The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

GDB2222

Yesterday, DW got yet another delivery from Holland & Barrett (free delivery if you order over £20 worth of stuff). She gets lots of deliveries. Ocado had been earlier in the day.

It made me wonder whether there might be a more cost-effective way of doing this, and I wanted to bounce this off you guys.

Suppose you set up a big building with lots of this sort of stuff all set out on shelves. She could choose what she wants, pay for it on the spot, and drive it home in the car. Simple!

What would you call such an arrangement? I'm trying to think of a snappy name before I rush off and patent it.

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

Yesterday, DW got yet another delivery from Holland & Barrett (free delivery if you order over £20 worth of stuff). She gets lots of deliveries. Ocado had been earlier in the day.

It made me wonder whether there might be a more cost-effective way of doing this, and I wanted to bounce this off you guys.

Suppose you set up a big building with lots of this sort of stuff all set out on shelves. She could choose what she wants, pay for it on the spot, and drive it home in the car. Simple!

What would you call such an arrangement? I'm trying to think of a snappy name before I rush off and patent it.

Gosh! That's very radical, GDB! :eek:

Do you mean to say that people would have to go to this place, you know, actually move about in order to translocate themselves to the big building, and then pick the thing off the shelf themselves? And then drive it home? All by themselves?

Do you think people would go for such a scheme?
Seeing as how it involves effort?

You're asking a great deal of people, you know.

Can't see it working, myself. Sorry.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

Yesterday, DW got yet another delivery from Holland & Barrett (free delivery if you order over £20 worth of stuff). She gets lots of deliveries. Ocado had been earlier in the day.

It made me wonder whether there might be a more cost-effective way of doing this, and I wanted to bounce this off you guys.

Suppose you set up a big building with lots of this sort of stuff all set out on shelves. She could choose what she wants, pay for it on the spot, and drive it home in the car. Simple!

What would you call such an arrangement? I'm trying to think of a snappy name before I rush off and patent it.

Ah .... but ... the shop might not be close by, parking might be awkward .... and then you have to stand next to poor people who grapple inside ancient artefacts called purses to count out actual raw pennies!! Although, come to think of it, probably not at Waitrose and H&B

I was grappling with pennies in a purse in L1dl earlier... so embarrassing, it's like you've got no money, but I'm one of those people who likes to try to give the right money and not get bogged down with a bag full of change.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

Do you mean to say that people would have to go to this place, you know, actually move about in order to translocate themselves to the big building, and then pick the thing off the shelf themselves? And then drive it home? All by themselves?

Do you think people would go for such a scheme?
Seeing as how it involves effort?

You're asking a great deal of people, you know.

Can't see it working, myself. Sorry.

Increasingly, I am finding that shops don't hold stocks of anything ... they now rely so much on people ordering online that they don't bother stocking the shops.

It's annoying as I'm increasingly finding that "stuff I go out to buy" isn't there.... and websites will tell you where it is (if you're lucky), but then it's usually 20-50 miles away....

Jackmydad

GDB2222 wrote: »

Yesterday, DW got yet another delivery from Holland & Barrett (free delivery if you order over £20 worth of stuff). She gets lots of deliveries. Ocado had been earlier in the day.

It made me wonder whether there might be a more cost-effective way of doing this, and I wanted to bounce this off you guys.

Suppose you set up a big building with lots of this sort of stuff all set out on shelves. She could choose what she wants, pay for it on the spot, and drive it home in the car. Simple!

What would you call such an arrangement? I'm trying to think of a snappy name before I rush off and patent it.

In ye Englande of olden times, they did have such establishmentes.
Theye dyd call them "shoppes"
You asked the personne in there, called "ye shoppe keeper", for the goods to suit your needs, and he would verilie supplie them from the shelves within ye shoppe.
You would then pay him with groats or other coine.

Jackmydad

PasturesNew wrote: »

Increasingly, I am finding that shops don't hold stocks of anything ... they now rely so much on people ordering online that they don't bother stocking the shops.

It's annoying as I'm increasingly finding that "stuff I go out to buy" isn't there.... and websites will tell you where it is (if you're lucky), but then it's usually 20-50 miles away....

It's probably got worse, but if you wanted anything a bit out of the ordinary it was always the same.
(Wipe that grin off your face at the back there! I don't mean "Out of the ordinary" that way. . .:D)
Specialist tools, materials, anything to do with science of any sort, specialist hobbies, it used to be awful trying to get hold of that sort of stuff at all.
I remember sending off for a tin of "Hammerite" in the late 60s, getting a PO to send, (Five bob I think) and it coming in the post a week or so later IIRC. I'd seen it in the "Exchange and Mart" and wanted to paint my bike. You couldn't AFAIK get it locally back then.
The internet's a Godsend as far as I'm concerned.

silvercar

GDB2222 wrote: »

Yesterday, DW got yet another delivery from Holland & Barrett (free delivery if you order over £20 worth of stuff). She gets lots of deliveries. Ocado had been earlier in the day.

It made me wonder whether there might be a more cost-effective way of doing this, and I wanted to bounce this off you guys.

Suppose you set up a big building with lots of this sort of stuff all set out on shelves. She could choose what she wants, pay for it on the spot, and drive it home in the car. Simple!

What would you call such an arrangement? I'm trying to think of a snappy name before I rush off and patent it.

Amazon; plus they deliver!

The amount of stuff possible through Amazon is unbelievable, I can get stuff that Costco only sells in America delivered by Amazon! Amazon fresh will deliver food in some areas.

michaels

silvercar wrote: »

Amazon; plus they deliver!

The amount of stuff possible through Amazon is unbelievable, I can get stuff that Costco only sells in America delivered by Amazon! Amazon fresh will deliver food in some areas.

Except that economies of scale and buying power may end up meaning Amazon is a monopoly with prices and service suffering - strange how the ultimate triumph of capitalism could end up looking like communism.....

Jackmydad

michaels wrote: »

Except that economies of scale and buying power may end up meaning Amazon is a monopoly with prices and service suffering - strange how the ultimate triumph of capitalism could end up looking like communism.....

Yes, but they have competition for most things through ebay and the like.
And in fact a lot of Amazon sales are fulfilled by smaller traders.
I wouldn't want them to be a monopoly though.

(It's strange how often the extremes of any one political ideal, end up looking like the extremes of the opposite ideal in practical terms though.)

zagubov

Haven't people argued before that the lack of retail competition is what generates the high prices that make us feel as though we're in "rip-off" Britain?
Tesco is far too big, Asda's getting that way, while Sainsburys and Morrisons aren't big enough to compete properly. The Co-op< Aldi, Lidl, Waitrose and Iceland aren't big enough either. The Guardian once had an article about a town which had five supermarkets, three of them being Tescos.