Of course the shipping isn’t free. But probably, the shipping to a handful of more localized facilities and then to the home directly is cheaper than the cost of shipping one case of that product to each of 4000 brick and mortar locations, where it might sit, tying up capital at each one for weeks before selling.
The article uses a 40% split too - I seriously doubt that the cost to ship a $6 item is $4, especially for Amazon running their own logistics network to lower costs even further. I don’t quite understand why unbundling the shipping cost would be somehow better, meanwhile my local grocery store or Best Buy doesn’t separately charge me for their transportation costs to get the item to the store location.
None of this is to defend the obviously undefendable Amazon - sounds like the FBA program is extremely predatory. And their selling ad placement on search pages has slowly ruined the shopping experience. I hope Amazon gets broken up for the good of the consumer and the market.
Lol FTC is a fucking joke in this country. Nothings going to happen
Cory Doctorow says this is the best FTC we’ve had in 40 years, and Lisa Khan is “doing the Lord’s work”. I trust him implicitly on such matters.
If they don’t finish before the next presidential term there’s a good chance Trump will replace everyone.
A lot of conjecture here.
“If” and “a good chance”. 😞
If you aren’t taking the possibility seriously you really haven’t been paying attention 🙄
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.
Goddamn the mental gymnastics of Amazon shoppers