I don't know how many of you are the same way, but my wife and I buy a whole heck of a lot of stuff from Amazon. It's just easier to shop there, and as Prime members the two day wait for goods is no big deal.

But now it's hard to shop anywhere else online.

I know there are other Monoprice users here, and I have to ask: do the shipping times bother you too? It is incredibly slow and expensive to ship things from Monoprice. For example, I ordered something five days ago and it's expected to get to me tomorrow. Granted, I chose their slowest delivery option (UPS Ground), but I did so because it was the cheapest option and it still cost me $12 (for a couple switches and a few cables).

It's hard to complain when the prices for their products are so low, but personally, I really wish they'd get snapped up by Amazon, so they could hopefully get some of that order fulfillment magic the company could give them. Amazon could keep the company running like they do with Zappos, or Monoprice's stuff could get pulled into the Amazon Basics brand. I don't care, I just want my stuff to get here faster.

In many occasions I end up just biting the bullet and ordering cables and stuff through Amazon instead because I know it'll get to me faster, especially when I need something for work. I can't do that through Monoprice, though, because getting something overnighted with them can sometimes cost twice as much as your order!

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I'm trying to set up my new home, and I'm having to wait over a week to get the equipment

Yup, and what is worse, I got hooked on the year of free Prime they gave us under Amazon Mom. It is my default place to looking to buy something, and yes, I do know that some time I'm paying more for something that is Prime eligible, but dammit, it is so convenient.

Am I reading you wrong, or does your gripe boil down to the fact that UPS ground isn't faster than Amazon Prime's 2-day shipping? That doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me. You (and I) are paying $79 a year for the 2-day option (and the cheap overnight option.) If we use Amazon enough (I know I do -- my dog is on a first name basis with the UPS guy at this point) the $79 amortizes out to a very small cost per order for a shipping upgrade that chops a day or three off the shipping time. It also provides Amazon with extra business they might not have gotten. I don't think this has anything to do with wizardry on Amazon's part. You chose a cheap and slow shipping option at Monoprice, so you got cheap and slow shipping.

Also, I disagree that Amazon snapping up Monoprice (or any other online retailer that beats Amazon in any particular area) would be a great thing for customers. Maybe in the short run it'd be fine, but the way it's supposed to work is that competition from Monoprice and other retailers should force Amazon to deliver lower prices.

You do see some of that with their Amazon Basics line of cables, which are pretty cheap, though not quite as cheap as Monoprice, because at some point, most people would rather just deal with one or two online retailers instead of hundreds of them. Amazon Prime is another advantage they have -- I can't imagine anyone would pay for "Monoprice Prime" unless they have a serious cable addiction.

My fear is that if Amazon were to simply acquire every business that comes close to them on price and customer satisfaction, the quality would eventually suffer. This is pretty much the case in any market that gets dominated by a single player, and we're pretty close to that with Amazon. I'm actually glad states have started pushing on them to assess sales tax, and even though I have to pay 6% more at Amazon, they're still usually the cheapest option from a reputable retailer, but at least they're not taking advantage of loopholes to take money away from state/local retailers.

I guess what I'm saying is that I loves me some Amazon, but they're at just the right size right now that I'd be scared if they got much bigger.

I also tend to buy things from Amazon simply because of Prime. I've used the cheap next-day and Saturday delivery options a lot as well. It really comes in handy when you're in a pinch.

I only learned about this a couple months ago, but you can share your Prime membership with up to four "family members" for free. So, you could potentially split the cost between friends and family. Just FYI...

Hello, my name is John and I am a Prime-aholic.

Not only is the two-day shipping convenient, they always ship the same day you order (if you order before a certain time). Sometimes I'll order expedited shipping from another retailer and they won't ship the dang product for three days and I still get it after my deadline.

Another thing I LOVE about Amazon, since I live internationally is that they'll drop-ship any item at any time to anyone without question. I constantly ship to people who are coming down to visit so that I can avoid international shipping and customs. Some retailers have made me fax a copy of my ID and front and back of credit card, etc. before they'll ship to an address that's not my billing address. Again, I miss my deadline.

My deadline is usually people traveling down, and if I miss, then I not only have to wait a month or more before the next person comes, but I have to pay to ship it to the next person because the shop I bought from can't get their stuff out in a reasonable time. Super frustrating.

So I just use Amazon almost exclusively and pay extra for Prime when I can.

