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Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

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Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#101

Post by VLM »

redblacktree wrote: post #92
VLM wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"easier to use Prime than drive into town" cheaper not easier. My mom and sister live in a rural county with more dairy cows than humans, and its not just easier, but considerably cheaper. Not sure what its like where you live, but sometimes around here people assume 50 cents/mile total cost aka $1/mile round trip so a trip into town to a big box store isn't twenty miles away, its $20 away, round trip. Suddenly payin…

> cheaper not easier. Cheaper and easier? Your post came off as immediately combative, but when I read the rest I realized that it wasn't at all. I don't mean to chastise you, only to point out how it was perceived. Have a nice day!

Hmm could be. I didn't think either option would be hard, so it must have been an innocent word selection error, and I have immediate family who go into repetitive detail how its cheaper, apparently along with everyone else, making rural retail go out of business...

I've seen combative, and its looks a lot different than suggesting a different word and giving some back story that's shared experience for two people from cow country of course, but the city slickers in the audience would need significant background to understand. Maybe an analogy for urban people, would be imagine if the subway suddenly changed price to $20 per ride. Or adjusted for inflation of incomes and expenses in urban areas, if the subway changed to $200 per ride. Sure, its easy driving, nice scenery, no legendary California traffic jams, but its still very expensive.

Have a pleasant day

Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#102

Post by tootie »

tkone wrote: post #38
tootie wrote: post #33

You're blaming USPS, but the problem is that you live in an apartment building. Such is life in the city. I live in Brooklyn as well and I solve this problem by having a doorman :)

Must be nice to have enough money to pay the astronomical rents that a doorman building costs!

Oh, it is.

Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#103

Post by VLM »

crusso wrote: post #98
VLM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than for hollywood accounting reasons or a political stunt, why would a profitable agency default?

One could ask why a profitable agency would take out billions of dollars in loans. "theoretically profitable" is not the same as "profitable"

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/05/news/economy/postal_service_...

"a congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits"

I'm not saying that's a bad idea in isolation. However if you're trying to make a political point that your enemy is a failure, merely force your enemy to do something sensible that no one else is forced to do, then when that destroys them, you can blame them for it, or something like that.

That was just round one. Here's round two of how to destroy the USPS, done in two simple quotes from the same story:

"In addition, it would give access to another $10 billion loan backed up by Postal Service property, which would have to be sold a decade later to pay off that loan."

"And individual Democrats and Republicans are united in their effort to prevent their own neighborhood post office or postal plant from closing."

Ta da! We require you to take out a loan, which you need because we forbid you from managing your own business, furthermore we also specifically forbid you to repay the loan. I'm sure nothing bad could happen in that situation LOL. I give 100% odds that this scheme will hit the fan as "proof of usps and bureaucrat mismanagement" when it is actually 100% the fault of congress meddling, of which at about 50% are trying to manufacture a political point to fit a predetermined agenda.

The problem with meaningless sloganeering is even if a slogan is generally correct, there will of course be outliers in opposition. This seems to be the case with the USPS. It would seem that blind faith based belief is so weak, the only way to enforce conformity is to intentionally sabotage a minor outlier.

The TLDR is they're being set up. (Edited to add, its the old game of take away authority needed to succeed, while leaving behind the responsibility of resulting failure. For a .gov, the USPS is actually pretty well managed, which is why its being targetted).

Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#104

Post by crusso »

VLM wrote: post #103
crusso wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could ask why a profitable agency would take out billions of dollars in loans. "theoretically profitable" is not the same as "profitable"

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/05/news/economy/postal_service_... "a congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits" I'm not saying that's a bad idea in isolation. However if you're trying to make a political point that your enemy is a failure, merely force your enemy to do something sensible that no one else is forced to do, then when that destroys them, you can blame them for it, or something like t…

TLDR is they're being set up

They're being set up the same way that Social Security has been set up to go bankrupt, Medicare has been set up to go bankrupt, Obamacare has been set up to crash and burn, the Community Reinvestment Act was set up to cause a housing bubble, government backed student loans were set up to cause hyper-inflation of education costs...

You see a pattern?

They're being set up because they are part of a system that has failure baked in from the beginning. Not failing is the odd surprise when it comes to government control of large complex business entities -- and even then the question of whether or not some apparent success is actually failure depends upon how closely you look at how much it cost to prevent catastrophic collapse (ie, the military).

Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#105

Post by aforty »

VLM wrote: post #58
xacaxulu wrote: post #9

Not so much an Amazon problem. As with a lot of services, we see quality private sector services (OnTrac, DHL, FedEx) being consistently better than bloated government services operating at a loss and subsidized by taxpayers. I wonder how much further the USPS would dip if Amazon stopped doing business with them.

In a comic twist UPS (not USPS) is well known in my locale for sending out trucks making "2 day" deliveries with just slips, no packages. That way they can't get refund requests for failure to deliver on schedule. Holy cow do they get embarrassed when I fling the door open and catch them. "well, uh, err, sorry sir but we don't actually, uh, have your package, not just yet, but I do have a delivery failure note and I…

Holy shit that's insane! I would report this pattern first the UPS upper brass and then, promptly, to the better business bureau.

Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#106

Post by redblacktree »

VLM wrote: post #101
redblacktree wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheaper not easier. Cheaper and easier? Your post came off as immediately combative, but when I read the rest I realized that it wasn't at all. I don't mean to chastise you, only to point out how it was perceived. Have a nice day!

Hmm could be. I didn't think either option would be hard, so it must have been an innocent word selection error, and I have immediate family who go into repetitive detail how its cheaper, apparently along with everyone else, making rural retail go out of business... I've seen combative, and its looks a lot different than suggesting a different word and giving some back story that's shared experience for two people fr…

I see what you mean. It just looked like an argument.

Re: Why I Canceled Amazon Prime

#107

Post by busterarm »

igreulich wrote: post #91
busterarm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post offices in Brooklyn and Queens are typically quite terrible and do really shitty things like mentioned in the OP all the time. My brother has terrible problems running his business out of Sunnyside because of problems caused by USPS. There's no accountability in these post offices for how they deal with their customers. I'm glad almost all of my Prime deliveries are via UPS or FedEx. Occasionally they go thr…

Where are you at? In Columbia and/or Charleston, I have never missed mail on a delivery day because the carrier was sick. I have, however, had them not deliver the slip for a signature-required package, then try to blame it on me. (I still try to figure out how that one is my fault...)

Down hear Hilton Head.
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