amazon's war on private mailing of goods

[guitar george]

Originally Posted by DenverSteve

I go with what Fazool said. Let’s see you want to ship something 5,000 miles to be handled by dozens of people, personally hand delivered to a specific address and you think that .01 cent per mile is too much? I agree. Outrageous. Sorry to pile on but, come on.

You can send a small card or letter 2,451 miles from Los Angeles to New York for a measly .55 cents. That's .0002 cents per mile.

[DesertTwang]

Thank you all for weighing in on this topic. I read each contribution with interest, and some of you brought up points I hadn't thought about.

I also discussed this with a colleague in my office, and he offered yet another interesting perspective: He claimed that the delivery services like USPS, UPS and FedEx have been resting on their laurels too long, in the sense that once e-commerce took off, they raked in lots of profits from the dramatic shipping increase fueled by online buying and selling. Except they were not prepared for amazon making them obsolete by simply starting its own delivery fleet. The amazon Prime vans appeared out of nowhere. A year ago, I had never seen one. These days, they're almost more ubiquitous than the USPS trucks.

[Murphy Slaw]

I love the Post Office. We have a tiny one in my Village. I fear it closing and having to get another P.O. Box in a larger town and changing my mailing address on everything, plus the loss of a few jobs.

Rural America is worth it.

I loved Mr. Haney, too.

[RP]

Originally Posted by DesertTwang

...Except they were not prepared for amazon making them obsolete by simply starting its own delivery fleet. The amazon Prime vans appeared out of nowhere. A year ago, I had never seen one. These days, they're almost more ubiquitous than the USPS trucks.

I've never seen an Amazon Prime van, but then I live in the country. USPS special delivers AP packages, even on Sundays, in these parts. Far from being obsolete, USPS is indispensable to Amazon Prime and regular Amazon package deliveries...

[imwjl]

Originally Posted by Murphy Slaw

I love the Post Office. We have a tiny one in my Village. I fear it closing and having to get another P.O. Box in a larger town and changing my mailing address on everything, plus the loss of a few jobs.

Rural America is worth it.

I loved Mr. Haney, too.

Northwest of our cabin you see post offices have closed. Those wide spots in the road now feed to the somewhat ailing town by the cabin. Industry, ag and retail have changed in the area.

The complaints about all that has occurred in that area are a bit crazy. All but one of our cabin area year-round or most of the year residents whine against this sort of infrastructure and complain about it going away at the same time.

There's probably little I can do about what I feel was a poor economic strategy for the area - concentrate on tourism when who can afford vacation has changed - but I'm all for keeping core services and infrastructure good across the entire country.

Originally Posted by RP

I've never seen an Amazon Prime van, but then I live in the country. USPS special delivers AP packages, even on Sundays, in these parts. Far from being obsolete, USPS is indispensable to Amazon Prime and regular Amazon package deliveries...

My area does not yet have the vehicles marked as Amazon. You do see the USPS vehicles. Our main home is where small and big city have grown into each other. Even there the post office I use has had staff say the Amazon phenomenon helps keep overall service levels up.

[matt986]

Originally Posted by imwjl

My area does not yet have the vehicles marked as Amazon. You do see the USPS vehicles. Our main home is where small and big city have grown into each other. Even there the post office I use has had staff say the Amazon phenomenon helps keep overall service levels up.

I'm not sure if it's what DesertTwang is describing, but we have plain white delivery vehicles delivering Amazon packages around here. I think that Amazon realizes that they shouldn't have logos on the vehicles to help the porch pirates out.

It may depend upon how close you live to fulfillment centers. There's quite a bit of stuff that I can get same day delivery on if I order early enough in the day, so you know that's not going through the usual delivery channels.

[DenverSteve]

Originally Posted by guitar george

You can send a small card or letter 2,451 miles from Los Angeles to New York for a measly .55 cents. That's .0002 cents per mile.

But that's half the distance for double the cost........... outrageous.