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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

#21

Post by usefulcat »

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…

Reducing the frequency of mail delivery would have a much larger impact, since most of fuel is probably consumed by last mile delivery.

Delivering less mail each day doesn't really make much difference if the mail carrier still has to come to my neighborhood 6 times a week.

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

#22

Post by jrockway »

Sometimes I wonder if we just do these wars so that companies can raise prices and when the war ends, not lower them. Do we ever see "oil prices are down 3.5%, we are lowering our prices by 3.5%"? Never. "But the free market will force someone to do this to gain marketshare." But Amazon is the only Amazon, so I doubt that will happen.

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

#23

Post by tshaddox »

ssl-3 wrote: post #5
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…

What percentage of overall vehicular fuel use does junk mail (from inception to landfill) constitute, might you suppose?

Percentage of mass is probably the wrong metric to look at, because it assumes that the USPS could simply eliminate the X% of mass used by junk mail and save roughly X% on fuel/delivery costs.

But of course the issue is that the junk mail is subsidizing the actual mail. There's likely no way the USPS could be financially solvent, at least with the current level of service, if junk mail were eliminated. Personally I'd be fine with that. One or two mail deliveries per week would be more than enough!

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

#24

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #22

Sometimes I wonder if we just do these wars so that companies can raise prices and when the war ends, not lower them. Do we ever see "oil prices are down 3.5%, we are lowering our prices by 3.5%"? Never. "But the free market will force someone to do this to gain marketshare." But Amazon is the only Amazon, so I doubt that will happen.

[deleted]

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

#25

Post by lokar »

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.

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

#27

Post by crazygringo »

jrockway wrote: post #22

Sometimes I wonder if we just do these wars so that companies can raise prices and when the war ends, not lower them. Do we ever see "oil prices are down 3.5%, we are lowering our prices by 3.5%"? Never. "But the free market will force someone to do this to gain marketshare." But Amazon is the only Amazon, so I doubt that will happen.

> Do we ever see "oil prices are down 3.5%, we are lowering our prices by 3.5%"? Never.

Companies lower prices all the time. It's the competitive market at work. They just don't tend to say why, because nobody cares about the reason, so it's not necessary.

E.g. snack prices are coming down, to pick one recent example: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/03/nx-s1-5697941/pepsi-prices-ch...

But it's human bias to notice when things get worse, but not when things get better.

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

mikestew wrote: post #19
slillibri wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stopping marketing mail wouldn’t change the number of accelerations per mailbox. USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. The only difference would be in weight carried.

USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by youarentrightjr »

etiennebausson wrote: post #20
LightBug1 wrote: post #9

[flagged]

>> (generous exemption for those who didn't vote for the orange dildo). Those who could but didn't vote aren't blameless either.

> Those who could but didn't vote aren't blameless either.

The harsh reality is that "lesser of two evils" thinking is what got us here.

In the 2024 election, the two mainstream party positions on immigration were:

- Let's not enforce any immigration law, and subsidize those here illegally

- Let's round up illegal aliens, indefinitely detain them without habeas corpus, maybe deport them to a country they aren't from

These are both insane, radical policies, neither of which represents the vast majority of the voting populous.

But since the picture is painted as "you just gotta pick the lesser of two evils", we end up with parties continually toeing the line of policy sanity.

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

#30

Post by youarentrightjr »

mikestew wrote: post #18
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…

$8, and that all stops for ten years: https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.

Sounds like a racketeering operation (not saying it doesn't work).
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