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A free shipping mystery

romain.goyet.com

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Re: A free shipping mystery

#181

Post by tomp »

lmm wrote: post #178
tomp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > All this should be a reminder that any trade deal has winners and losers and unintended consequences. Obviously, whoever you subsidize is a winner. If you're setting up barriers to trade (e.g. tariffs), foreign sellers/manufacturers lose. If you're subsidizing imports, domestic sellers/manufacturers lose. Why can't we just not subsidize anyone ?! Free trade is supposed to be just that, free . Inst…

So what would you replace the UPU with? Bilateral agreements between every pair of national carriers?

No. I would replace it with no agreements; everyone pays the cost of sending their packets.

Markets => competition => lower price.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#182

Post by tomp »

goda90 wrote: post #68
tomp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > All this should be a reminder that any trade deal has winners and losers and unintended consequences. Obviously, whoever you subsidize is a winner. If you're setting up barriers to trade (e.g. tariffs), foreign sellers/manufacturers lose. If you're subsidizing imports, domestic sellers/manufacturers lose. Why can't we just not subsidize anyone ?! Free trade is supposed to be just that, free . Inst…

Labor and environmental laws. They make manufacturing more expensive in the progressive countries that have them. Then they can't compete without tariffs or subsidies.

Right, but then you should set up specific restrictions for very specific circumstances. E.g. if a company in China is using coal power (that would be below EU/US standards of pollution), you apply extra "fair-market fees" to their imports. However, you also allow for "certification" - if a company proves they comply to the stricter laws, they don't need to pay the fee.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#184

Post by rndstr »

I occasionally order things from AliExpress and I recently managed to exceed the pickup deadline at my local post office by one day on a $3 item. They notified me on the day of arrival by email but somehow couldn't remind me towards the deadline. Anyway, they just sent it back!

Re: A free shipping mystery

#185

Post by morsch »

jib wrote: post #171
wallacoloo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I don't know much about how mailmen are employed, but there are a few scenarios in which it could turn out that the mailman would have been paid those 3 cents regardless . The simplest: he's salaried. However, I don't think mailmen generally are. Alternatively, the mailman is paid hourly but is expected to put in 40 (or some other constant) hours of work per week. His primary role is to deliver mail, but any extra…

I was a mailman in Sweden for about 3 years in the early 2000s. One year full time, temping while doing uni for another two. Full time employees were salaried, with 8h work day averaged over a month. When work was done, you went home. If you worked 6h one day, 10h the next you would not get overtime. Overall, I would guess I worked about 80% of the monthly hours, and I never hit overtime. Longest day I worked was 13h…

Were you delivering mail or packages? Because apartment complexes around here usually have a set of letterboxes just inside or even outside the building, so the mailman doesn't have to climb to the 4th floor.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#186

Post by acveilleux »

tomp wrote: post #52
scholia wrote: post #26

The postal service is a networked delivery service, just like the Internet. The difference is that the data packets are physical envelopes. Now, the cost of running the postal service is the cost of supporting the whole network of delivery vans, sorting offices, collections and so on, including all the staff. The cost of supporting the network is the same whether it carries a very large number of packets or zero pack…

I don't buy this argument. This might explain free shipping to France (the country), but not free delivery to the OP (the physical address). There's not way you can make even a short 1km delivery profitable for 3 cents (except if you're delivering for a whole building at once , which seems very unlikely).

International postal agreements cap the cost to China Post for the final delivery of mail artificially low and USPS has to absorb the actual final delivery cost.

Because of that artificial cap and China Post's cost of mailing, the shipper bears a very low cost. Probably still losing money mind you but that loss is in effect heavily subsidized.

Airmail costs for a button would be 6 RMB or $0.91 per china post's web site for a letter in the 3rd group (US, Europe, Canada, OZ, NZ).

Surface mail cost for the same letter would be 4 RMB or $0.61.

That's cost if you walk up to the post office. I don't really have the patience to try and sort out the discounts that might apply to volume shippers. I assume they have the whole line of discounts for electronic stamps, large volume shippers and pre-sorted mail, amongst others.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#187

Post by Tepix »

voltagex_ wrote: post #93
jpenninkhof wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still getting my sub-dollar stuff from China delivered at my doorstep in the Netherlands. Then again, I'm A3 at Ali ;)

What's A3? I went through a phase of ordering ridiculous amounts of stuff from AliExpress (sure, I'll buy 1000 resistors for $2!), but the postage times went from ~2.5 weeks to 4+ weeks (CN->AU)

It's a rewards program. A3 means you have earned more than 500 points in the last 365 days. You earn 1 point per $1 spent (you only earn reward points for orders over $2), 1 point per feedback given and 5 points per day you buy stuff. With A3 you get Fast refunds. It has no effect on the speed of shipping.

I've found that Malaysia Post is the worst, they often take 60 days until a package is delivered.

Re: A free shipping mystery

#188

Post by mikeash »

scholia wrote: post #139
mikeash wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just because volumes are highly predictable in the short term? It's not that the marginal cost per item is near zero, it's simply that the number of items is just about the same each day. It's still meaningful to talk about the cost of delivering a single item, and the strangeness of having a price that's well below that cost.

Yes, volumes are predictable, and no, it's still not really meaningful to talk about the cost of delivering a single item. You have to switch to network thinking -- and I'm sure there's plenty of C19th analysis to support it. The real cost is the cost of running the network, not the cost of delivering an individual item. Think like that and you'll fail to understand why it's the same price to deliver a letter from Ma…

> Think like that and you'll fail to understand why it's the same price to deliver a letter from Manhattan to LA as it is from Manhattan to Manhattan.

Um, they're the same price because it's mandated to be such by law. Go ask a company whose prices aren't set by the government, like UPS or FedEx, and they'll quote you very different prices for those different services.

As for the rest, if the cost of additional items is near zero then why is it a prove that the pricing incentivizes large volumes sent to the USA?

Re: A free shipping mystery

#189

Post by bzbarsky »

bkor wrote: post #165
bzbarsky wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 days is a bit short indeed, but... Modern container ships travel at about 25 knots (unless they're doing fuel-saving slow cruise at 12 knots). http://www.sea-distances.org/ tells me that a 25-knot ship going from Hong Kong to Marseilles via the Suez Canal takes 13 days 7 hours to get there. In practice, of course, there's loading and unloading on both ends (figure 2 days) and you're not traveling through the Suez…

I urge you to just lookup the schedules using something like http://www.shipmentlink.com/ or http://www.linescape.com/ . For one, 25 knots is a ridiculously high speed. At the same time, 12 knots is way too low. Any shipping line will sail a bit quicker on the main haul (=direction where most full containers go to). So China->Europe is usually quicker than the other way around. But the huge mistake you're making is t…

Thank you for the links to places with actual schedules! Always the difference between theory and practice.... ;)

Re: A free shipping mystery

#190

Post by mod »

secstate wrote: post #36
Someone1234 wrote: post #17

I agree with the article, the term "free" is widely misused. Which is strange given the available options in the English language: bundled, included, prepaid, incorporated, et al. If something costs $99 it isn't free. Free is no cost. $99 is not no cost, therefore $99 is not free. Just as text messaging isn't a "free" part of your $30/month cellphone plan, it is an included part however.

And furthermore, what you often find with "Prime" products is that there are alternate sellers shipping "like new" versions of the products that the same price as the Prime offer, but have shipping split out. For example: $14.99 prime item $10.99 + $4 like new used item

You can also often just find the item at a lower price from a non-prime seller, with no strings attached. Just don't have free 2-day shipping.
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