If I had a customer that shipped 1.6 million packages per day, I’d give them a discount too.
Enough of a discount to bring the price to less than what it costs you? Lose a little on every item and make up for it with volume?
The U.S. Postal Service delivers the company’s boxes well below its own costs
No amount of volume makes up for each package shipping at a loss. The loss only gets greater. Government subsidies only distort markets. In a bad way.
Uhm...Amazon does not pay for the postage, their customers do. It's the customers that should get the discount. Prime is not a discount. Items on Prime are more expensive to cover the cost of the postage.
“If I had a customer that shipped 1.6 million packages per day, I’d give them a discount too.”
and i imagine amazon pre-sorts the packages as well.
and no doubt amazon gets special discounts from fedex and ups too.
If I had shops that sold merchandise with in driving distance for my age bracket, I’d shop them. What I have is Family Dollar, fast food, 2 grocery stores, 1 good, 1 smells of bad food, and a drug store. Couple of gas stations. We live semi rural, not even a Wal-Mart in our little berg.
I’d have to drive into CRIME infested Memphis, whose stores don’t allow my CCW handgun. I’m not driving 2 hours round trip to look at Hooker clothes, and shoes NOT in my size.
So I shop Amazon. Saves fuel, hassle, risk, and I don’t have to drive a 2 hr round trip.