Amazon Surpasses Apple and Google to Become World's Most Valuable Brand

I like to use them to get an idea of the kind of products that exist and then try to find a higher quality equivalent from other merchants, locally, when I get the inkling that some of their product categories are swamped by cheap knockoff crap.
...
^^^This, 100 fold.

I want to always cater to local businesses, first, which contribute to neighborhood/city, and provide local employment.
So, i follow the same process as stated by GrumpyMon:
  1. Web research, typically Amazon appears front page, being cohorts to Google, and thus Google search.
  2. Cull the Chinese crap, if possible. [Buy either American or European-community made products.]
  3. Look for local sources.
  4. Only if there is no local source option, I will purchase from Amazon -- but always as last resort. And only for products either sold by Amazon or shipped by them [Otherwise, you are thrown to an uncertain refund quagmire.]
Support local businesses. Just my approach.
 
Hmmm, I know it’s anecdotal, but I’ve never had an issue with Amazons customer service. In fact, quite the opposite. Anytime I’ve had an issue they have been quick to resolve. YMMV.
I'd make a distinction between two kinds of customer service: "easy", which is what I'd call Amazon, and good.

Good is the experience I had recently with the New York Times. I hadn't been receiving papers for a couple weeks after starting a subscription and called in. Within about 40 seconds I was talking to a real person (despite "higher than usual call volumes"), and within 90 seconds I had explained exactly what was going on, had confirmed the required information, and the agent was already writing a message to the local distributor to figure out what was wrong. We were done in under 5 minutes.

"Easy" is great for resolving little issues. Every time I've had a simple order- or service-related issue on Amazon, they've solved it promptly and usually issued some sort of credit in addition to the refund. The difference:
  1. Beyond picking out what order, item, and/or service I had an issue with and the broad category of issue, I rarely get the impression that Amazon representatives really even comprehend the issue I'm contacting them about. This is born out whenever I've had a request that was not so simple it should have been solvable online; there's a real language barrier, and when you hit it, you hit it hard.
  2. Amazon clearly makes an active effort to divert people away from support. They've all but entirely hidden the email option, leaving only chat and phone options which are needlessly time-consuming for resolving simple order-related issues.
  3. Nearly every issue I've contacted Amazon support about is something that should have been solvable online. For instance, on multiple occasions they've shipped me the wrong trail bar; for whatever reason refunds can't be issued online for this sort of item. I've also had multiple issues with items being marked delivered one night and only showing up the next morning, none of which I could report without a lengthy interaction with customer service.
  4. The real kicker was when I ordered something from what turned out to be a fraudulent listing. As it turns out Amazon's A-to-z "Guarantee" is a complete joke.
In this last case, I ordered a new electronics item from a third-party seller and received one that had obviously been used and wasn't even quite what I had ordered. The return address was not readable (possibly intentionally so), so I contacted the seller who first asked me to return the opened package to USPS (which is not allowed) and then provided a clearly fake address and asked me to ship at my expense. USPS wouldn't even let me buy postage to the address (not that I had any intention of doing so).

In over a week of back and forth, Amazon's A-to-z team did nothing but tell me to follow the seller's instructions (which was literally impossible, at least via USPS), some of which directly violated Amazon's own policy and would have, per their own terms of service, made me ineligible for a refund. Ultimately I was only able to get my money back after spending well over an hour on the phone and eventually getting to someone based in the US who could both speak English fluently and who actually bothered to understand the situation. Even then, they were only able to issue a refund on several other sold-by-Amazon items amounting to the same total. The A-to-z claim was literally never resolved.
 
It's all temporary. Next time, the top 3 will switch places again, on the whim of the evaluators. Being in the top 10 is a big deal, though.
 
Alibaba at #7, Chinese is really taking over the world.

Have you began to notice how many "Hollywood" films are now funded by China? Mission Impossible: Fallout was Alibaba. Tencent Pictures funded Kong, Wonder Woman, Venom, Bublebee, MIB International, Terminator Dark Fate and Top Gun Maverick.
 
Hmmm, I know it’s anecdotal, but I’ve never had an issue with Amazons customer service. In fact, quite the opposite. Anytime I’ve had an issue they have been quick to resolve. YMMV.
Sane here, for me, their customer service is top notch. I have few Amazon Basics items and they work well and are pretty good quality.
 
Amazon achieves low prices by cutting out human employees. Eventually, most if not of all their warehouse employees can be replaced with robots. It’s great for low prices in the short term, but I worry about long term societal cost.
 
Amazon achieves low prices by cutting out human employees. Eventually, most if not of all their warehouse employees can be replaced with robots. It’s great for low prices in the short term, but I worry about long term societal cost.

