Amazon to Ship Orders before You Place Them!
It’s a new breakthrough in home delievery marketing! It is in your mailbox before your order is even placed!
USA TODAY says:
Amazon says it may box and ship products that it expects customers in a specific area will want, based on previous orders and other factors it gleans from its customers’ shopping patterns, even before they place an online order.
Among those other factors: previous orders, product searches, wish lists, shopping cart contents, returns and other online shopping practices.
So say you bought the last three seasons of Dora the Explorer on Bluray (DVDs are so 2006!) and the new season is about to be released. As soon as it is, Amazon’s new algorithm will predict the likelihood of you buying it anyways and preemptively strike with an order already in progress, dinging your credit card and sending it off post haste!
Don’t want it? They have done the math, and those unwanted guesses that resulted in orders you didn’t want will start a negotiation for discounts to get you to keep it. And for those items that are going to cost them more than the product is worth to return, they might just toss your way as a free will gesture.
Knowing what you will order before the order comes out? Get me a copy of Spaceballs the Movie!
I assume there will be opt-in methods to take advantage of this, but I can honestly see a lot of people attempting to take advantage and break the system hoping to outsmart it like idiots who plot for free pizza from those 30 minutes or free places.