Record-breaking $502m in sales, BIG LOSSES – OF COURSE IT'S TWITTER Twitter has managed to collect over half a billion dollars - and somehow throw it all away and more even though it does nothing but run a microblabber portal. But the markets are impressed anyway. The company brought in $502m for the second quarter of its fiscal 2015, which ended on June 30. The figure represented a 60.9 per …
Below cost? I don't believe a word of it. For the last few months now I've been avoiding Amazon and finding other places to buy stuff ... and reputable, long standing small companies are coming in cheaper than Amazon.
All black Pentax K-S2 with 18-50 kit from my usual specialist source, £559 with £40 cashback. Amazon, £649 with no cashback. Even the white is £594.41 ... unless you want forest green, in which you can get it for £533.32.
Amazon aren't the cheapest by a long margin ... and with this Amazon Logistic service, which repeatedly tries to deliver to business addresses, outside business hours (three recent orders went wonky this way) ... they're shooting themselves in the foot .... at the knee ... with a howitzer.
Here in the UK, Amazon's determination to lose customers carries on apace.
It only seems like yesterday that punters were abandoning eBay UK because sellers' prices there -- often plus post & packing -- were being substantially undercut by Amazon, and with a far better CS, too.
Ah well. That was then. This is now. Go to Amazon UK today, and you'll find that the site is exceptionally useful in helping you not to buy from Amazon UK. Time after time, the product page you're looking at says spend-twenty-quid-minimum-and-there's-free-P&P. . . but the item you want is less than £10. So you simply look at the other 'offers' on that same product page to see a list of sellers -- many of them major names in their own right -- who will (a) provide the same item for less than Amazon UK is charging and (b) won't charge you a penny P&P and (c) if they screw up your order, you can still go via Amazon UK to complain.
Alternatively: you can try your luck on eBay UK, not a place I'd ever use for a major purchase but fine nowadays for cheaper items, most of 'em P&P inclusive.
This ridiculous attempt by Amazon to up-sell customers to a minimum £20 spend is about as daft as its earlier attempt to convince Prime users that Prime had nothing to do with one-day delivery but everything to do with streaming video. The connect between the two hadn't actually ever occurred to many Prime users, so it's little wonder that many of 'em never renewed their subscriptions at Amazon's massively increased rate.
I'm not sure who is running Amazon UK these days. Dismally uncompetitive on product pricing and pug ugly in its cynical up-sell manipulation, I can only presume that someone with an MBA is way up there at the top surrounded by a clutch of managers with equally impressive degrees in Marketing.
* Paris. Because no-one has ever complained about her manipulation.
Below cost? I don't believe a word of it. For the last few months now I've been avoiding Amazon and finding other places to buy stuff ... and reputable, long standing small companies are coming in cheaper than Amazon.
The appeal of Amazon appears to be convenience and laziness. You've always been able to find cheaper/better products elsewhere but, like a supermarket, Amazon appears to offer everything in one place. Doesn't work for me but obviously does for many others and this, along with questionable employment and accounting practices, is slowly driving the competition out of business.
"In order to realize Twitter's full potential, we must improve in three key areas: ensure more disciplined execution, simplify our service to deliver Twitter's value faster, and better communicate that value," Dorsey said.
"In order to realize Twitter's full potential, we must improve in three key areas: monetising, advertising, and data mining!"
"But investors seemed pleased with the results, and Twitter's share price climbed by more than 5 per cent on the news and continued upward in after-hours trading."
This has nothing to do with the viability of Twitter but has everything to do with the money grabbing "markets" that we are all told to embrace.
Just imagine if the two got together? A marriage made in heaven!
Actually, that's a bit unfair on Amazon. Bezos has always been clear about spending any money the company makes on new stuff. Shareholders have so far been content to accept an increasing share price instead of dividends and Amazon does have things to show: AWS, Kindle, etc. I fully expect the shop and warehouse business to be split off at some point.
That's what Twitter is. No longer content with one or two posts per day on FuckWitBook, the most seriously mentally-deranged nutters with their over-inflated egos think they have something important to say on a minute-by-minute basis, and the thing they need to say is so important it absolutely HAS to be shared with the even sadder pathetic shambling apologies for people who have nothing better to do than 'follow' them.
The sooner that utterly useless 'business' implodes the better although I fear the fallout when all those sad sacks have to find something else to fill the gaping void in their miserable, vacuous existences. I guess most of them will buy droids and start flying them near aeroplanes and helicopters instead.
A little piece of me died when I discovered that I can now contact TV companies, banks and building societies by Twitter. To make matters worse my employers are considering that option too. Oh the horrors.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
