Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Postal Arbitrage

walzr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 293 posts

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#201

Post by eru »

xg15 wrote: post #198
mhink wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: the Verge article links to this blog post, describing the situation in more detail: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage

Maybe that's my EU mindset, but I'm baffled how it's even legal to add a company to your public listing - complete with fake phone number - and just declare they're taking deliveries, all against the explicit wishes of the company. (Complete with "chill bro, I was just joking demand testing you" at the end) The blogger calls this being "tricked" to sign up for DoorDash. Seems to me, this is the same way a burglar "tr…

Well, you can probably add some fine print somewhere that listings are just for educational purposes or something and may not represent the actual company.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#202

Post by eru »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #63
BrenBarn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if you apportion the fuel usage over the items transported? Presumably the ship carries far more items than the truck.

This is already taken into account: Shagie's table is based on [1], which is per kilogram-kilometer [1] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation

I suspect they are underestimating how efficient ocean shipping really is.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#203

Post by eru »

sdenton4 wrote: post #191
shagie wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not an expert though just saying it opened my eyes to how inefficient "last mile delivery" energy consumption is. One of the oddities of home shopping and delivery is that it can be more efficient. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/10/nx-s1-5020321/food-delivery-m... > In 2022, researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. modeled a single 36-item grocery cart to compare greenhouse emissions from an e-co…

My quixotic bicycle grocery buying system still wins, though.

You need to take into account your system requires there to be a nice store (presumably with aircon and lights on) within your cycling distance.

With online shopping and delivery, the warehouse can be a dark, cramped, hot, robot-filled pandemonium in the worst part of town.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#204

Post by eru »

Sesse__ wrote: post #72
graup wrote: post #65

Last time I checked (a few years ago), it was cheaper to send letters and small packages from South Korea to Germany than from Germany to Germany. The delay was also not that big (maybe 1-2 weeks instead of 3-5 days). I already envisioned an arbitrage business for this: a simple page where people upload their non-urgent letters as PDFs, and I just print and mail them from Korea.

This is already a thing; political parties sending out their mass mailings from Poland to Norway.

I'm surprised Poland is still cheap enough to make that worthwhile. (Compared to poorer EU countries you could send from.)

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#205

Post by tempestn »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #89
hatthew wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in general, but as a one-off thing I'd very much enjoy getting a lime with a message saying "this was cheaper than sending a letter myself"

I've started sending paperbacks instead of greeting cards when someone I know needs a get-well-soon card. In stores around here, greeting cards are often $7ish + postage. I can frequently ship a paperback with a gift receipt for $5 total. I include a gift message on the gift receipt, and choose a book I think someone might like to read while they're out of commission. I guess it's a bit like postal arbitrage, if I ac…

Haven't done it in a long time, but years ago I had a similar realization that picture frames were cheaper than cards. So you can frame a little note, either with a picture or just suggest they can reuse it if they like. Buying greeting cards always felt like kind of a waste. Lately our kids' schools have been doing a thing each year where the kids do some art and then you can buy cards (and other things) with it, so we've been using those as they're at least a bit personal. Once that's done, maybe I'll give picture frames again (or paperbacks or cans of tomato soup...)

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#206

Post by tempestn »

intrasight wrote: post #154
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You have a collect call from MomWe'reAtTheArcadeCanYouPickUsUp? Would you like to accept the charges?"

Ahh, the 70s. Good memories.

I recall using this occasionally in the 90s even. There was also a period where I would regularly "one ring" my parents as code to call me back. IIRC that was because my cell plan had unlimited (or at least more) incoming minutes.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#207

Post by globular-toast »

stevage wrote: post #170

There are some of us going to great lengths to reduce the amount of plastic we consume, the crap we buy and then throw out, distances travelled on our behalf. And then there are these people. Sending a pregnancy test to their grandma. What a hoot!

Sometimes it's a curse to think. My friend group years ago started "Secret Santa" at Christmas and I quickly realised it wasn't about giving useful or even entertaining gifts, it was just about the joke of the item itself. The more useless or stupid the better! I didn't realise this and chose a gift I thought would be appreciated but they were super disappointed that they weren't part of the joke. I've boycotted Secret Santa ever since.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#208

Post by tempestn »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #183
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you also start providing the 0.25$ lime feature as well (by making use of the amazon prime itself as well?) xD?

At any scale your Amazon prime account would be shut down, you can't do account sharing in that way

However, you could offer a service to existing Amazon prime users to help find these fun, cheap gift items. Maybe generate punny jokes people could include in the notes if they want. Join the Amazon affiliate program and earn a few cents from each...

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#209

Post by tempestn »

qingcharles wrote: post #195
jervant wrote: post #98

There are also things on eBay with a starting price of less than a dollar with free shipping that never get bids. I "won" two auctions like this the other week for brand new USB-C cables, each of them costing me 13 cents shipped. I have no idea why sellers would do this with eBay fees and USPS small package shipping costing well over 13 cents.

I did this on a mass scale. There are auction items that close at 1 cent with free shipping, so I signed up for the eBay API and wrote a bot to scrape all the auctions and bid one cent on them a minute before they closed. I ended up with an enormous overflowing mountain of packages every day for weeks. I might have gone crazier, but there was a serious bug in eBay's checkout. Try checking out with 400 items in your c…

What did you do with all the random stuff?
Post reply on HN