Innovative payment experiences
I don't want anything innovative. I just want it them to ensure it is quick and secure.
Unless "innovative" in this context is about how to extract more form the customer under the radar.
Amazon and Visa appear to have resolved their differences and reached an agreement that will see Amazon continue to accept online payments from customers with Visa credit cards around the world, after previously threatening to stop. The dispute arose last year, with Amazon threatening to block payments from Visa credit cards …
One of my accounts now handles the CV2 process with an alert on the app which allows me to approve or deny the charge from there.
That's pretty innovative* and vastly preferable to the ways other firms handle it (as long as there's a fallback to enable purchasing a new phone when this one, and thus the app, is inoperable)
*innovative in the sense that I was asking for it over 10 years ago as a viable second factor, which seems to be quite a quick turnaround in banking terms.
> an alert on the app which allows me to approve or deny the charge from there. That's pretty innovative*
It might work well for you, but no, it's anything but innovative.
The traditional method is for banks to figure out patterns to your purchase activities, and stop any that are sufficiently shady. Simplifying that process down to just ASKING YOU if you did it each time is rather giving up on innovating, and taking the easy way out when their systems can't actually get the job done...
More innovative methods would be that retailers only get cryptographically generated tokens your smart credit card outputs, which can include restrictions you've dialed-in as well...
"The traditional method is for banks to figure out patterns to your purchase activities, and stop any that are sufficiently shady. "
You mean like HSBC blocking the card every time I tried to buy dial-up access from a hotel phone line because it was in a not-spot and I needed to review another client's logs? Every week for a four week contract. Even after they'd been told.
Yup, works really well, right up to the time when you need to make a change to your spending requirements.
Sounds like Visa is becoming the merchant and Amazon is becoming the vendor. I do wonder how long it will be until the major CC companies are more frequently challenged in this way as they've been running a small gambit for about 60 years (or really since inception). Strange things will happen when Visa/MC/etc. are all on XYZ's cloud service. Payment services are by no means new to the internet, but they are a frontier that has yet to be vigorously challenged.
I'm still just happy I've found ways to cut Amazon out of my life entirely :-)
I've successfully gone an entire year now without making a single purchase on Amazon.
My most expensive habbit is tech bits (it's my worst addiction.. I even pre-ordered a steam deck last year.. I can't help myself..). But I've found Scan to be a suitable replacement, failing that CCL sometimes gets my money.
I actually found the service from them to be better than Amazon most notably, HDDs actually have proper padding and protection during transit imagine that! No DOA drives since leaving Amazon.
As for my other bad habbit, Music, HMV has come out on top.. I was amazed to find they still offer a decent selection of metal albums.
I'll use other retailers where necessary also. But I'm just happy I haven't needed to use Amazon at all for a year :-D
Either way, kinda proud of myself over here, I used to spend way too much with them.... but no more.
I switched 3 years or more back. eBay gets the small bits and there are some good online book sellers, one of which I found was only in the next town to me so I can always go over and accost them directly if it turns out not to be of the expected quality. :-)
Funnily enough I've just bought two 10TB drives for a NAS and the cheapest option - Amazon included - was to buy Seagate external drives from Argos and schuck them. Anyone need a 12V, 1.75A wall-wart?
I try and use hive.co.uk for book orders, you can choose a local independent book store to support.
To date I have managed to avoid giving amazon a single penny and will keep doing so. When they pay a reasonable rate of tax in the UK I might reconsider.
I know people who whine about their tax practices and use them all the time, saying that they really had to buy that top or new gadget and it was not available anywhere else or may have cost an extra 3p.
Nothing is that crucial that you have to go to them.
Not defending Amazon, but if you want them to pay more tax, start with Downing Street. They're only paying (or not paying) what they're allowed to get away with. It's not morally acceptable, but it's legally acceptable. That's where the problem lies, and where any fix needs to happen.
