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Free two-day shipping may be enticing, but it doesn’t necessarily justify the higher price tag for an Amazon Prime membership. Amazon AMZN, +3.60% raised the annual fee for its Prime membership program for the first time since 2014 — but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less of a bargain for most consumers. The online retailer announced that it will hike the annual fee for a Prime membership in the U.S. by 20% to $119. The change comes as Amazon revealed that it now has more than 100 million people globally who are members of the program. In January, Amazon raised...

Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime 1. The Post Office Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills. 2. The Check Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with check by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks....

Critics might be right that President Trump is more interested in attacking the Washington Post than the Amazon/U.S. Postal Service shipping deal. But Trump is right that the deal is a bad one for the Postal Service and for U.S. taxpayers.As I wrote last September, Amazon has a deal with the Postal Service to handle the last mile of delivery for its packages. Even though Amazon presorts most of the packages and prepares them for delivery at its depots, the Postal Service has continued to improperly allocate its costs, which has resulted in undercharging Amazon for delivery of those packages by...

He bet a quarter billion on something maybe worth 60 Million, to bully, damage, and hopefully to destroy this president, and paid $18 billion for it. Who is laughing now? Bezos, a virulent Trump hater, used the Washington Post, a paper of repute at one time, to perform regular, predictable and malevolent daily blitzkriegs on the candidacy, and after he was elected, on the presidency of the man We, the People, elected to the nation’s highest office, his family, his associates, his policies, and his ideas. In other words, Bezos and the Washington Post colluded, cooperated and conspired with the...

According to Forbes recent list of the world's billionaires, President Donald Trump lost more than $400 million during 2017 and is now worth $3.1 billion. Forbes cited the dropping value of Trump Tower in New York City due to the rise of e-commerce as a major factor ...

In fairly short order, the Supreme Court is going to begin hearing arguments in the case of South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. This case is being closely watched around the country because of the potential impact it will have on consumers as well as retailers, both traditional and online. The state of South Dakota is asking the Supremes to overrule their 1992 decision in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, which held that states could not force online retailers to collect sales tax in other states where the company didn’t have a physical presence.Now the White House has weighed in on...

WHDH) — Former electronics giant Circuit City says it is making a comeback. Circuit City made the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show, which is being held this week in Las Vegas, according to a CNBC report. The retailer will launch a retail website on Feb. 15, CEO Ronny Shmoel said.

Those who fear Amazon is on the verge of becoming a monopoly that eats all competitors and locks up the retail market should take note of an announcement last week by Sears Holdings: The company will be closing another 100 stores this year. Some will see Sears’ downward trajectory as proof that Amazon is on the verge of assuming near-monopolistic dominance of the retail market. In fact, it proves the opposite: No one can blithely assume that kind of power, at least not for long. Just look at Sears’ history: Back in the 1960s, many feared the Sears chain would...

[FULL TITLE] Trump says Amazon should pay 'MUCH MORE' to ship packages as he claims current deal makes web giant – and foe Jeff Bezos – richer while the Postal Service loses money President renews ongoing feud with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos The billionaire web executive also owns The Washington Post, which Trump sees as perpetually unfair to him Trump says Amazon should be paying more to ship its packages to consumers The company lost $7.2 billion on shipping in 2016 But the Postal Service has posted overall losses for 11 straight years Citicorp analysis found that the USPS systematically...

With the meteoric rise of online retail in the age of Amazon, consumers have continued to opt more for shopping on the Internet in their pajamas as opposed to running out and getting their shopping done in person. The malls hit their heyday in the 1990s and the U.S. has definitely overbuilt the amount of retail needed per person. The American mall is now fighting for its life. A typical large mall in the mid-1990s entailed 142 stores spanning about 1.2 million square feet, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis on 458 malls across the states. Many retailers have...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has reached a net worth of $100 billion — it's enough this holiday to buy over half a billion Echo speakers or pay the yearly subscriptions of more than 670 million Amazon Music Unlimited accounts. The online retail mogul this week surpassed Bill Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, advancing almost $11 billion past the Microsoft co-founder. He can thank Black Friday sales for helping Amazon shares to jump more than 2 percent and online holiday sales to increase by more than 18 percent since last year, Bloomberg reported.

