I added a qualifier because these exist (see also pretty much every Japanese company), though if such a hypothetical law were implemented I'd honestly see no major moral gain in protecting the creation of new names like those either. If Strauss had decided to name his company something other than his own name it wouldn't have altered the quality of the product.
But no, those aren't comparable here because people today don't believe Henry designed the latest F150
I do tend to shop at low-margin places like WinCo Foods. There's also an auction house I buy big ticket items from. Both charge credit card fees. I've never seen a gas station anywhere in the US not charge extra for credit cards, and most also charge extra for debit cards. The DMV also charges a fee. I don't know if Grocery Outlet charges a fee, but I do shop there too.
Also, pretty much every recurring charge I have, e.g. from T-Mobile, Comcast, and my water supplier and mortgage processor all charge credit card fees, if I use a card instead of ACH transfers.
In the DC area we are seeing more places offer cash discounts. At restaurants it is listed on the menu. With local (not national) retailers you have to ask. However I do save a bit by avoiding cards at the right places. Sometimes as much as 6%.
a lot of places do it automatically so everyone is paying slightly more on every purchase. A lot of gas stations openly advertise a lower cash price.
There is a local supermarket chain that doesn't accept credit cards at all because they'd have to raise their cash price.
Everyone pays for credit card fees. Not just the people using CCs. Then CC companies pocket those crazy high fees while giving a lil bit back as "rewards".
This is a good example of a system we've normalized in this country which harms most people.
I've heard electronic direct payments (like PayPal) are much more common in Australia than the US. Do they charge similar fees to credit card transactions?
Yes and no. I've never heard of someone trying to use PayPal to pay someone else, however we do have PayID which is linked to your phone number (I hate it, since you can plug anyone's number into the PayID system and see who owns it). This is free and instant, however you don't really pay businesses with this.
Paying businesses you can use EFTPOS which I believe is run by the central bank and has very low fees on debit cards, or the usual credit card networks/Apple Pay/gpay.
I think this is something that sucks about your particular sorting facility or you're just very unlucky. I've been using Informed Delivery since it launched, in two different states, and while it's not perfect, I find it pretty accurate, especially for normal mail (envelopes, postcards, and so forth). I'd guesstimate that it misses a real non-junk mail item less than 1% of the time, and it misstates when something will be delivered 5% of the time or less. Certainly not enough to offset the value of the service.
I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of that is happening - in many cases, items get marked as "shipped" when the label is printed, but often shippers don't hand the package off to the carrier until days later. I can't prove it but sometimes it very much feels like sellers, especially on platforms like etsy and ebay, make sure to print the label immediately and mark the item as shipped so they can claim fast shipping, but then are in no hurry whatsoever to actually get the package in transit. Maybe this is not nefarious and is just a side effect of the way the systems work together, but as a customer it's pretty annoying. For me it's less about how long it takes to get the item and more about feeling mislead on whether it is actually on its way or not.
That definitely happens, I don't think it's intentionally nefarious though.
They tend to package and label orders as they come in, that's the only thing you can do to be efficient -- you can't let them build up.
But then they only drop off (or get pickup) 2x/week, e.g. Tues and Fri. Which might be fine if that's what their shipping times indicate.
But then the buyer gets confused because they assume it was mailed immediately, which it wasn't. But there's no way for a seller to print shipping labels from eBay in advance without eBay marking it as "shipped".
It gets even more confusing because with bulk pickups or dropoffs, they often don't even get scanned when the carrier receives them. They won't show as actually in the carrier's hands until they reach the first major hub, which can easily be a day or even two later.
>I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of that is happening - in many cases, items get marked as "shipped" when the label is printed, but often shippers don't hand the package off to the carrier until days later.
AIUI, Amazon's policy is that credit cards don't get charged until the order ships.
As such, some shadier folks will create the label long before the item is actually shipped. However, since the label has been created, the order is now marked as "shipped" and the credit card is charged even though nothing has been packed, let alone actually shipped.
Delivery companies in Europe have an initial status of something like "notification of package received", which should be followed by "package received from sender".
I assume they do this to avoid complaints of slow delivery when the sender takes a whole to post the item.
They think that people are idiots and unable to deal with more that 3 search results. Or maybe they think their search is so good that the wanted video is always within those 3.
