Posted on 08/24/2018 11:51:23 AM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
Silicon War: How Donald Trump Can End Amazon’s Sweetheart Postal Service Deal
Looks to me like the POTUS has got the right idea. Again.
BUSINESS NEWS
AUGUST 24, 2018 / 1:27 PM / UPDATED 11 MINUTES AGO
U.S. calls foreign mail system unfair in surprise win for Amazon
Jeffrey Dastin
(Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Friday said it would push for foreign postal carriers to pay the U.S. Postal Service more to deliver small parcels within the United States, taking up a longtime complaint by Amazon.com (AMZN.O), UPS (UPS.N) and others who have alleged the current system is unfair.
Oh, jeez. Now I’m confused again.
I personally know at least 10 people who sell on Ebay and Amazon.
One of them told me the USPS driver confided to them that Amazon has 5 USPS-AMAZON ONLY buildings in CA just to sort out the packages and it’s open 24 hours. The dude trusts the driver because he’s been their delivery pick-up guy for the past 5 years.
Check Cincinnati airport on flightaware after midnight in weeknights. Polar, Atlas, Southern and Kalitta are moving TONS of goods every night from China for Amazon Prime Air.
Amazon and China have been ripping off the USPS with very distorted low postal rates that put American companies at a Big disadvantage. Essentially, U.S. citizens are subsidizing the U.S. Postal Service's lose of revenue because of the sweetheart deal Amazon gets to ship goods from China well below actual Postal Service cost.
Thanks MarchonDC09122009.
I’m sure some federal judge is preparing their nationwide injunction to stop this as we speak
s/b
I’m sure some federal judge is agreeing to issue a nationwide injunction written by lawyers for Amazon
Excellent revision
This is not just Amazon. There are a ****load of Chinese sellers on eBay selling all sorts of items at low or zero shipping cost to the buyer. I have purchased quite a few of such items myself, but I prefer buying from US sellers if they can get reasonably close on total cost (say, 20-30% more), and some do. Problem is, sometimes the item is ONLY available from a Chinese seller.* Other times the US sellers are 2x (or more) the item cost before one even gets to the shipping cost.
*Ok, so I buy some relatively uncommon items... :-)
Oddly enough (given my eBay “history”), in terms of $$ I’d say well under 5% of what I buy on Amazon comes from Chinese sellers. Last year, I don’t think anything I bought from Amazon shipped to me from China.
It's not just the USPS, while the USPS entered into a sweet heart deal for the Chinese and amazon. The cost of overnight shipping and 2nd shipping has gone way up for the individual. I'm guessing FedEx and UPS cut sweet heart deals with the big overnight shippers. Now the individual essentially pays a tax every time they have to ship something overnight just so FedEx/UPS can offer a discount to he Amazons of the world
I think it's more likely that with USPS raising it's rates to individual US customers, FedEx and UPS simply followed suit, since they no longer had to compete with USPS as vigorously. (That is not to say that doing so did not allow UPS and FedEx to make big shippers a better deal -- but one does not have to be anywhere near the size of Amazon to get substantial discounts, and that was true even several (10 or more?) years ago. I can speak with experience to that.)
Also, it seems to me that the program FedEx had going with contracted local delivery people went away due to some sort of legal problem with it, IIRC. Back then, that method of shipment & delivery by FedEx was usually the cheapest option...
Y’ know... Way back during the campaign, I wrote the Trump campaign pointing out this very thing as an example of the unfair playing field many US small businesses were faced with. I think I mentioned it here on FR as well (not sure -it’s been a while, and lots has happened since!) I thought it might make a good campaign issue — just pointing out in another way how the system was “rigged”. I am sure others had the same thought.
I never saw this issue mentioned in the campaign, but, maybe the complaints eventually found an ear!
Terrible bind and all the rest ...
What are you smokin?
I take it back.
Things looked very bleak last Friday.
Continuely amazed at President Trump’s fortitude and resilience with pundits and adversaries constantly savaging him
Cool, thx....
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