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Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

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Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#101

Post by duskdozer »

lokar wrote: post #25
exabrial wrote: post #3

We could immediately provide relief to fuel prices, while doing the climate a huge favor, by immediately suspending the USPS accepting marketing material through the mail. My mailbox is permanently jammed with paper that useless paper that is both produced and hauled away to a landfill by diesel fuel. No I do not want your credit card offer. No I do not want to switch phone plans. No I do not want an extended warrant…

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

>They already fail to break even

It doesn't need to make money or "break even." We just pay the cost in tax or postage that is needed to run the service.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#102

Post by Schiendelman »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #88
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again your argument is irrelevant. The Supreme Court has just as often struck down gun laws where a city couldn’t do anything about it. Your question isn’t in good faith. Desantis also tried to do something about immigration and the Supreme Court said he couldn’t do it . What part of immigration is not the purvue of state government is hard to understand? Oh and Obama deported more people than Trump..

Flagging my comments doesn't make you right by the way. > The Supreme Court has just as often struck down gun laws where a city couldn’t do anything about it. You're exposing your ignorance by showing you don't know what "sanctuary city" means. Sanctuary cities aren't contrasted with non-sanctuary cities where a sanctuary city's police officers don't arrest people for immigration offenses. The contrast is because the…

It's been pointed out to you repeatedly that city police officers don't arrest people for immigration violations. That's not their job. It was never their job.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#103

Post by duskdozer »

djoldman wrote: post #33
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #7

Last year, Amazon backed down from sharing tariff pricing. I assume the same will happen here.

I immediately thought of that move. This time I think the surcharge will stay until the war is concluded.

Concluded by "mission accomplished" or when the troops withdraw in another 20 years?

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#104

Post by knollimar »

morelandjs wrote: post #74
PaulRobinson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To turn around the famous quote: "Amazon's margin is someone else's opportunity". :) The Amazon flywheel is all about reducing costs to consumers. The moment that stops happening, consumers can get caught by offers elsewhere, and the flywheel can start to go backwards.

I physically twitch every time I hear a flywheel mentioned. Intended to be evocative of certain physics without actually substantiating any of it.

What does it mean, really? I see it used more like catalyst or enablar than momentum storage. I'm still unsure.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#105

Post by 46493168 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #37
lokar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

> I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026

Mail in voting.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#106

Post by lokar »

duskdozer wrote: post #101
lokar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

>They already fail to break even It doesn't need to make money or "break even." We just pay the cost in tax or postage that is needed to run the service.

I don’t mind a public subsidy, but that’s not current law or the majority attitude

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#107

Post by lokar »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #62
SoftTalker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

Because you can’t make money serving rural areas and no for profit company would touch deliverying to those areas

Another case of the evil, unamerican cities subsidizing the real Americans

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#108

Post by stryan »

SoftTalker wrote: post #92
stryan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically speaking, USPS does a lot of last mile package delivery that no one else wants to do, including Amazon. If USPS wasn't delivering to those locations no one would be. And we're not talking middle-of-no-where-Wyoming locations, plenty of places east of the Mississippi have only USPS too. There's all sorts of philosophical arguments as well: government services shouldn't need to turn a profit, all citizens n…

There are lots of rural places the USPS doesn't deliver to. They require you to get your mail at a PO Box at the nearest post office, or have a mailbox at a common spot on the nearest public road (which might be a fair distance from your house).

They won't deliver to the house but they'll still deliver to that area. Amazon/etc wouldn't even deliver to the area without the infrastructure of the USPS.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#109

Post by lenerdenator »

singleshot_ wrote: post #53
lenerdenator wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in what was a family member's house before her passing in 2014. I still receive her mail. Here's the kicker: the mail is addressed to a name she hadn't legally had since the late 1970s. She divorced and remarried - which meant taking her new husband's last name - then lived another 30-ish years, died, I moved in, and it's been ten years of me there. It's an insanely wasteful practice.

Write “rejected” on all the mail you don’t want and leave it unopened in your box. Cuts it down nearly to zero after a few months.

Will give that a try, thanks

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#110

Post by hnav »

cma wrote: post #95
hnav wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly true, they expanded the free tier from 1 to 100GB/mo (1TB/mo out of CloudFront) and dropped egress from ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB. This was due to pressure from the Bandwidth Alliance formed by all the other Clouds and spearheaded by Cloudflare.

~20c/GB to ~9c/GB was the 2006-2026 halving I mentioned. Two decades to drop by half.

Accounting for inflation that's more like dropped by 75%. As AWS position as market leader erodes we'll likely see further drops.
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