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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Road Walker who wrote (161165)1/25/2013 5:27:58 PM
From: Doren1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 164684
 
Short Amazon? I would like some comments on that and my musings below.

I'm gonna start monitoring this thread. For sometime I've been thinking about shorting AMZN.

This is an interesting article Roadie posted. Its seems to me Amazon sees the weakness in their business model. Few have noticed it but apparently they understand this is a problem that they have very little control over.

I 'm going to copy an paste a post from another thread here:

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Is anyone else thinking about shorting AMZN?

Its just a question of time I think... but exactly what time.

I was just about to buy this package:

http://tinyurl.com/adqfuqj

Five minutes worth of shopping and...

http://tinyurl.com/aznvyxo

Note free shipping I think to my door on this product. HomeDepot is NOT going to screw me. AMZ Cyberbear might, and I have been screwed on AMZ before.

Wednesday I walked into a HomeDepot right past the online order pickup window. Amazon cannot do this. There are 6 HomeDepots surrounding my home in San Diego. I can drive to 3 in less than 15 minutes. I think HomeDepot is pretty close to totally having this part of the business down now.

Walmart is also offering free shipping. It doesn't really cost them much to ship to a store as their trucks visit the stored probably daily. There are 3 Walmarts within 15 minutes of my home. They don't quite have it down yet but increasingly I'm wondering why they don't go all out here. They really have a huge chance to take AMZN down good.

Both Walmart and HomeDepot are built out. They are going to eventually kill Amazon on anything large enough that shipping affects price. Amazon cannot compete this way without building out brick and morter. Much harder to do that than to build out websites.

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Caveat: I once was a seller on Amazon. I was having problems loading their pages. After looking at the code I started complaining. The coders were so arrogant they were putting jokes in as comments in their code. The code for an average page was 200 pages of type.

They banned my selling privileges for life. I had a 99.7 positive rating and thousands of sales. They pretended the ban was about complaints against me as a seller. Complete lie. I see I can now get my selling privileges back but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth and convinced me that management was not in touch with their employees.

I try not to let this incident unduly color my perspective here, but I though it worth noting.

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I just read this article:

seekingalpha.com

The poster doesn't even include Amazon's looming pick up locally to avoid shipping problem I mentioned above. The Staples pick up option seems to me to be an act of desperation... they don't have a natural distribution network with Staples unlike HomeDepot, Walmart, Lowes and Costco's natural distribution networks.

Amazon has to solve this problem or they are screwed on anything larger than a loaf of bread. I visit my local HomeDepot and Walmarts about twice a month. Its no biggie to pick stuff up there other than the bureaucracy which I believe they will sort out. Even if they don't solve that, ever see how many people in new SUVs and BMWs will wait in line at Costco to save $4 on a tank of gas?

Another article linked to the above:

imgur.com

When I look at those pictures I think "What's going to happen when/if employment picks up?"

There is no question in my mind that Amazon is going to crash and burn. Its just a question of time. Time is the unknown here.