Just think of how addicted we'll be when they offer same day delivery. I'd even buy my groceries from them.

You should see if Rob will share his Prime with you, he might be your long lost brother

I spend probably $1000 a year or more with Amazon, and I do not have Amazon Prime.

Amazon Prime would benefit me very little, because even though it would get to my mail forwarder in Texas a day or so quicker, it still takes my mail forwarder two to three weeks to get the package through customs and delivered to Ajijic. For that "service" I pay the forwarder 50% of the invoiced value of the package, plus a flat "transportation fee" ranging from one to three dollars (10 to 40 pesos) depending on the value of the shipment.

The reason I shop Amazon is their customer service. If there's a problem, they will take care of it absolutely and without question. Their willingness to forgo short-term profit in order to ensure customer satisfaction is, in my opinion, the reason they are so dominant in the market today. Unless the Amazon price is outrageously more expensive than some other source (does that ever happen?) I always shop Amazon. Even while shopping within Amazon, I will spend a few dollars extra to buy directly from them rather than one of their subsidiary merchants, simply because if it's from Amazon I know I will be treated right should something go wrong.

The Amazon model should serve as a shining example to anyone who wants to run a business.

tanstaafl.

We have that in Phoenix if you order early enough and it is in the local warehouse (pretty sure it has been available since before that article). I've used it a few times (like that power supply I had to replace a couple weeks ago). It costs the same as next-day ($3.99 per item) and is called 'Local Delivery' or something.

I use Amazon many times per year and I am a gold member at Monoprice. I hoe the two never combine in any way. Amazon's customer service, to put it kindly, is shit. Amazon's UI and order process is shit. I much prefer Monopice in these regards. Customer service is excellent there.

Amazon also treats its fulfillment employees worse than shit. Read the wonderful undercover stories. I've read two so far.

Super-saver shipping at Amazon takes longer than Monoprice's standard shipping. Yes, it's free. I'm surprised Monoproce's shipping isn't a bit cheaper - I'm sure it could be, but they're likely trying to make a bit there to offset their otherwise low prices on goods. I know what kind of pricing UPS offers to even marginally high-quantity shippers and the discounts are out of this world.

So, in summary, I'd like slightly lower shipping at Monoprice, and better web and customer service experience at Amazon.

My current fav online ordering site is digikey.ca.

They ship from North Dakota (that's what the -ND in the part numbers stands for), for a flat rate of CAD$8. If I order before 5pm or so, it arrives at my front door the following morning (Fed-Ex).

Outstanding service, that!

They also take care of collecting HST, so the parcels arrive sans brokerage hassles too.

That's amazingly convenient - they must do large volumes to Canada to get low enough rates to offer $8 flat. I'll have to keep them in mind when I'm looking for the stuff they carry. $8 and essentially overnight is definitely worth saving me a drive to Burlington or Mississauga to visit a Sayal location.

Another, similar worthy site is robotshop.ca in Montreal. Great stock, decent pricing, and under $8 for next day ExpressPost delivery. That's where I go for Sparkfun stuff when I'm in a rush. Similar stuff can be had for 1/3 the price from China on eBay, but with multi-week delivery times.

Humor me and explain why you think so, because I happen to find their order process quite convenient and the site acceptible (not superb though). Like Doug, I've also found their customer service to be fantastic. (and we're talking about over 100 orders in the last few years)

I was wondering that myself. Nothing about the ordering process or UI says 'this sucks' and I don't see any obvious needs for improvement. I've only needed to talk to their customer service twice, but both times they were exceedingly pleasant and helpful.

Not exactly. I'm complaining that to ship a thing at Amazon, it could have shipped in two days for "free." To ship that same thing at Monoprice cost me $12 and took a freaking week. To match the shipping speed at Amazon I'd have had to spend $24 dollars, and even then the store tends to take a day to ship stuff out. I realize I can't call my Amazon shipping free, but as others have pointed out, I share that subscription with another family member who splits the cost with me. So now it takes two shipments at Monoprice to already exceed the cost of shipping stuff at Amazon, and I usually don't even get things shipped out the same day.