When the robots came to online retailer Boxed, dread came, too: The familiar fear that the machines would take over, leaving a trail of unemployed humans in their wake. "I had a lot of people asking me, 'What is going to happen to us?'" says Veronica Mena, a trainer for the e-commerce startup, recalling the anxiety that rippled through her co-workers after company executives announced plans to open an automated warehouse in nearby Union, N. J. Yet their fears didn't come to pass. When the new warehouse opened this spring, workers found that their jobs were less physically demanding than...

Okay, I got a few good ONLINE Black Friday deals. I love buying online because you are crazy if you think ol' PJ is going to fight the crazed crowds in the stores. Anyway, even though I got some good deals ONLINE, I have this gnawing fear that I missed out on some even better deals. Therefore if you found some good ONLINE Black Friday deals still active, please post them here. If they aren't easy to find, then please provide the links if possible. Okay, I'll start out with my very obvious Black Friday buys. Of course, this means...

Butthead bezos and the offices will be closed on Thanksgiving, celebrating with their families. The warehouses will all be open and fully staffed all day and night - no celebration for the working people.

WASHINGTON (AP) – When the robots came to online retailer Boxed, dread came, too: The familiar fear that the machines would take over, leaving a trail of unemployed humans in their wake. “I had a lot of people asking me, `What is going to happen to us?”’ says Veronica Mena, a trainer for the e-commerce startup, recalling the anxiety that rippled through her co-workers after company executives announced plans to open an automated warehouse in nearby Union, New Jersey. Yet their fears didn’t come to pass. When the new warehouse opened this spring, workers found that their jobs were less...

Consumers flocked to Whole Foods in droves after the organic grocery chain slashed prices by as much as 43 percent after its $13.7 billion sale to Amazon (AMZN), according to an analysis of mobile phone location data by research firm Thasos Group. (snip) Seattle-based Amazon gained customers at the expense of its rivals in the cutthroat grocery market. According to Thasos, nearly 25 percent of the new Whole Foods customers came from Walmart (WMT), the largest U.S. seller of groceries. Another 16 percent came from Kroger (KR), the No. 1 operator of conventional supermarkets and 15 percent came from warehouse...

The mayors doing their utmost to get Amazon's second headquarters for their cities are having a grand time informing Jeff Bezos of everything they have to offer. They should enjoy this part of the chase because what comes next won't be much fun. They are about to get some insight into how the search for talent goes in Major League Baseball. St. Louis Cardinals general manager Michael Girsch noted the crucial moment in pursuing a coveted free agent player. "We sometimes call it your 'puke point,'" he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Sometimes you make an offer and you're not...

Walmart announced Friday that it will begin testing a new service that allows employees to enter a customer’s home and stock their fridge, to alleviate the stress of shopping. The retail corporation is targeting busy families looking for a more convenient option for food delivery

Content marketing is one of the best ways that you can bring new customers to your eCommerce store. Eighty-two percent of consumers report developing a positive opinion on a company after reading content produced by them. Also, 70 percent of consumers prefer to learn about a company and its products through content like blogs and articles, as opposed to advertisements. As if that wasn’t enough, content marketing tends to cost about 60 percent less than other types of conventional marketing and generates about three times more leads. Tips on Content Marketing for eCommerce However, content marketing can be difficult to...

Amazon (AMZN) may be in hot water with consumers over the price of water. Some are reporting sharply higher prices for bottled water on Amazon as Hurricane Irma approaches Florida. Customers there were reporting packages of Nestle water selling for $25 on Amazon, yet prices for those in the Northeast showed a 24-case pack of Nestle water selling for $18.50. Amazon uses so-called "dynamic pricing," also known as surge pricing. In this model, items that are in demand receive price tweaks, thanks to Amazon's pricing algorithms. As demand spikes, prices go higher.