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Postal Arbitrage

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Re: Postal Arbitrage

#151

Post by [deleted] »

bandrami wrote: post #138
vidarh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? Amazon is wildly profitable, and while AWS is far higher margin than their retail businesses, everything I can find suggests their retail segment also has a healthy operating margin.

If you put all of the money Amazon as a whole has taken since it was founded in 1994 in a stack on the left, and all of the money Amazon as a whole has spent since then in a stack on the right, the stack on the left is slightly larger, but this has only been true for a couple of years now. It's the difference in 1990s billionaires and 2020s billionaires. Bill Gates was so rich because he owned a lot of Microsoft shar…

[deleted]

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#152

Post by crazygringo »

ics wrote: post #144
andy99 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I canceled prime ~8 years ago because where I am, half the stuff I wanted was considered an “add on item” that could only be shipped free if you had > $35 of other stuff, which is a complete scam because you get that without prime. Maybe that was just for me (in a large Canadian city at the time) or maybe they don’t do that anymore? I haven’t considered getting prime since, it would be a lot more interesting if it ac…

It was like that in NYC at the time as well. I'm not sure when it stopped but have not seen add-on items in a long time and most things seem to ship immediately regardless of price (with Prime).

Yeah, haven't seen in a long time either. I can't help but wonder if it's related to Amazon building its own delivery infrastructure instead of relying on UPS/USPS like it once did? (At least where I am.)

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#153

Post by crazygringo »

jervant wrote: post #98

There are also things on eBay with a starting price of less than a dollar with free shipping that never get bids. I "won" two auctions like this the other week for brand new USB-C cables, each of them costing me 13 cents shipped. I have no idea why sellers would do this with eBay fees and USPS small package shipping costing well over 13 cents.

Presumably they are inexperienced sellers who haven't learned about reserve prices?

Now you're part of their education.

Or... they are sophisticated and trying to get a ton of relatively inexpensive positive ratings before selling things that are actually expensive?

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#154

Post by intrasight »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #94
dizhn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the old collect call trick. Rather than state your name when prompted you transmit a short, perhaps even coded, message. Then the receiving party declines the call.

"You have a collect call from MomWe'reAtTheArcadeCanYouPickUsUp? Would you like to accept the charges?"

Ahh, the 70s. Good memories.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#155

Post by BobbyTables2 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #139
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to fight the VCs, you have to pull stunts like this. If they want to destroy local infrastructure because "free market", in an attempt to secure monopolies for themselves, then let them operate in a free market.

But why do you think they’re harming “local infrastructure”? The food delivery services didn’t hurt anything but their investors in the end. And they kept the restaurant industry alive during the pandemic, the fallout would have been so much worse. I work in the industry and know several bar/restaurant owners who will tell you DoorDash and competitors are the only reason they made it through 2020-21. Early on they st…

DoorDash finds a way to consistently screw up orders.

Order A,B,C - receive only A+B, or A,B,D. No explanation. Tipped generously.

For a long time, I myself drove and picked up my orders. The same restaurants rarely made mistakes. I never had to ask for missing item to be included. They always had everything in the bag.

It’s happened so often, it has to be malice from one of the parties involved.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#156

Post by BobbyTables2 »

shagie wrote: post #44
MinimalAction wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love a napkin math calculation at this.

https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation > While nearly three-quarters of the world’s cargo is carried by ocean-going ships, road vehicles like trucks and vans make up the majority, 65%, of freight’s emissions. Most ships burn fossil fuels and emit carbon, but they carry large amounts of freight at the same time, making them the most efficient way to move cargo. Road freight, however, can emit more t…

Not disagreeing but it’s amazing a ship plowing water out of the way is so much more efficient.

Perhaps trains beat road transport efficiency to a similar degree.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#157

Post by Dylan16807 »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #33
bee_rider wrote: post #8

A cheaper option (if we’re going to do away with the restriction that the post card should be sent by the sender) would be for the recipient to hook their printer up to the network, and just send bits. It is better, actually, you can even scan a real hand written post card.

owning a printer is never the cheaper option.

When compared to amazon prime, a laser printer can be cheaper than a single year. Add a pile of paper and the printer is cheaper even if it breaks every year and a half.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#158

Post by tdeck »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #156
shagie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation > While nearly three-quarters of the world’s cargo is carried by ocean-going ships, road vehicles like trucks and vans make up the majority, 65%, of freight’s emissions. Most ships burn fossil fuels and emit carbon, but they carry large amounts of freight at the same time, making them the most efficient way to move cargo. Road freight, however, can emit more t…

Not disagreeing but it’s amazing a ship plowing water out of the way is so much more efficient. Perhaps trains beat road transport efficiency to a similar degree.

This is why European cities had so many canals back in the day.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#159

Post by rhplus »

_trampeltier wrote: post #28

This story comes to my mind. A pizzeria owner made money buying his own $24 pizzas from DoorDash for $16 https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-p...

Ha! It’s the trick Richard used in Silicon Valley season 5 episode 1 (2 years before the blog post) to bankrupt “SliceLine” and buy out their devs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_season_5

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#160

Post by tdeck »

nunez wrote: post #149
johnfn wrote: post #45

Somewhat off-topic, but when I click on "Case-Mate - Case for 2009 LG Xenon - Marsala"[1], the "About this item" section simply states: About this item - Do - Not - Buy - This - Product What on earth is going on here? [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D51KNQM

It might be a placeholder product to hold the ASIN. Some (many?) vendors on Amazon will recycle pages this way. Sell some item, change the item and description to dummy values when it stops selling, change to another item that will be sold, repeat. This is usually done to keep the reviews, though I've also heard about this being used for money laundering.

It's amazing that this has been going on for decades and Amazon still doesn't give a shit.
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