"We have nowhere else to go and Amazon know it." The FTC and states are going after Amazon, largely for stopping merchants from offering discounts elsewhere.
The charges seem to revolve around how Amazon treats third-party sellers on its platform. It would seem, then, that I can avoid being a contributor to that by only purchasing on Amazon items which are sold by Amazon. And because their Prime free shipping costs them more than it does me, my choosing to do so only fucks them harder.
Would you agree or disagree that they might make up that physical money through things like influence, marketing their brand for free on their delivery vehicles, continuing to hold down market value, etc?
Not all company value is strictly in sales, not so sure I agree that this hurts Amazon in the short term or the long term but I’m happy to continue chatting about it
I guaranfuckingtee Amazon doesn't lose money on shipping. If they were losing money on it they'd raise the price of Prime. Anyone reading this thread who thinks they have it figured out more than a trillion dollar company with armies of logistics departments is foolish.
According to one J.P. Morgan analyst, the actual value of Prime is roughly $1,000 for a customer, which means that Amazon is subsidizing its Prime business to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.
value is different than cost. At market shipping rates, Amazon could be charging their customers more, say $1000, for Prime. But that doesn't mean it costs Amazon that much to operate it. So your statement means they are leaving money on the table, but they still very well may be making a profit off Prime. Just not as much as they could.