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Postal Arbitrage
91–100 of 293 posts
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#92This story comes to my mind. A pizzeria owner made money buying his own $24 pizzas from DoorDash for $16 https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-p...
If you want to fight the VCs, you have to pull stunts like this. If they want to destroy local infrastructure because "free market", in an attempt to secure monopolies for themselves, then let them operate in a free market.
> then let them operate in a free market.
I think you meant to say "operate in a market that is regulated in precisely the way they want it to be".
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
My honest question is: If you pull shenanigans like this, isn't it actually making Amazon burn through said imaginary money, thus hastening its demise? The cost of delivering a potato has to be on the order of at least a couple dollars.
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" ...
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#94I 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…
Reminds me of the old collect call trick. Rather than state your name when prompted you transmit a short, perhaps even coded, message. Then the receiving party declines the call.
"You have a collect call from MomWe'reAtTheArcadeCanYouPickUsUp?
Would you like to accept the charges?"
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love a napkin math calculation at this.
The distance from Shenzhen to Long Beach is some 300 times the distance from Long Beach to Pasadena, depending on where exactly in Pasadena and which route you take. The CO2 emissions factor for a truck is some 10-100x that of a container ship. The exact ratio depends on what kind of truck, and what scope of emissions are being included. The more one accounts for, the more it will favor the boat. But overall, the emi…
You have to normalize for package volume. There’s one ship involved, how many delivery vehicles and other auto related logistics until that whole shipload has reached its final destination?
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#96All of these items appear to have received the HN hug of death. They're all showing as unavailable for me, who just wanted to drop a friendly lime hello to a friend across town.
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#97I 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…
Reminds me of the old collect call trick. Rather than state your name when prompted you transmit a short, perhaps even coded, message. Then the receiving party declines the call.
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#98There 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.
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate USPS, and will not be doing anything to benefit them until they offer a way to limit my deliveries to once a month, and opt out of anything that has "or current resident" At the very least they should charge more for bulk mail, not give out discounts.
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 than I do for any other spammer.
Re: Postal Arbitrage
#100Has this person tried it? Doesn't Amazon shipping have to go to the billing address on the credit card? Being able to purchase on a credit card and have it sent anywhere makes it that much easier to use stolen credit cards.
> Doesn't Amazon shipping have to go to the billing address on the credit card?
No and that would be crazy. I'm not aware of any e-commerce site that has a restriction like that.
> Being able to purchase on a credit card and have it sent anywhere makes it that much easier to use stolen credit cards.
Well, it's probably one fraud signal among many, but it's absolutely not generally prohibited. I've sent things from Amazon to other people (or to myself while staying in a hotel), and other people have sent things to me, many times.