Amazon BUSTED for Widespread Scheme to Inflate Prices Across the Economy— Amazon, its vendors, and competing retailers are price fixing, hiking up prices for consumer products, making Amazon richer

https://lemmus.org/post/20432276

Kinda suspected they were doing that. Looked at some drywall panel lifts this morning and saw one for $75. Shipping however was $247. Dropped that like a hot rivet

I mean, that makes sense to me at least. Drywall lifts aren’t difficult machines, they’re basically a lifting mechanism on a steel frame.

However, they are heavy and big mother fuckers, and therefore cost a ton to ship. Shipping is damned expensive, even without price fixing and gouging.

True but $240+ just seems excessive if the tool itself is priced 1/3 of that

It depends on a lot of things. Weight, truck availability, packaging size, whatever deal the manufacturer has with the shipping company, warehouse location, etc.

Supply chain management is an absolute unsolvable beast. I used to help out a local warehouse business, and the amount of work that went solely into optimizing their shipping costs was staggering

The guy they had on staff whose job it was to optimize everything was paid more than the owner or co-owner, and it was worth every penny. Dude was making 300k a year + 2% of all cost savings. Dude saved them 4.5 million on shipping costs according to the paper work I saw. And this is pre AI. Dude was doing all of this with scripts and spreadsheets

Astonishing what happens when people are paid what they’re worth
I know but amazon has a policy for non prime users that items over $35 qualify for free shipping. After dropping that deal I looked at some on a couple big box homimprov stores and they have some that are double the amazon item price but ship free so a net savings of around $100 on the deal