Of course, it didn't work. There wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with the arbitrage scheme, but the profit per coupon was way too low to make it feasible as a business. Ponzi pivoted to paying off older investments with new investments, and the rest is history.
It is better, actually, you can even scan a real hand written post card.
I'd estimate I've put in $200 at most, and probably put 15-20k pages through it. Still prints just fine. It doesn't have color, or networking features, but I can share it on the network from the connected computer. I'm not sure they make anything this reliable these days, but I bet there's quite a few old laser printers floating around still.
My color laser printer has definitely been cheaper than me driving to the store hundreds of times to print thousands of color prints.
I can almost guarantee that everyone mentioned in that blog post is a habitual Amazon user. They're all renewing Prime each year at full price and making a ton of regular purchases. The family has even turned on the FOMO by making Prime a family social network with social pressure to stay. I see it as a self-own, personally.
Edit: I'm taking part of this to the root of the thread
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 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" ...
While Amazon is efficient, "fractions of a cent" is probably the wrong order of magnitude for even the most efficient order.
At the very least they should charge more for bulk mail, not give out discounts.
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.
I was shocked when I moved to SF and found out there was no way to opt out of unaddressed mail (or "current resident").
Maybe that was just for me (in a large Canadian city at the time) or maybe they don’t do that anymore?
I haven’t considered getting prime since, it would be a lot more interesting if it actually provided the shipping terms they advertise.
Why yes, I am fun at parties.
Container ships use ~0.015 kWh per ton-km[1] and a car is ~1.35 kWh/km.
If you go to the store and end up getting >10 things it becomes "worth it" from an energy standpoint. Anything less printing at home seemed to be more economical... Not an expert though just saying it opened my eyes to how inefficient "last mile delivery" energy consumption is.
[1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c15/page_95.shtml (old reference)
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-commerce grocery delivery and a traditional trip to the store to get the same items. Gregory Keoleian and colleagues at the university's Center for Sustainable Systems found that using an electric vehicle to pick up groceries could cut emissions by as much as half, compared to a gas-powered vehicle.
> They also found that home delivery could be an even better option. That's because with a delivery vehicle, orders are often clustered, with a driver dropping off not just your groceries, but also hitting neighbors during the same run. "Delivery is actually going to be more efficient in general than driving yourself in a gasoline SUV to the store to pick up your groceries," Keoleian says.
The mentioned paper is https://css.umich.edu/publications/research-publications/car...
---
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/what-if-more-people-bought...
> A recent USDA survey found that in 88% of U.S households, people hop in their car to buy groceries, driving an average of 4 miles to their preferred store. ... All these car trips result in carbon pollution: over 17 million metric tons of CO2 come from car tailpipes just from driving back and forth to the grocery store.
---
https://csanr.wsu.edu/how-do-grocery-and-meal-kit-deliveries...
> While it is common for the consumer to associate convenience in the food industry with increased greenhouse gas emissions, this is not always the case. Results from a 2013 University of Washington study indicate that grocery delivery has the potential to reduce carbon emissions anywhere from 20 to 75 percent (Ma 2013), while another study out of Finland found the potential for grocery delivery to reduce emissions by up to 87 percent (Siikavirta et al. 2002).
---
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/shop-online-sustaina...
> Buying goods online can be better for the environment than in-store shopping for one fundamental reason: With online shopping, a single truck or van can replace multiple car trips, by multiple households, to stores. It helps to think of it this way: In most of the United States, almost every purchase means putting a vehicle on the road—either your own or a delivery company’s.
---
Some others:
https://blog.sevensenders.com/en/ecommerce-carbon-footprint-...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250302115526/https://sustainab... (this one is quite comprehensive also including the difference in packaging)
And those articles come with their own citations to other articles.
> While nearly three-quarters of the world’s cargo is carried by ocean-going ships, road vehicles like trucks and vans make up the majority, 65%, of freight’s emissions. Most ships burn fossil fuels and emit carbon, but they carry large amounts of freight at the same time, making them the most efficient way to move cargo. Road freight, however, can emit more than 100 times as much CO2 as ships to carry the same amount of freight the same distance. Road transport is also a fast-growing sector—80% of the global increase in diesel consumption can be attributed to trucks. E-commerce and home delivery are two reasons for this growth.
