shape of the hallway and entrance, the sleeper did not fix from door. And carrier guys did not want to push further. Luckily, my patio's door was large enough to fit. I've called Coleman and explained the situation, they demanded extra money from me, to deliver through patio's door, or they were gonna send it back, which I have to pay for shipment and 15% re-stocking fee.
I come from another country, this would never be an issue. No matter what, carrier would deliver inside my home (either through front or back, or patio's door, or window), and never ask for extra.
If I would have bought from Amazon, I'm sure that I could send back, or speak for another delivery option. This is why Amazon is winning, they are customer obsessed, they are there to help, even if they lose money.
>This is why Amazon is winning, they are customer obsessed, they are there to help, even if they lose money.
They are so customer obsessed that I can't trust the brand name AC adapter I purchase from them is made with quality materials from a trusted brand, or if it's a counterfeit sent to their warehouses and commingled with all of the other inventory.
And they're so customer focused that they removed the option to restrict product searches to only show "shipped and sold by Amazon.com".
The only thing their actions show me is that they're obsessed with higher profit margins, which can't be obtained by providing traditional retail services. They can achieve higher profit margins by simply being a platform and collecting a commission of all the transactions.
Amazon would have the sense to have a popup with measurement instructions as they would learn from the first 5 times that happened and take action to ensure it never happened again.
I used to work for a relatively large bank that for years didn't even track what customers were calling our mega call centre about. It took them a long time to realize that 25% of calls were password resets because the button was hard to see. They had recently expanded the call centre and all over a hard to see button.
Amazon lost me as a customer completely. They're not at all customer focused. Their shipping care/quality is horrendous (stuff is damaged all the time). Any non-trivial issues (anything that can't be resolved by refunding money, re-sending the item) have no path to resolution. Amazon.com itself is like a flea market: tons of untrustworthy/counterfeit merchandise, fake reviews everywhere.
Apple is customer obsessed. Amazon is efficiency obsessed.
Refund and replacement aren't always easy depending on where you live or which amazon firm it is (different countries, different contractor company). But that's not even the point, wasted time and headache is not something many want to deal with.
They are so customer obsessed that they sent me 5 defective different products one after another last time I purchased electronics from them (feb). In the end, I simply gave up and decided I would never buy anything remotely expensive there. The customer rep didn't do anything. I needed a laptop urgent but the laptop came wrong twice and after emailing jeff (because their customer rep didn't do anything for days mentioning warehouse investigation). I got some indian guy who forgot about me again after telling me to wait a few days. Then another indian guy taking his place told me to wait, that repeated until march of 10-15th. Copy paste responses looking like spam. (gmail even put one of their email in my spambox)
I got nothing in the end and wasted damn time with customer support + money stuck twice... since refunds take time to appear.
Not that I, too, find it ridiculous that the delivery person doesn't take a minute to try and get it into your house another way instead of bringing it all the way back, but do note that restocking and delivery fees are real. Amazon does free shipping not because it makes them more money but because they know the competition doesn't have as deep pockets.
A podcast from "the university of Flanders" (which is more than one university, but alas) talked about this and that free shipping offers are ways to bind customers but that it's typically not actually viable with current profit margins and just an attempt to squeeze others out of the market. (If someone speaks Dutch/Flemish and cares for the original, I could probably find it again.)
The PTR is a bit of a different beast: they sacrificed battery life and water resistance for styling. The result is (IMHO) the best-looking smartwatch available. I've been drooling over the PTR ever since it came out (I have an OG Steel). When they announced the "limited-edition" polished gold model during their Kickstarter campaign, I jumped at it, even though it will effectively a previous-generation model (I also got a Pebble 2 to use as a "beater" watch).
I think that Pebble understands better than most that, to many people, a watch is a piece of jewelry more than it is a gadget or piece of equipment—hence why very expensive watches often have less functionality and reliability than a $10 quartz Casio. IMHO, the PTR and OG Steel are the only two smartwatches on the market that really appeal to this demographic.
I think that Pebble's challenge is that the traditional watch market seems to be shrinking—most of the people I know that wear an Apple Watch or Android Wear are people that wouldn't otherwise be wearing watches, and are more interested in the gadget aspect. Regardless of hardware, I don't think that Pebble will ever be able to compete in that market; Pebble support will always be an afterthought for app developers, compared to the ease of the native Apple and Android SDKs. In my experience, Pebble is already falling behind here—the quantity and quality of apps isn't that great (though perhaps I'm missing out on some good apps because my Steel is too old?). They do seem to realize this, and seem to be actively trying to build a larger developer community.
Also problematic for attracting developers: the Pebble app store has no built-in payment facilities, and developers must resort to clunky third-party solutions (such as KiezelPay) to sell paid apps and watch faces. This might not be Pebble's fault, though—I'm guessing that they're restricted by the requirements placed on them by Apple (and perhaps Google) to be in their stores.
One buys the PTR mostly for the looks since it lacks the battery life and water-proofing of its siblings. A good reason to buy a watch for and it looks mighty fine! [1]
Still, a daily charge is too often. I charge mine every other day. Do you have a watchface showing the seconds ticking by?
