[Info-vax] What is VMS?

[seasoned_geek]

On Dec 22, 6:11 am, ChrisQ <m... at devnull.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/11 23:16, Bob Eager wrote:
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> > On Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:14:47 +0000, ChrisQ wrote:
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> >> Sorry to quibble, but do you work for them or something ?. Have heard
> >> several
> >> stories about amazon recently, none of them complementary. Their book
> >> prices
> >> are no bargain anymore and someone else who ordered memory from them
> >> found the
> >> price doubled on receipt.
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> > I don't work for them. I buy quite a lot from them (although it's
> > amazon.co.uk). Never bought memory from them; I use Crucial. But I've
> > bought loads of different stuff, and when I have had a problem they've
> > always dealt with it quickly and well.
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> > I still find that, in the UK at least, they are usually the cheapest for
> > books.
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> > In have occasionally bought stuff that hasn't been immediately avalable
> > (e.g. a pre-order) and I have had the price *reduced* on delivery.
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> > My real beef back there is that I don't think it's fair to blame Amazon
> > if a third party is selling something for an inflated price. It happs -
> > as it does, for example, on eBay (now there's a company I really do hate).
>
> I guess with any large company, there will be the occasional horror story,
> but every time i've looked at amazon recently, I have always found a
> better price
> elsewhere. Different strokes etc - I use ebay all the time and it's the
> first
> place I look for all kinds of things. As for books, have used abe books,
> which
> is a cooperative of booksellers, for years, but hear that they save been
> bought
> out by amazon and bookseller fees have gone through the roof. Yet
> another nice
> little operation, ticking along well, providing value for money services,
> succumbs to the greed of big business.
>
> For reference:http://www.abebooks.com
>
> No flashy front end or bulls**T, just the tools to find what you want...
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> Regards,
>
> Chris

Abe was a good business.  It was small, but, allowed a lot of tiny,
niche book vendors to stay in business.  The problem with Abe was that
it was small.  It didn't have the financial resources or the staffing
depth to fight off Amazon.  I'm actually surprised there wasn't an
anti-trust case brought by current and former Abe members when that
sale happened since it did put a lot of small vendors out of business.

Once you filter through all of the Enron accounting going on at
Amazon, it appears that Alibris is about equal to them in size now
that they have Monsoon books.  The deal with Sears will greatly expand
their market, AND contractually block any bid Amazon makes to purchase
Alibris.

I've never been a fan of Sears, but, I have to be impressed that they
have decided to go head to head with Amazon at this stage.  We can all
hope what the Myans really predicted in 2012 was the end of Amazon.
Sears can offer something Amazon cannot.  In store returns.