+----------+------------------------+---------------+----------+----------+
| Mode | Freight (bn tonne-km) | CO2 (Mt) | CO2/Frgt | Vs. Sea |
+----------+------------------------+---------------+----------+----------+
| Air | 303 | 155 | 511 | 79 |
| Rail | 10,842 | 170 | 15 | 2 |
| Road | 26,807 | 2,230 | 83 | 12 |
| Sea | 101,486 | 657 | 6 | 1 |
+----------+------------------------+---------------+----------+----------+[1] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation
Also I’m passionately opposed to feathering billionaires’ nests, even with fractions of pennies of profit.
This story is funny, but also so so sad.
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 something physically from someone with their handwriting and some personality to it. Getting the Amazon message is more like printing out a text message on crummy paper.
Also, I don't have Prime, so it definitely isn't cost competitive for me anyway.
I guess it's a bit like postal arbitrage, if I accept the cost of greeting cards themselves as part of the cost of the activity.
To the extent that anyone has commented much, those who have commented had very positive reactions to what amounts to a book recommendation and a copy of the book I'm recommending along with a little note.
Would you like to accept the charges?"
It's horribly annoying to have a product that is $34.99 and you want it, but it'll cost shipping unless you get the damn Volkswagen screw; and then Amazon ships them individually anyway.
Even sellers started doing this, but instead of selling random items, they sell "extra hardened packaging material" conveniently at $1, $2, $3... prices. Of course when item arrives, no extra material to be seen. When questioned, one of them said "well, the package had cardboard box - that's it, wink wink, please do not report us".
So. Many. Possibilities.
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...
I think you meant to say "operate in a market that is regulated in precisely the way they want it to be".
About this item
- Do
- Not
- Buy
- This
- Product
What on earth is going on here?
I actually used to have(maybe still have?) a LG Xenon
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.
Plenty of people ship to the office. I buy stuff for my parents from time to time. When I'm on vacation, I might ship to the hotel or a friend I'm visiting or ...
No, I've had stuff shipped to plenty of addresses.
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.
So people figured out, that you can abuse it to send anything to anyone in the country. Just create a fake listing for 1 PLN, let the receiver "buy" it (there is some extra service fee, but like $1) and there you go - probably the cheapest shipping possible, much cheaper than regular ~$5-7 box machine package.
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?
That's right, you're also cementing Amazon's control of the US economy. Both by doing more business there, and by spending time on that site which will lead to you doing even more of your business there. Not to mention having to be an "Amazon Prime" person to begin with.
This may sound weird to some, but - you should really avoid using Amazon where possible.
$0.25 - Lime - Amazon Fresh -FREE 2-hour delivery on orders over *$100*
Other products have similar shipping restrictions, or the prices are higher than claimed.
Also, most of the cheapest products (at least before tariff effects kicked in) don't allow customized messages that postcards allow, for obvious reasons.
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, print, envelope, stripe fees, misc. hosting fees, etc.). Sadly, I have no way to compete with a $0.25 lime!
If you're curious, https://mappymail.com
I have no idea why sellers would do this with eBay fees and USPS small package shipping costing well over 13 cents.
What I find interesting is how long these windows stay open. You'd think someone at Stamps.com or UPS would notice the pricing anomaly, but large organisations are often too siloed. The team setting international rates probably doesn't talk to whoever monitors small parcel economics.
The author mentions making a few hundred dollars - but the real question is scalability. At what volume does this become attractive enough for the postal services to close the loophole? There's probably a sweet spot between "not worth their attention" and "actually profitable."
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_2022.2007.1
https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/bank-of-ver...
Or 3.5oz filet mignon flavor dog food for $0.84+tax with FREE two day delivery. https://www.amazon.com//dp/B07VBFLCKT
Beat that!
A couple of these are still valid with Prime, but most of them are Amazon Fresh items ($9.95 service fee for orders under $50), or out of stock, or the price is now way more.
We have to pay for the ride either way - may as well put it in a friend’s pocket.
Tempted to vibecode a little tool to manage the ride requests..
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