Same here. I now support local and small UK businesses and web sellers in preference to Amazon whenever I can and am happy to pay a premium. Like you, I still buy the occasional tech thing from them.
For me it was a combination of bad treatment of employees to maximise profits, money-shuffling, tax avoiding tricks available only to big multinationals not to single-country, home-grown companies, and the depletion of local communities' businesses with resulting quality-of-life effects (independent shops closing, etc).
It's interesting how often, these days, Amazon prices aren't good, now that people have been lulled into a assuming them to be the best. I had a review deleted when I pointed out that several supermarket chains supplied the same goods (6 jars of some food product) at between 1/3 and 1/2 less than the Amazon price. Apparently my review "wasn't helpful".
If only people realised the premium frequently pays for itself. You may pay a couple of % more for something locally but if you dont that company goes bust and then (in the UK) your council tax had to rise the following year to cover that lost from the company - the charity shop replacement will not be paying as much! There's a lot more to a simple financial transaction than most people realise.
64TB === most people?
Wtf? I'm in the minority and even I only have 20TB at most (and that's spread across multiple machines/external drives). Majority are lucky if they have 1TB (IIRC most machines come with 500GB at most at present, and the vast majority of Joe Public don't have flash drives, let alone external drives or a NAS)
> OK I'l bite - HDDs ?? WTF !?!
Prices are starting to drop for solid state drives - after wading through Amazon's[*] surprisingly clunky search mechanisms, I can see 2TB SATA drives for as little as £132.
But a 2TB HDD is just £45, or roughly a third of the cost.
Similarly, a 10TB SATA HDD is £245, where as the largest SSD I can spot is just 8TB and £560.
Spinning rust is still the most cost effective storage, and it's still ridiculously easy to fill local storage, especially if you're doing things like 4K video editing/rendering.
... though I must confess that I'm tempted to grab one of those cheap Crucial 2TB SSDs for my photo/video storage. Should make editing and thumbnail-rendering a whole lot faster!
Though maybe from Scan, rather than Amazon...
[*] Using them is perhaps ironic, given the article, but hey.
You've been lucky with HMV. One friend has beed waiting 8 months for a backorder copy of Joni Mitchell's blue CD. I ordered The Courier, 2021 Bluray with Benedict Cumberbatch, sure enough it arrived in a shrink wrapped package with the correct cardboard slip cover. However, inside was the appalling 2019 film of the same name. How could they screw that up?
Only good experience I've had with their online store was ordering 3 copies (family member also wanted one and I wanted a spare (back in the days when I could afford to do so)) of the Meat loaf Hang Cool Teddy Bear Super Deluxe Fan Pack Box Set.
Damn I miss their local store ........
...I just got pissed off with Amazon whinging about Visa charging them more to process UK-based transactions in Luxembourg which Amazon do to minimise/avoid tax in the UK. I'm sure Visa are no better but Amazon just took the piss. I cancelled the Amazon (Prime) account same day.
I think many of you might be quite surprised at how limited online ordering has become over the last decade if you don't use Amazon or Ebay.
You will save a shedload of cash by not casually buying crap though :)
"the Tat Bazaar can be outrageously expensive.
Live in France. Enjoy Fray Bentos (sorry, guilty pleasure).
The "sponsored" version of Just Chicken is horrifically expensive. €9,13 with €19,98 delivery. A little down the list is €14,99 for two (free delivery), and then €9,99 for one (free delivery).
I currently get mine from a friend in the UK. Costs about €15 for three (most of that is postage), but changes in customs have messed that up. Recently La Poste demanded €9 in duty for around £9 worth of Betty Crocker cake mix, having just delivered a near identical parcel without any duty being asked. It was split in two because two 2kg parcels cost much less to send than one 4kg parcel.
But, yeah, Amazon is okay for some things (Prime delivery often costs more, but I choose it by preference so I can send stuff back if it isn't right, like a recent satellite receiver claiming PVR functionality which did in fact not have any capability of recording), but is equally awful for other stuff.