Amazon Will Pay Shoppers $5 to Walk Out of Stores Empty-Handed

Retailers aren’t all lumbering behemoths being driven into extinction by online merchants. Many have figured out that they are actually running showrooms and charge the manufacturers rent for displaying their wares. Supermarkets have been playing this game for years, renting shelf space by the foot to people like Coca-Cola.<p>Meanwhile, people like WalMart make a business out of logistics, they only carry stuff where they have a strong financial advantage. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard to beat their prices when you factor in shipping.<p>It will be interesting to see how Amazon and WalMart match up against each other over the next decade. I wouldn’t be surprised if WalMart start displaying higher online prices right beside their merchandise in the store.

Very interesting move by amazon. No doubt the retaliation will be political in nature and focus on the unfairness of no sales tax, well the retaliation is already underway and lobbyists have been hired and working on this issue for some years now.<p>I have always had a paper notebook I carry around with me. Sometimes I will be shopping for something and the local store will have many models but none on display and almost no information about features. Let's take BluRay players for example. The local store has about 30 models of these. A couple are on display but not plugged in. What is really important to me is the player not take 5 minutes to cue the movie because the processor is underpowered and the DRM on BluRay uses a complex scheme involving Java code and decrypting. I also want to know how the menus are arranged, because most remotes are infuriating to use and user interface is important. You would think this would be an ideal situation for brick and mortar because knowledgable sales clerks would be able to answer my questions and allow me to test the merchandise using the large screen TVs they have set up for the purpose. Alas, no. The era of sales clerks knowing accurate information about products ended many years ago. Such places can not be found. The era of being allowed to test things in store has likewise ended.<p>So what I do is write down the model names of a half dozen of the most likely candidates and then go read online reviews to find if there are complaints about cuing speed. Finding out about the menu design is nearly impossible though unless I can find a pdf manual to download that comprehensively documents the menu structure (seldom the case). Having found the best product, I return to the brick and mortar store and purchase the item.<p>What happens sometimes in these endeavors is a manager comes up to me and accuses me of being a "price checker" for the competition. He will tell me that the license that governs my entry to the store prohibits this and that I am now banned from the store and police will be called in the future.<p>I assure him I am not a competitor's price checker, I am trying to get information about the product since his own people don't know anything. He is not interested. I am now banned from the store.<p>So then I buy from amazon. If the product sucks I return it. This is an inefficient process, I would much rather buy locally but local merchants aren't hearing of it.

This is an ingenious move by Bezos &#38; co. Not only do they train consumers to price-shop using Amazon (which usually beats brick &#38; mortars), but they gain a treasure trove of information on their competitor's holiday pricing.<p>I'd hate to be a competitor Amazon takes seriously.

I think Amazon will eventually open a big box store. They won't carry any inventory-- just one copy of each item. You scan the items you want and choose shipping to your home or next-day pickup at the store. With so many big box stores shutting down the real estate will be cheap. And with no inventory turnover there would be relatively no employee overhead. If walmart has 100k SKUs an Amazon storefront could offer 250k SKUs. It would be massively disruptive for items that are more difficult to browse/evaluate online (read: clothing).

Handling delivery of packages is sill a major annoyance of online shopping. I love Amazon but consumer-side logistics could use some serious improvement. The drive to reduce shipping prices as much as possible has definite downsides.<p>- Items consistently damaged/stolen during shipment. - Delivery of incorrect items/wrong address. - No place to leave packages during the day if you live in an apartment with no doorman. - Impossible to schedule delivery, especially before the first delivery attempt. It is unwise to order things while traveling. - Carriers lie about delivery attempts and times. - Distribution center for package pick up is 10 miles away and only open M-F 9-5.

I honestly don't know how Amazon stays in business, their customer service is almost too good, they are the anti-paypal.<p>Just today I wrote them a detailed email about a problem I had with a product I bought and was expecting instructions on how to return it, etc. - instead they just refunded the whole purchase price and told me to keep it. Kinda blew my mind.

The problem here is this isn't a sustainable strategy long term. While Amazon has succeeded in killing the bookstore, this works because consumers are willing to accept "browsing" for books online.<p>The same is not true for many other types of goods, such as clothes. Shops are performing a useful function in letting consumers see, touch and try what they buy. So what Amazon is doing here basically parasitical, but a smart parasite doesn't kill it's host.<p>There's a reason why Jeff Bezos invested in SecondLife ( <a href="http://goo.gl/PluAT" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/PluAT</a> )...

