I wonder how long it's going to be until we hear about a direct-to-consumer online pet food store that gives a bag of food to a dog in need for every bag purchased
Why not? It seems like a pretty solid option for a subscription model and they already ask you for money donations when you pay at Petsmart and Petco...
I've been using the Amazon "subscribe and save" to get Blue Buffalo dog and cat food for a while. A subscription model seems solid, especially as I can't get Blue Buffalo in the grocery store so I have to make a special trip for it. But, maybe with this deal it'll get into more grocery stores?
I got counterfeit Hill's Science Diet cat food from Amazon. Their customer service reps refunded me but seemingly did not care whatsoever about the counterfeiting issue. Amazon's value as a marketplace dwindles to me day by day as they don't seem to want to deal with any problems (like counterfeiting) that would require skilled human resources without automation leverage in the short-term. I see where they're going from a strategic standpoint but it makes me do a lot less business than I otherwise would with them.
Yeah, given my experience with Amazon purchases over the past year or so, I'm really hesitant to buy any food or dietary products from them, for me or for my dog.
Many food companies will have their own "store" on Amazon and you can purchase from them as a supplier. I assume they have quality control to ensure the food they ship to Amazon is from their warehouses, and I assume that Amazon only ships you that food. I guess it's a lot of assumptions.
My understanding is that Amazon tags similar products with the same SKU despite their source. This allows someone to ship fake inventory in, have amazon fulfill it, and then those products make their way to customers purchasing direct from Amazon. There are cases of this reported by authors and other products
Our neighborhood supermarket has recently started carrying it, and I've seen it in Target, too. This is good, since the neighborhood Petco closed recently. But yeah, I can't imagine GF paying $8B for a product they weren't going to do mass-market distribution for.