Mastodawn

CoffeeGeek Jun 23, 2024

Late night thought:

I'm honestly surprised Amazon still offers free and relatively fast delivery on any order of $35 in Canada (over $25 in the States). I figured they would have found a way to wind it down, or make it more restrictive, or jack it up to $50 or $75 or whatever by now.

But nope. It was "free for over $35" when Amazon Canada launched over a decade ago, and still that way today.

I know it's a big biz strategy, and the shipping costs are worked into their margins, but still... big corps are always looking for new ways to nickle and dime us all. ;)

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Josh “Yoshi” Vickerson

@coffeegeek this is a must-read on the subject: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/amazon-primes-free-shipping-promise

Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie

A new antitrust case shows that Prime inflates prices across the board, using the false promise of 'free shipping' that is anything but free.

BIG by Matt Stoller

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CoffeeGeek Jun 23, 2024

@josh That was a very enlightening read.

What's interesting is the buy-box portion. This was written in 2021; today, at least on Amazon Canada, it's almost impossible to find any other buy options for a product (ie, 3rd party sellers). It is literally buried in a tiny text area somewhere off to the right.

Also though, I think Prime numbers are diff. in Canada vs USA. Prime in Canada is way less of a 'deal', shipping in Canada overall is way more xpensive than USA, and I think more folks just use the "free shipping" option as non prime members here.