The reason I purchase things at Monoprice is only partly for their prices. The primary reason is that their selection is so much better. I can get a 1.5' ethernet cable in a dozen colors. I can get (as I did earlier this week) a full selection of keystone jacks to customize a wall plate to my liking. Some of the more specialized things just don't show up at Amazon. But the thing is, I'd pay half again what Monoprice charges for their products if I could get them delivered in the same manner I get things at Amazon, because in the end I'm not sure how much I'm saving if I'm spending a large chunk on shipping.


Bruno, I agree with you on one point: they need to shape up on their fulfillment center practices. Those sound pretty damn bad. Not Foxconn-bad, but they only just got air conditioning in some of these places that are in warm climates. I hope they change their act there.


Lastly, I couldn't disagree more on Amazon having bad customer service. Sure, I've never called them up for something, but that's only because I've never had to. Their automated systems take care of me just fine. The one time they didn't, I was able to chat with a representative. I had purchased a behind-the-head headset that simply broke after a couple months of use (the plastic just snapped). Amazon sent me a replacement set well after I thought any grace period would apply, and when I said I didn't have anything but the headset and the receiver (no packaging, manuals, or install discs), they said it was okay and that I could just drop what I had back in the box. Then I simply throw it at someone in a UPS store and they take care of it for me.

I've never had a bad customer service experience at Amazon.

I'll slightly agree that their site has issues. It can be a bit of a mess to do some things, but for 99% of my usage I have zero trouble.

Ok, while Amazon's customer service is not PayPal-bad, I've only had bad experiences with them and my brother even worse. Every case was due to returns and happened before Amazon Canada started shipping consumer electronics.

I had order stuff to ship to Canada from them and stuff to ship to the US (depending on the product and their policies). Over the course of a single year I had to return a few things, so let's say it was 4 returns. Always because the products were defective. When I finally got pissed off at them was when they told me that I'd already returned to many items and they were cutting me off, no more returns, PERIOD. I had to call my credit card company to issue a charge-back to get my money. I would have been happy with a replacement product but they would do neither. Pretty much all communication had been over the phone.

Maybe they've changed or turned over a new leaf since then, but I haven't heard about it. They really like to give non-answers and might be trouble free the first time, but after that they're going to push you out to sea.

Now on to the web site...

It's confusing as hell, bad layout, stuff all over the place, every square millimiter of the page occupied. You get multiple results for the same product, prices are constantly changing, you're presented with adds and other upgrades at various points in the order process and it takes way too much clicking to check out even when you have an account and card on file in my experience. I've never seen this "one click" thing they'v supposedly got patented. Try ordering from Monoprice or Apple or my site sometime for a completely different experience. Amazon is just badly done.

Honestly, a lot of times I just search using Google and go to Amazon pages directly from there. That doesn't help with the check-out process though. Yes, they have a tremendous amount of different products and it's hard to keep so many SKUs organized within a single store, but seriously, they can start by redesigning the web site's layout which will go a long way.

I agree the UI stinks. I hardly use Amazon because of the poor searching (especially when you want to sort your results) and the cluttered web page when I finally do find what I want.

I'm more of an eBay fan just because I can find what I want better.

Unfortunately eBay/PayPal fees are starting to drive me away.

You've never seen one click ?

That is how 99% of my Amazon orders are done, I click the one click button and the product turns up on the doorstep the next day. There isn't even a checkout process involved.

Their customer service has always been first class when I've needed it, returns sent out immediately, often with no need to even return the faulty item.

I place 50 orders a year with them, they are excellent despite their slightly hodge podge website. And Prime is such a bargain, next day free delivery for me, my father, my wife and two brothers.

Andy, you get next day delivery on Prime? To the US it's 2-day. And you can get an entire family, at different addresses with one prime membership? I'm not sure that applies to the US.

I think we need to keep in mind that Amazon in the UK is, from a product availaility and service perspective (everything other than overall UI and branding) a different entity. Similar to Amazon in Canada, only with a lot more/better stuff.

I typically order from Amazon US and get delivery to my US mailbox, since Amazon in Canada doesn't have the same selection. I think I've only ever ordered 1 or 2 non-media items from Amazon in Canada and probably less than 5 orders total ever.

What special setup is needed to use the one-click ordering? And why does the non-one-click require half a million clicks and 6 pages?

It does. I linked to that earlier in this thread.

You can share your Prime membership in the US with up to four people. Their physical address doesn't matter.

WTF. That might be worth it then. Crap, why didn't I know about that? (rhetorical )

Yes, Prime is next day in the UK. And sometimes you can order very late in the day and still get it next day (depends where you are in the country).

