UnknowingFool and scores of other readers have shared this report: Fry’s Electronics, the decades-old superstore chain with locations in nine American states, appears to have gone defunct. Bay Area TV station KRON-4 was the first press outlet to confirm the news late Tuesday, saying that Fry’s will shut down all 30 of its American locations. The retailer will reportedly make an…
Tag: merchandise
Amazon Begins Removing QAnon Goods For Sale
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the Washington Post: Amazon said it will remove merchandise related to QAnon, a discredited conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a potential domestic terrorist threat, just a day after the e-commerce giant suspended the pro-Trump social media site Parler from using its cloud computing technology. Amazon is beginning to remove QAnon products from its…
Amazon, Walmart Are Telling Some Consumers to Skip Returns of Unwanted Items
Amazon, Walmart, and other companies are using artificial intelligence “to decide whether it makes economic sense to process a return,” reports the Wall Street Journal: For inexpensive items or large ones that would incur hefty shipping fees, it is often cheaper to refund the purchase price and let customers keep the products. The relatively new approach, popularized by Amazon and a…
Many Amazon Returns Are Just Destroyed or Sent to Landfills
What happens when we return items to Amazon? “Perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill,” according to Marketplace, an investigative consumer program on Canada’s public TV:
Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don’t end up back on the e-commerce giant’s website for resale, as customers might think. Marketplace journalists posing as…
QAnon Groups Hit by Facebook Crack Down
Facebook on Wednesday banned about 900 pages and groups and 1,500 ads tied to the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon, part of a sweeping action that also restricted the reach of over 10,000 Instagram pages and almost 2,000 Facebook groups pushing the baseless conspiracy theory that has spawned real-world violence. From a report: Facebook also took down thousands of accounts, pages and…
Walmart’s Amazon Prime Competitor Will Launch This Month
Amazon may have a 15-year head start, but Walmart is close to finally unveiling its own membership program that it hopes will eventually become an alternative to Amazon Prime. From a report: Walmart plans to launch a new subscription service later this month called Walmart+ that will cost $98 a year. It will include perks like same-day delivery of groceries and…
Walmart Is Piloting a Pricier 2-Hour ‘Express’ Grocery Delivery Service
Walmart confirmed today it’s launching a new Walmart Grocery service called “Express,” which promises orders in two hours or less for an upcharge of $10 on top of the usual delivery fee. TechCrunch reports: The service has been in pilot testing across 100 Walmart stores in the U.S. since mid-April. Walmart says it plans to expand the service to nearly 1,000…
Pier 1 Files For Bankruptcy, Warns of Dangers In Handful of Online Vendors Dominating Retail Sales
Pier 1 Imports filed for bankruptcy Monday (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), “a victim of changing consumer tastes and an unforgiving retail environment,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Unlike many other retailers that have sought bankruptcy in recent years, the publicly traded Pier 1 — with assets of $426.6 million and listed total debt of $258.3 million — isn’t weighed down…
YouTube Overhauls Advertising, Data Collection On Kids Content
YouTube said Monday it is rolling out new protections for children viewing videos on its site (source may be paywalled; alternative source), an effort to satisfy federal regulators who last year fined the company tens of millions of dollars over alleged privacy violations. The Washington Post reports: The changes, which include limitations on data collection and advertising, are a step toward…
Amazon Blocks Sellers From Using FedEx Ground For Prime Shipments
schwit1 shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com is blocking its third-party sellers from using FedEx’s ground delivery network for Prime shipments, citing a decline in performance heading into the final stretch of the holiday shopping season. The ban on using FedEx’s Ground and Home services starts this week and will last “until the delivery performance of these ship…