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Postal Arbitrage

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Re: Postal Arbitrage

#251

Post by LeifCarrotson »

petcat wrote: post #249
sudobash1 wrote: post #19

I feel I should point out that USPS has a lower rate for postcards (currently $0.61), so the threshold might be a bit lower. I know that this is tongue-in-cheek and would be pretty funny to receive, but it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. The experience of getting a little message printed on receipt paper is nothing like the experience of receiving a note or card in the mail. Through the mail you receive somethi…

Not to mention that I would much rather give my $0.61 to a public service like the Post Office than to Amazon.

Eh, if the post office - which is a pretty efficient operation - thinks it costs $0.61 to mail a postcard, it probably costs Amazon more than $0.25 to ship someone a lime.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#252

Post by ck2 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #87
ck2 wrote: post #77

A more recent question I have is how Amazon is skipping DeMinimis fees which are now massive on 50 cent or $1 items from their "Amazon Haul" which come from overseas It arrives in a few weeks by Amazon's own carriers, not USPS/UPS/FedEx Who is paying the $80 DeMinimis fee on the $1 cable I got last week from China?

Is it always $75 minimum, or is it alternatively 90% ad valorem?

good luck figuring it out, the king constantly changes his mind

note the last three sentences, $80, $160, $200 MININMUM

> The duty was initially set at 30% of the value of the postal item, but on April 8, the duty was increased to 90% of the value of the postal item. On April 9, President Trump increased the de minimis duty to 120%.

> Then, on May 12, the president issued an executive order lowering the duty rate for de minimis mail shipments to 54% effective May 14, 2025, at 12:01 a.m. ET.

> The per postal item containing goods duty for low-value postal shipments is $100 as of May 2 (after being increased by executive orders dated April 8 and April 9) This fee increased to $200 on June 1, 2025.

> There are new duty rates for international postal shipments in the executive order that eliminates de minimis for all countries, as described here. The specific duty for postal shipments:

> $80 per item for countries with an effective IEEPA tariff rate of less than 16%.

> $160 per item for countries with an effective IEEPA tariff rate between 16% and 25%.

> $200 per item for countries with an effective IEEPA tariff rate above 25%.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#253

Post by potato3732842 »

silvestrov wrote: post #213
xg15 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can baffle you even more: if you register your company in Delaware, you don't even need to specify who owns the company. You only need to specify the name and address of the registered agent, which is sort of a "contact person", not somebody who works for the company. https://www.delawarebusinessincorporators.com/blogs/news/can... and https://velawood.com/anonymity-in-delaware/

Lots of states do this. It's not just some Delaware thing. If you're doing "solidly interstate" business there's other reasons to file in Delaware.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#254

Post by dizhn »

tempestn wrote: post #206
intrasight wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Collect calls would have been a thing until cell phones got very common because you had to use pay phones when you were outside and you somehow never had quarters.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#255

Post by wizzwizz4 »

vasco wrote: post #197
gaudystead wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would love to agree with you, in America restaurants of all sizes (and personal transportation companies) seemingly often rely on tips from customers to supplement the wages of their workers instead of just paying them fairly.

Yeah so you shouldn't help them do that if you disagree with the practice

It's a collective action problem: it can't be solved by individuals like this. All you'll achieve is complicity in wage theft. A viable approach might be to prefer doing business with companies who promise their workers a good wage, but this requires that your local businesses actually make that commitment. To get that, you'll have to go outside the abstraction of the market, and actually talk to decisionmakers within the businesses. (This is sometimes called "activism".)

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#256

Post by potato3732842 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #224
kergonath wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber eats / Door Dash suck so much I have no desire to order delivery food at all other than the two that run their own delivery and I know it will be a consistent experience. Same. It’s about the only reason why I order from Dominos occasionally. But last week it got delivered by Uber even though I ordered directly on their website. It also took 45 minutes to get delivered instead of the usual 10. So now the only…

Dominos lets people order from Uber Eats but still handles delivery itself. Maybe they fall back to Uber drivers when they are short staffed. I don’t know of any restaurants that previously had delivery of their own and switched. I’m sure they exist but it’s vanishingly small, for the reasons outlined. So all DoorDash does is give you the consumer more options. If you don’t like it, you don’t use it and nobody is har…

>I don’t know of any restaurants that previously had delivery of their own and switched. I’m sure they exist but it’s vanishingly small, for the reasons outlined.

Used to be that just about every chinese food and pizza place would deliver. Now it's all gig app BS unless it's a massive order.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#257

Post by abcd_f »

TrackerFF wrote: post #214

I used to import a lot of stuff from the US to Norway. I lived all the way up in northern Norway, so parcels would take roughly 5 working days from Oslo to where I lived. Domestic overnight mail / express mail was prohibitively expensive, something equivalent to $150 for small items. However, if I ordered something via USPS International Express, those items would automatically be shipped as overnight / express mail…

> ultra cheap shipping prices

It’s either "ultra cheap shipping" or "ultra low shipping prices". Prices can't be cheap. /nitpick

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#258

Post by pruetj »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #106
pruetj wrote: post #90

Funny seeing this. I've been working on a site to allow people to send a letter as cheaply and conveniently as possible. I actually think letters (physical) are a great way to make an impression, often times much more so than an email. Had never considered sending an actual object lol. At current scale (which is very small), the cheapest I can get it down to without losing money is $1.55 per letter (postage, paper, p…

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

"Special offer: 80% off if you send a lime with a note attached instead of a letter!"

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#259

Post by nunez »

tdeck wrote: post #160
nunez wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a placeholder product to hold the ASIN. Some (many?) vendors on Amazon will recycle pages this way. Sell some item, change the item and description to dummy values when it stops selling, change to another item that will be sold, repeat. This is usually done to keep the reviews, though I've also heard about this being used for money laundering.

It's amazing that this has been going on for decades and Amazon still doesn't give a shit.

which is why i've stopped my prime subscription many years ago and only buy items there as a last resort.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#260

Post by SoftTalker »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #248
kmoser wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your goal is to receive zero mail at your address, simply have all your email forwarded to this service and configure it to opt-out of all notifications. Alternately, you can forward your mail to an entirely different address. (This is just a Gedankenexperiment; please don't spam strangers by forwarding your mail to them.)

A lot of mail is marked as do not forward

And junk/bulk rate mail is never forwarded.
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