This is the same thing the food delivery apps (including Uber Eats) do. I have screenshots showing the estimated delivery time pretty consistently jumping up anywhere between 20% and 50% from what it shows on the initial screen to what you get once you've placed the order. And then often they don't even make that time estimate.
An accurate estimate isn't really possible with the food delivery business model. Couriers will have 2-3 orders, so if you are order 1 or two, there is a new variable that enters the equation after you purchase the food. They obviously add other items on a similar route, but wait times and such are fairly random). Of course they could do 1 order to 1 driver but that would double the labor costs (sequential orders would be 2-3 deliveries per hour max per courier, vs 4ish when optimized).
That doesn't explain why the delivery consistently jumps 30% to 50% as soon as you hit the confirm button and they process your payment. If they were giving an honest estimate, you'd expect a gradual increase in the estimate as the delivery person showed up 2 minutes late at point A, then 5 minutes late at point B, then 10 minutes late at point C, etc.
The Uber Eats delivery time estimates are a lie, plain and simple. Once they have your money in hand, they'll shamelessly admit to the lie, which is why the estimate jumps instantaneously.
also, you would expect to at times get over-estimated wait times. but my experience is always underestimated by about 20 minutes. so consistently, in fact, that I suspect they have a very good idea of the true time and then subtract 20 min from it.
Then they shouldn't charge for faster delivery. It just doesn't make any sense. Like i'm 95% sure in most cases you don't actually get a car faster and they just take your money and provide no marginal value (granted, I only use the apps about every other month). How else could they consistently offer multiple price tiers regardless of availability? I'm not claiming fraud necessarily, but I also can't imagine how you could offer it without committing fraud. At some point you're just lying ("estimation with negative effort" as a friend calls it) about car etas to drive the perception of value.
Uber could provide a range or a point in the middle, but it seems like they just estimate the best case scenario and then it's usually not the best case.
Dev turned doordash driver here. Let me tell you why those estimates are bullshit.
First, there are three different ways that orders can come in. 1) Tight integration into the POS system. 2) Through a separate parallel physical tablet. 3) Something spits out something on a printer.
There are opportunities with 1 and 2 to do some sort of feedback on how busy things are. I know for the tablet option that at least for some restaurants they are able to indicate how long the order will take.
But half the places I get to have no integration, they just put the ticket on the pile and it's done when it's done. A couple places that do this in particular also don't even start the order until the driver shows up, on purpose. The app will tell the customer I'll pick it up in 5 minutes no matter what. There's a chain that does prep work in front of the customer, but certain locations will not make pickup/delivery orders if there's anyone in line in the shop. I stopped doing deliveries there.
You'd also think that places with the potential for awesome metrics making pickup timing a breeze would be fast food chains, right? Nope. Not a single iota of smart integration whatsoever.
I've found that keeping customers in the loop as to what's happening with their deliveries ends up keeping them happy, even if it's gonna be slow. I suppose some things never change.
You're spot on, I've been doing Doordash on an e-bike on the weekends for exercise and the wait times are BS because everyone orders lunch/dinner at the same time and they're in essentially a random queue with everyone else who orders. Add to that multiple pick ups and drop offs and you've got a mess.
Talking to people really does help though, everyone wants to be more forgiving when you remind them theirs a human factor involved in getting the food to them.
I believe you on the technical details, but as an anecdote, I have M12 batteries that are 10 years old and still working fine. At least, good enough that I have noticed no issues with them and I don't even know off the top of my head which of my batteries are newer and which are older. I also have a bunch of M18 tools and batteries, and I've noticed no particular difference in how they age compared to the M12 ones. But I'm just a DIY homeowner, so my usage is relatively light.
Yeah I figure most of them work fine, otherwise I'd find more similar stories.
We have about 10 of the M12 batteries, about half are the 3 cell ones and half the 6 cell larger capacity ones. And every single one has gone completely out of balance within 2 years of use.
I plug them into a balancer and they last another solid 6 months or so.
Markmonitor is much more about the people and service behind it rather than the software. To replace markmonitor you don't need a dev to write a tool. You need a dev to write a tool, and then a team of people who build relationships with everyone in the domain world and are available 24/7 to make calls and deal with issues if they come up.