Yes you can have five completely different addresses, as long as they are all in the same family (the surnames don't even need to be identical or anything like that).

We are a reasonably small country (and no doubt the next day thing doesn't apply if you are living on some distant Scottish island), otherwise next day wouldn't be practical.



Nothing very special, you just go into your account settings and tell it which card to associate with which address for 1-click. You can set multiple addresses, with a default, the extra addresses appear in a drop down under the 1-click button.

Could well be slightly different in the US/CA of course (at one point you could change the url on Amazon.com to Amzon.co.uk and the UK page for the product would load, can't do that now it appears the platforms they use have diverged a bit).



To encourage you to use 1-click

I'll answer anyway: you didn't actually read Rob's post or my post where we mentioned it for you :p

Bruno, I really don't think your experience with Amazon is the typical one, however, I can't comment on what the experience is like in Canada. In the US, though, I've had nothing but good experiences ordering from Amazon and everything else pales in comparison, thus the reason for this thread


The whole next day shipping thing definitely depends on where you live. In the UK I'm sure it's easier for them to get things to customers that quickly. Even in the US, though, it really depends. They only promise free 2-day, but they can over-deliver and occasionally do (not as much as Zappos does, though). One weird thing is that even when I lived 10 miles from my mother, she was able to get same-day shipping and I was not.

Mainly, I meant, why didn't I know about this BEFORE. Like when I did the Prime try-out for a month. Or when I knew my brother was a Prime member.

And then I did quickly read Rob's post but it didn't click that it applied to family members outside the same house, let alone that they didn't need to have the same last name - I didn't click on the link obviously.



This was all with Amazon US and with shipping to the US. But like I said, Amazon has grown since I had these issues and perhaps they've cleaned it all up. It's been over 5 years since it happened, and I stayed away from Amazon for a long time. I haven't had to use their customer support since that time and since most of my orders are typically from third-parties through Amazon, I've dealt with those parties directly.

I'm always willing to give a company the benefit of the doubt especially if it's clear that the issues are caused by a lone gunman at their support desk. But my experience involved at least a couple of people (probably 3).

The support contact I've had with Monoprice seemed a lot more personal and personable, which could very well be because of their smaller size. And that they don't run their shop like a slave labor camp.

In the US, all you do is go to your payment method and address, I think. Just go to your account and search the page for "click" or something and you'll find it. You have to choose an address and a credit card as your 1-click preference, and then you're set up from then on.


Andy was mostly joking, but Amazon tends to design for the people who shop there often. For the majority of purchases I use the 1-click button, but sometimes I need to use a different credit card, so I'll just add something to my cart and go through the longer checkout process that asks me for all my preferences regarding the order.

Besides, it doesn't take that long to check out the normal way. It verifies the same stuff I see on most web checkouts, particularly for first-time visitors on other sites.


The one aspect of the Amazon website that has always annoyed me is the lack of ability to take a single step back. There's a terminology I'm not getting here, but the basic idea is like what you see on a site like Newegg, where if you're looking at a WRT54GL router, at the top of the listing there will be a series of narrowing categories, and you can click on just one to take a step back and see all the Linksys wireless routers, then one more to see all the wireless routers, then one more to see all the networking equipment, etc.

I'll agree on that. Monoprice has pretty good service.

The thing is, there's no reason that would have to change if Amazon bought them. So far, Amazon has been great at acquiring popular web stores and combining the positive features of both parties. Look at Zappos, for instance. They are widely considered to have the best customer service of any store on the internet, and as far as I've heard, that hasn't changed since Amazon bought them. Amazon could continue to let Monoprice run its ship the way they already do, but give them the ability to get their orders out to customers in a better way.

Matt, you're thinking of "breadcrumbs" - a trail that allows you to click back to a previous point in a linear navigation path.

I thought so! Ugh, my brain is fried. Moving is stressful.

I dunno, I think Amazon has a pretty robust filtering/breadcrumb system.

Search for "WRT54GL" brings up the top hits, with the "Department" sidebar showing (hierarchically) "Computers & Accessories" and then "Computer Routers." If you then click on "Computer Routers" you see all the items in that category, with breadcrumbs at the top showing:



You can mouse over the "wrt54gl" to remove that search string from your query or you can go over to the left sidebar to filter by brand, features, average review, etc.

What's missing?