Automation has been replacing human since the first person put a wheel on a cart. That let them roll thing around instead of having people carry them. Greatly multiplying the effectiveness of the workforce and thus reducing the number of people needed. And freeing people to create new technologies, which creates new jobs for people.
 
Unlike Google, Amazon can be complementary to Apple. I’m a devout Apple ecosystem user but I’m a big Amazon customer, doing around 85% of my shopping on Amazon. I subscribe to my monthly groceries on Amazon and when I need to buy something, Amazon.com is almost always my first (and last) stop.

This non threat position is reflecting in Apple’s increasingly close relationship with Amazon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Amazon store directly embedded in Siri and available on HomePod.
 
Automation has been replacing human since the first person put a wheel on a cart. That let them roll thing around instead of having people carry them. Greatly multiplying the effectiveness of the workforce and thus reducing the number of people needed. And freeing people to create new technologies, which creates new jobs for people.

I certainly hope you’re right that eliminating retail stores and replacing human workers with robots will create jobs.
 
Big shout out to all the Amazon employees working in terrible conditions without whom none of this would be possible

Totally.

Amazon is great for convenience.

But it's awful for pay, conditions, the high street, counterfeiting, the environment etc etc.

I've totally pulled away from Amazon now - won't use it at all. Their business depends on people assuming Amazon is the cheapest - but in my experience, they certainly are not.
 
Totally.

Amazon is great for convenience.

But it's awful for pay, conditions, the high street, counterfeiting, the environment etc etc.

I've totally pulled away from Amazon now - won't use it at all. Their business depends on people assuming Amazon is the cheapest - but in my experience, they certainly are not.

I only use Amazon as a last resort, when local businesses don’t have what I’m looking for. I’m happy to spend an extra couple bucks to support my local economy, and I like being able to drive 10 minutes to the store and immediately have the thing I want.
 
I certainly hope you’re right that eliminating retail stores and replacing human workers with robots will create jobs.

Has worked so well so far. People are pretty adaptable to change. We went from 90% of the population living in rural life and doing farms labor in the 1930s to 80% working in factories and retail by the early 1950s.
 
Has worked so well so far. People are pretty adaptable to change. We went from 90% of the population living in rural life and doing farms labor in the 1930s to 80% working in factories and retail by the early 1950s.

Your optimism knows no bounds! That and a high-paying job in the Bay Area will get you far.
 
Have you began to notice how many "Hollywood" films are now funded by China? Mission Impossible: Fallout was Alibaba. Tencent Pictures funded Kong, Wonder Woman, Venom, Bublebee, MIB International, Terminator Dark Fate and Top Gun Maverick.
That’s why I don’t watch flicks.
 
It's because they keep upping my Subscribe & Save prices. My delivery increased by more than $10 this month alone!

You realize there are market forces that influence this, right? $10 increase seems tiny compared to the huge increase in gas prices alone that these companies need to pay to keep operations running.

I have tremendous respect for what Amazon has achieved through really smart strategies, mainly how they turned their entire technology platform needed to run their own business into a highly-monetized business itself (Amazon Web Services). That alone wins my vote! Next to them, Apple seems like a black box of sludge. I still trust iCloud more than anyone else, though.
[doublepost=1560298953][/doublepost]
I disagree with this completely. Apple focuses on the Teen and College markets, which are style, fashion, and image focused. This will keep them at the top for a while. At some point Apple's disregard for cost, technology and reliability will cause them to fall out of favor. Once that happens, it will be a free fall because Apple does not have any other base to fall back on, like in the past.

Now with that said, the new Mac Pro might start recreating that base, provided the new Mac Pro does not have the problems that other recent technology releases have, is upgraded more often, and a middle ground Mac is released between the mini and the Mac Pro.

I am not holding my breath, because Apple management's DNA for good products has gone out the door (outside of the iPhone and a heavy image focus).

What planet to do you live on? I agree that Apple's execution the past few years has not been without its bumps and bruises, but they absolutely put product quality first. And they are pushing technology forward more than 90% of the "reseller brands" out there. Reliability remains absolute core to their product line. Expecting perfection from them all the time is unreasonable while also demanding faster innovation. You do realize that consumers put demands on them that are unachievable without compromising something else, right?
 
For me Amazon is the lowest of the low for online sales. They can do a ton of volume but the quality sucks, customer service is a nightmare and all the Amazon branded products are cheap junk.
This is literally the opposite of my experience.

The parcels are trackable and always arrive quickly..

Amazon basics are often way better than other brands (their lightning cables have held up comparably to Apple’s, only other decent brand I’ve found is Anker)

Their customer support has always been exceptional for me, no question returns, easy refunds on things like subscriptions. (I was paying for kindle+ for a year accidentally, they refunded it all no we asked.) they have really short queues to do live chat.

They’re debatably evil and probably worth boycotting for a whole bunch of other reasons, just not these particular ones. :D
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top