Last weekend, I was at a used books shop. I saw a guy with some iphone app, checking the price of <i>each and every</i> book in the shop (there were lots of books for $1). The store people noticed, but didn't say anything, at least I didn't see them say anything. I bet they weren't happy about it.<p>How long before we just place an order, online, in a centralized place, and pick one of these:<p>cheapest<p>fastest delivery<p>highest quality<p>or some combination of these, and the app finds the best place to order (amazon, walmart etc) and automatically places the order?

This is off topic but people are discussing Amazon and shipping so I figured I'd ask this here, because it's always confused me. Why do so many American based companies refuse to ship to Canada or limit what they do ship to Canada (Amazon, has Amazon.ca, but the selection is nothing compared to the .com, which does not ship to Canada)? It seems strange with things like NAFTA in place that companies would restrict their market power by eliminating a potential buying supply that for all intents and purposes is very similar (in terms of shipping costs, dollar value etc). So HN, what am I missing here?

How long before stores start deliberately finding ways to kill cell phone reception?

I really wonder how this will impact the commercial real estate market and if commercial real estate is an incredibly bad investment these days even at its current lows. As we all know, you have this obvious and unstoppable force of doing stuff now at home online. More and more people who used to go to stores now stay at home to shop and more and more people can perform their jobs via telecommuting rather than sitting in an office. Consequently, we have less and less need for commercial real estate space. My feeling is that in X years commercial real estate will be even more vastly under occupied and will only be occupied by services that cant be done online (restaurants, bars, night clubs, salon). Maybe as a result the expanding geographic human footprint on the earth will slow down a bit in that Walmart wont need be putting up its next super store.

This is exactly what I've done at Fry's (50% of the time as they match prices lots of times) and any of the bigger bookstores ever since I got 3G. I'm surprised Amazon, or any other online retailer, has come up with this strategy this late.

I remember reading a story about a year ago, reporting that stores would ask people using their smartphones to leave - they were worried that they were checking for lower prices in the area. This seems like it might be met with the same sort of attitude, at first.

How many people who use Amazon frequently work at home or have a spouse/partner at home during the day? I would love to use Amazon for the bulk of my purchases, but I can't take delivery at work and there is no one to receive packages at my home during the day. It's completely infeasible for me to use Amazon except for occaisonal orders where it is worth taking time to stay home or visit the UPS depot to actually receive my orders.<p>Until Amazon solves this problem, they're not a serious competitor to traditional retail.

I was shopping for toys for my 4 year old this black friday, and I scanned a few of them ( if not all ) and the discounted toys where at the same price as Amazon.<p>eg: Lego Train Set<p>Store: $21.99<p>Amazon: $19.99<p>while the store price is marked as 20% off, and the Amazon price is marked as Prime, i went with Amazon Prime for the most part, the free shipping always wins for me, I wish this promotion was already active back then.

Now when are they going to add this feature to their Windows Phone app? Windows Phone already has the capability built-in (through Bing Vision) to scan barcodes and price-match, but Amazon's app adds more features on top of that. Kinda ridiculous that they haven't added that to their app on this platform.

It sounds gimmicky when you add on top of the 3 item, 2 day, and 5% off restrictions that it's only on select products and valid in select stores. Nice headline news, but shouldn't Amazon be looking to find people who'll become long-term users?

Given Amazon's history of displaying different prices to different users, I wonder if they'll use this technology to optimize their prices to beat a specific competitor but perhaps not go as low as they could.

This is what I was kind of doing for books in Barnes and Noble: check the contents, read a few pages, then buy the e-book or physical book online. With this app it would make it super convenient to compare prices and order instantly after doing such a thing. I would imagine this will extend to clothing and other things, i.e. people will try the clothes and look at stuff in physical stores then order online if there is no rush to have the item. Who would have thought the online world would be such a force to reckon with?

This is why stores should start offering free wifi - so they can see how much this is affecting their bottom line.

I love this. Stores hate it when people do stuff like this, and that's what makes it so fun.