Amazon doesn’t handle shipping for a lot of the things they sell.
This is false. Very few products sold via Amazon are shipped independently from Amazon’s logistics services.
Comment on Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 day agohow to ship goods?
Part of their point was that Amazon doesn’t handle shipping for a lot of the things they sell. If you want to, they can store everything within their massively-optimized operation and ship it for you for a small-enough-to-be-compelling fee, but you don’t have to. You can also just list your stuff there and ship it to customers when they order it.
how to process payments?
This is trivial. The modern financial internet makes it extremely easy.
how to handle refunds? how to handle contestations?
This is a fair point, probably the biggest issue that could be a stumbling block. One fair counterpoint is that Amazon’s handling of these situations is often pure uncaring dogshit, so if you’re doing a bad job at it, you’re still no different than Amazon (and potentially better than, since it is hard to see how someone could be any worse.)
It’s not totally simple, and you have to do some real actual work to solve it, but it’s also not like going to the moon. It’s solvable.
ericjmorey@discuss.online 10 hours ago
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 9 hours ago
Do you have numbers for this? I tried to find some, and couldn’t.
ericjmorey@discuss.online 3 hours ago
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 hours ago
Yeah, so 18% of the stuff is shipped by someone else. IDK if you want to call that “a lot”, but I definitely wouldn’t call it “very few.” Anyway glad we got to the answer, however to characterize it.
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
You think the payment processing issues are trivial? That’s a weird claim.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Considering your answer to payments solution was "This is trivial.’ it sounds like a) You’ve never run a business and b) you’re more interested in fantasizing than a realistic conversation.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
They might have run a small business or been present in a bigger one in management position, doing their own job well enough to avoid painful understanding they don’t get it as a whole. Arrogance is not always cured by experience, actually I don’t it’s ever cured in humans and we all have it.
That much was clear from the very beginning, I tend to have such ideas too, but I have BAD and thus mania periods.
kat@orbi.camp 1 day ago
Pretty much what they’re doing all over this thread.
Like some people can only see the glass half full. Few have the guys to look at both the fullness and the emptyness equally.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 day ago
I have run several businesses, some of them on this micro-scale. That’s how I know that part is trivial.
You can literally set it up for yourself for free, if you want to see: stripe.com