@countessalmirena wrote:Yes - as you both say, amazon.com.au has been a bit like a blind date where a friend tells one that "He's very intelligent and good-looking, and he's interesting and with a great sense of humour and he loves opera and he's a tremendous gourmet and he's got lots of interests", and one agrees to meet him, only to find that he's four foot two, rodent-faced, obsessively plays chess to the point that he sets up the salt and pepper mills on the table to illustrate his favourite moves, once went to see The Phantom of the Opera (and thinks that that's opera), is clearly colour-blind if one judges by his puce and green attire, insists that the only good steak is a blue steak, and guffaws at his own utterances (thus illustrating a sense of humour).
In short - not as advertised, and hugely disappointing.
Oddly specific example... 
I've been watching how those with faith in the other site have been commenting on their lack of success so far, which has been interesting. In the beginning, it was all about how they were going to have instant success, blow all the competition out of the water, and be the death of eBay specifically. After all, both buyers and sellers have been waiting a long time for a good alternative, how could they not be immediately successful?
When it became clear they were not as successful as expected, it was because "Prime" hadn't been introduced yet, but once it was, then things would kick into gear... Still pretty lacklustre after being available for quite a while. I've tried Prime twice, and both times it was purely to access the streaming service so that I could watch something they have exlusively. (I'll sign back up for a month or so later in the year, when both American Gods S2, and Good Omens are available. 
)
Now articles tends to just talk about how Amazon is the sleeping giant who builds over time to become the dominant shopping site they always intended to be. There is some real basis to this - they tend to focus on infrastructure, market share and customer loyalty above pesky things like profit (i.e. they usually play the long game), and they are certainly still investing in some of those things, so it's not impossible for them to eventually be as massive as everyone originally expected, but they also have a lot of obstacles that are going to prove difficult to overcome.
