There is a shitty think called "Card refresh". Big companies can have deals with Credit card companies, because, at the end of the day, both of them need your money.
Lets say, you gave your card automatic monthly billing to company 'X'. You would normally expect that when card expires, it won't be billed anymore and they will ask you for new card details. The reality is company 'X' goes to credit card company and tells them "We have these card details with us. Everything except expiry date is same. So you can conclude that we legitimately obtained the card details. Can you give us the new card details. We will update the account accordingly. It is even useful to the customer as he will be (cough cough) inconvenienced."
I think something similar happened in your case.
Source: I implemented this in a big e-commerce company(Not AMZN).
Had a friend who went back recently. Life outside work is good. Closer to family, all daily chores are taken care of by maids and servants. But w.r.t work, you don't get enough number of quality people. They still need hand holding or "push". Most people are smart but do not know how to deliver end to end.
This question gets asked for every company. The way it works is that Amazon and Instacart. may copy. But walmart and target will be slow to respond. At some point, Amazon will be ahead in the game and Walmart is in a hurry to bring something similar to buy. Then they will acquire Bottomless
Another way, even if Amazon introduces it, they have to make $x billion from it to be viable. If Bottomless makes $100M per year from this funtionality, they are a good business. Meanwhile they can also rake up a few patents thus making forcing Amazon to pay some fees
Instructive when using SAAS.
>>In the summer of 2014, we accidentally deleted everyone’s “In Progress” column from their board. And not just the ones in English either…. After 2 feverish hours of scripting, MongoDB ninjary, and Google Translating, the columns were back and we decided we should not attempt to ship anything else that day.
I asked this the other day. But I am asking again as I didn't get an answer.
Suppose I want to make a small niche improvement on top of existing search engines. I want to them to provide first level results and then I will provide additional filters on top. For example, I would get the results from Bing for example, and then remove all websites which are ad supported.
How should I go forward with this plan? Are there any APIs available? Or should I put on a biz dev hat and talk to Bing guys?
Congrats. I used this funtionality in a couple of companies I worked and its neat. Never thought someone could make a business out of it. Especially, since ever tech company's favourite question is "Design a URL shortener"!!
Not true. I recently tried booking a flight on Cathay Pacific. Their price was $50 more than Kayak/Orbitz. I asked how come? They said, Kayak/Orbitz buy in bulk from Cathay Pacific so, they offer some discounts sometimes. For cathay pacific, they guaranteed income, whether or not tickets are sold.
Lets say, you gave your card automatic monthly billing to company 'X'. You would normally expect that when card expires, it won't be billed anymore and they will ask you for new card details. The reality is company 'X' goes to credit card company and tells them "We have these card details with us. Everything except expiry date is same. So you can conclude that we legitimately obtained the card details. Can you give us the new card details. We will update the account accordingly. It is even useful to the customer as he will be (cough cough) inconvenienced."
I think something similar happened in your case. Source: I implemented this in a big e-commerce company(Not AMZN).