If the future brings about a shift where delivery corporations reduce costs by outsourcing employee pay to the working class, then we must opt out of delivery companies bringing products to your door.
There will be a return of brick and mortar retail, or an opportunity for corporations to enter the market with new drive up delivery lockers where you can pick your shit up through a drive through window - McPackage (not sexual).
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies). I’d love minimising the time I need to be home, the concern of missing a delivery, a porch pirate stealing a package, something getting damaged or lost in transit, etc.
Edit: I’m aware you can pay for P.O. Boxes and parcel lockers from delivery companies, but they will become anachronistic. Expensive monthly fees, small lockers, and inconvenient because you have to find parking at your strip mall, walk in, wade through people, and get your stuff from a small area. I can see drive up package pickup (McPackage) taking off if tipping your delivery drivers becomes the norm.
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies).
It’s already enshittified. It’s a store. What you are describing is a store.
People have already forgotten this, but in the beforetimes you used to be able to go to a store and they would actually have a selection of products. Like, in stock. You could go to Radio Shack or CompUSA or Circuit City or even Best Buy and get whatever tech gizmo, hobby component, computer part, cable, or whatever it was you needed. Right then and there. And they would have it. All of it. No waiting. No shipping. You could even pay with cash. And you didn’t need a goddamned subscription.
Or you could go to Sears and get just about any fucking thing. Or K-Mart.
Nowadays retail is so damn transient because “everything is online,” so even major retailers don’t keep wide swathes of product in stock and expect you to just buy it from their web site. And worse, what they do have in store is always super scarce, which I’m positive they do on purpose to increase your urgency to buy whatever they do have now, because if you come back tomorrow it’ll probably be gone and out of stock forever.
As someone who doesn’t shop online anymore and a really goes to brick and mortar, the stock is dwindling OR you can actually sure the garbage they are trying to sell. I’ve just not bought things so many times because I can actually see the poor quality up front.
It’s really maddening, isn’t it? I went in to Autozone the other day fully prepared to pay 3x the online price for a coil pack for the vehicle I was working on in order to have it now. Autozone claimed they had it in stock on their web site, at the location I went to.
They didn’t have it. Their only response was that they could order it – at their full retail price – and have it from the “hub” on their next shipment in three days.
Even with the Hyper Mega Priority Next Day Select Plus Ultra shipping option, it was $80 cheaper to get it from RockAuto and I had it the next day, which wasn’t ideal but still better than Autozone’s bullshit.
I didn’t expect the brick and mortar retail location to compete with online stores on price. I was absolutely willing to pay a ridiculous premium to have that part right then, when I needed it. But what I got was the worst of both worlds: The insulting price, but still no availability. This is because bean counting idiots have decided it’s cheaper to make their inventory “lean” and keep as little as possible of it in stock. And apparently they keep their staff lean, too, because no brain cells were available to notice that a ~$180 component in a box about a foot and a half long was no longer on the shelf even though the computer said it was.
And motherfuckers wonder why retail is dying. Um, yes, that would be because retailers ruined it.
Correct, that’s why my comment also mentions the return of brick and mortar. I’m aware of retail stores and how they used to operate, having worked retail for years while I did school
It’s costs a lot to store unsold inventory. It costs a lot to ship it from store to store to try to get it to sell (based on their inventory metrics they want to place that product in stores that will be able to sell that product). Not all stores carry enough (or at all) of the item you want to buy. Brick and mortar could return, but we still have that problem of stocking stores.
I proposed an option I could see happening if it somehow became the norm to tip your delivery drivers. Maybe we would see drive thru pickup services.
To add to this; the shipping costs of “free shipping” Chinese webshops are paid by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) because China is considered a 3rd world country and it’s a way of helping them. For bigger local webshops, the costs of cheap or “free shipping” are mostly because they get a bulk discount and move the shipping cost into their profit margins. (That’s why it’s minimum $20 for example). So even with free shipping, shipping costs are always being paid, and the deliverers should be able to get paid a fair wage.
Tipping somebody that is just doing their job is stupid. One should tip because somebody doing their job did more than their job, or because you want to lessen the workload, like rounding up for convenience.
I would argue that shopping for a person is different than straight delivery. Depending on the shopping, I could be convinced that tipping could be appropriate.
The least you could do is type correctly so the rest of us don’t have to waste time reading your last sentence three times to work out what the hell you mean
This is normalizing tipping drivers and pretty soon it will be expected. Resist this enshittification.
If you’re this principled you should be boycotting Amazon anyway. If you’re not, give the driver $5 if it costs you nothing.
Expected? They’ll make it mandatory, and then lower the amount of wages they pay their drivers, pointing to the tips as justification.
