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Postal Arbitrage

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Re: Postal Arbitrage

#121

Post by hekkle »

ajdlinux wrote: post #113
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At your house it might be fractions of a cent. At my house, it's a 140 mile round trip between the fulfillment center ("are you feeling fulfilled yet?") and the drop off location. OTOH, there's likely more of "you" than there are of "me" ...

Assuming it's the US we're talking about, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, which means that if every worker involved is paid at the minimum wage, you incur a cent of labour costs every 4.97 person-seconds. AFAICT, most Amazon workers are paid substantially higher than the federal minimum wage. And that's just labour costs. While Amazon is efficient, "fractions of a cent" is probably the wrong order of magnitude for…

That's not even mentioning their additional overheads, like the cost of fuel for their idling van as they drop off your potato.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#122

Post by shagie »

chrneu wrote: post #117
xxpor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oil used for shipping from Shenzhen to Long Beach is completely trivial compared to what the truck used getting it from Long Beach to Pasadena.

oh okay then that consumption is totally fine. no worries here mate!

If the goal is reducing carbon emissions, making shipping emit half as much (650 Megatonne to 325 Mt) would be less of a gain than making trucking emit only 80% of its carbon (2,230 Mt to 1,830 Mt).

The question is which is easier to do (ROI)... to cut the shipping fuel carbon footprint by half, or over the road trucking (that's about 1/4th of all the shipping) by 20%? For that matter, moving 25% of the over the road trucking to rail would accomplish that too.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#123

Post by JSR_FDED »

There’s an even better way to send an actual letter for free.

Simply switch the destination address on the envelope with the sender address, and drop it in the mailbox.

When then post office returns the letter to sender because of insufficient postage it will have delivered the letter for you.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#125

Post by lkbm »

School-Cotton wrote: post #99
SoftTalker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately bulk mail is the only thing paying the bills. That and being a last mile delivery service for Amazon.

Which is a totally valid reason to hate USPS. The USPS is a government-run spam delivery service that there is no way to opt out of. Those of us who do banking and other administrative tasks online would be better off if the government shut it down completely, or better yet subsidized it slightly so it doesn't have to deliver spam to survive. But as it is, I don't see any good reason to have any more respect for USPS…

Doesn't seem like USPS is the spammer. They're Gmail. People send spam and USPS/Gmail delivers it.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#126

Post by lkbm »

bombcar wrote: post #23

I've used something like this list to get "over the hump" for $35 to reach free shipping without prime. It's horribly annoying to have a product that is $34.99 and you want it, but it'll cost shipping unless you get the damn Volkswagen screw; and then Amazon ships them individually anyway.

I recently bought a small pack of pens because 1. I keep not having pens when I need them, but mostly 2. Subscribe and Save discount on some much higher priced increased by 5%-10%, easily overwhelming the price of the pens.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#127

Post by kazinator »

School-Cotton wrote: post #101
SoftTalker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure if you buy something as a "gift" (which is what allows the inclusion of a message) then you can send it to a different address. I rarely use Amazon and never have used it to send a gift so could be wrong.

You can send things to other addresses regardless of whether it's a gift or not.

Like so many awaited packages, it is neither here nor there. :)

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#129

Post by [deleted] »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93
roncesvalles wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Amazon is losing money. It's really just that efficient. E.g. an Amazon van rolls through my street multiple times a day. What is the marginal cost of them stopping at my house and dropping off a potato?

At your house it might be fractions of a cent. At my house, it's a 140 mile round trip between the fulfillment center ("are you feeling fulfilled yet?") and the drop off location. OTOH, there's likely more of "you" than there are of "me" ...

[deleted]

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#130

Post by dawnerd »

This needs to be updated to check if an item is just local delivery. Most of the items are not available for delivery unless you live close to a fresh.
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