100%.
It’s to mentally condition you when it WILL cost.
It’s not a tip. Amazon is giving them the cash not you. It’s more like a bonus
For now
If the future brings about a shift where delivery corporations reduce costs by outsourcing employee pay to the working class, then we must opt out of delivery companies bringing products to your door.
There will be a return of brick and mortar retail, or an opportunity for corporations to enter the market with new drive up delivery lockers where you can pick your shit up through a drive through window - McPackage (not sexual).
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies). I’d love minimising the time I need to be home, the concern of missing a delivery, a porch pirate stealing a package, something getting damaged or lost in transit, etc.
Edit: I’m aware you can pay for P.O. Boxes and parcel lockers from delivery companies, but they will become anachronistic. Expensive monthly fees, small lockers, and inconvenient because you have to find parking at your strip mall, walk in, wade through people, and get your stuff from a small area. I can see drive up package pickup (McPackage) taking off if tipping your delivery drivers becomes the norm.
It’s already enshittified. It’s a store. What you are describing is a store.
People have already forgotten this, but in the beforetimes you used to be able to go to a store and they would actually have a selection of products. Like, in stock. You could go to Radio Shack or CompUSA or Circuit City or even Best Buy and get whatever tech gizmo, hobby component, computer part, cable, or whatever it was you needed. Right then and there. And they would have it. All of it. No waiting. No shipping. You could even pay with cash. And you didn’t need a goddamned subscription.
Or you could go to Sears and get just about any fucking thing. Or K-Mart.
Nowadays retail is so damn transient because “everything is online,” so even major retailers don’t keep wide swathes of product in stock and expect you to just buy it from their web site. And worse, what they do have in store is always super scarce, which I’m positive they do on purpose to increase your urgency to buy whatever they do have now, because if you come back tomorrow it’ll probably be gone and out of stock forever.
As someone who doesn’t shop online anymore and a really goes to brick and mortar, the stock is dwindling OR you can actually sure the garbage they are trying to sell. I’ve just not bought things so many times because I can actually see the poor quality up front.
It’s really maddening, isn’t it? I went in to Autozone the other day fully prepared to pay 3x the online price for a coil pack for the vehicle I was working on in order to have it now. Autozone claimed they had it in stock on their web site, at the location I went to.
They didn’t have it. Their only response was that they could order it – at their full retail price – and have it from the “hub” on their next shipment in three days.
Even with the Hyper Mega Priority Next Day Select Plus Ultra shipping option, it was $80 cheaper to get it from RockAuto and I had it the next day, which wasn’t ideal but still better than Autozone’s bullshit.
I didn’t expect the brick and mortar retail location to compete with online stores on price. I was absolutely willing to pay a ridiculous premium to have that part right then, when I needed it. But what I got was the worst of both worlds: The insulting price, but still no availability. This is because bean counting idiots have decided it’s cheaper to make their inventory “lean” and keep as little as possible of it in stock. And apparently they keep their staff lean, too, because no brain cells were available to notice that a ~$180 component in a box about a foot and a half long was no longer on the shelf even though the computer said it was.
And motherfuckers wonder why retail is dying. Um, yes, that would be because retailers ruined it.
Correct, that’s why my comment also mentions the return of brick and mortar. I’m aware of retail stores and how they used to operate, having worked retail for years while I did school
It’s costs a lot to store unsold inventory. It costs a lot to ship it from store to store to try to get it to sell (based on their inventory metrics they want to place that product in stores that will be able to sell that product). Not all stores carry enough (or at all) of the item you want to buy. Brick and mortar could return, but we still have that problem of stocking stores.
I proposed an option I could see happening if it somehow became the norm to tip your delivery drivers. Maybe we would see drive thru pickup services.
deleted by creator
…that’s just shipping cost? you already pay extra for that.
To add to this; the shipping costs of “free shipping” Chinese webshops are paid by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) because China is considered a 3rd world country and it’s a way of helping them. For bigger local webshops, the costs of cheap or “free shipping” are mostly because they get a bulk discount and move the shipping cost into their profit margins. (That’s why it’s minimum $20 for example). So even with free shipping, shipping costs are always being paid, and the deliverers should be able to get paid a fair wage.
Tipping somebody that is just doing their job is stupid. One should tip because somebody doing their job did more than their job, or because you want to lessen the workload, like rounding up for convenience.
I would argue that shopping for a person is different than straight delivery. Depending on the shopping, I could be convinced that tipping could be appropriate.
The least you could do is type correctly so the rest of us don’t have to waste time reading your last sentence three times to work out what the hell you mean