6 ms·

That only gets you so far though. > assuming it takes the mailman as little as 10 seconds to deliver the package, and given he is paid the minimal legal wage h

That only gets you so far though. > assuming it takes the mailman as little as 10 seconds to deliver the package, and given he is paid the minimal legal wage here, that would already cost… 3 cents already! The marginal cost for delivering that button (even assuming the button itself was free) was more than 3 cents.

jrockway 11y ago
What if it's like airlines, where the full-fare and business class passengers subsidize the economy class? Maybe for every 3 cent button, someone is paying more than the marginal cost for their shipping, so it all evens out in the end?
- monochromatic 11y ago
  I mean, I'm sure it is like that. But you have to ask yourself, why bother with the 3 cent transaction?
  - pdxandi 11y ago
    Repeat business on presumably larger transactions?
- rhino369 11y ago
  Even in airfare, the economy seat costs more than the marginal cost.
- xanderstrike 11y ago
  That's what I'm figuring. AliExpres's bread and butter is dirt cheap computer components and wholesale chargers and stuff for gas stations and the like. Their margin on that $100 android tablet is big enough to cover the shipping loss on hundreds of $0.03 buttons.
  - nebula1 11y ago
    Aliexpress won't loss money, but vendors do.
    - tempestn 11y ago
      Then why would they sell the 3-cent buttons?
      - cconcepts 11y ago
        So that people who need a 3-cent button use the service, are impressed by it and become higher margin customers later on.
        tempestn 11y ago
        Is there really any vendor loyalty on a site like AliExpress though? It just doesn't seem that likely to pay off. On the other hand, I assume the amount the vendor is losing on a transaction like this is also minuscule, so maybe it would.
        cconcepts 11y ago
        I feel like I'm subconsciously much more loyal to services I have used than I would otherwise like to think. There is so much other stuff going on and I just can't be bothered going through the (probably easy) task of understanding a new service. So I just go back to the service that I've already used, know works, and does amazing things like ship 3 cent buttons for nothing.
        tempestn 11y ago
        But it's not the service you need to be loyal to in order for this to pay off, it's the specific vendor selling that 3 cent button, since they're the one losing money on the transaction.
      - 11y ago
- eitally 11y ago
  And besides that, the commercial airlines do courier postal packages & letters for high priority stuff. all the major courier services offer same day delivery across the US. I learned this when I flew from NC to CA and left my car keys in NC. I could have gotten them on the next plane to CA for about $300. It wasn't worth it.
makomk 11y ago
I suspect the vendor screwed up and lost money on sending that button. I don't generally see free shipping on anything much under a dollar on AliExpress which presumably says something about how much it costs to ship stuff. (Even then, some of them might be losing money. AliExpress doesn't have a good way of combining shipping costs for multiple items so if you want to offer competitive prices for customers who want to buy a bunch of different small items from you...)
wallacoloo 11y ago
So I don't know much about how mailmen are employed, but there are a few scenarios in which it could turn out that the mailman would have been paid those 3 cents regardless. The simplest: he's salaried. However, I don't think mailmen generally are. Alternatively, the mailman is paid hourly but is expected to put in 40 (or some other constant) hours of work per week. His primary role is to deliver mail, but any extra time he has after doing his route he fills by sorting packages, filling out paperwork, etc. If he had a longer route that morning, he'll try to work through the sorting faster. If it was a shorter route, he might pace himself more casually. You might say - in response to either of these - "but this doesn't scale! If there were fewer packages, the company wouldn't have hired as many mailmen and would have saved money!" Again, I don't know much about this industry, but in some (e.g. rural) areas, staffing might be done based more upon geographical coverage than the expected number of packages to be delivered per day. Furthermore, the company may be choosing to deliver such a package in order to secure its branding. Does offering to deliver this unprofitable (on its own) package lead to a promise of further, profitable delivery contracts? In the case of Alibaba & its courier, it probably did have some weight. Maybe the extra cost of having the deliveryman out on his route longer is offset by the advertising painted onto the delivery van. It's difficult to measure the value of one very small piece of a big system because its the system as a whole which generates revenue, rather than each individual component.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Letter carriers were customarily paid to run their route. In the old days, that meant you could find the mailman in the pub after his rounds. Nowadays they audit them very aggressively. Also the migration away from letters to packages has led to the decline of the route and an increase in other mechanisms.
- jib 11y ago
  I was a mailman in Sweden for about 3 years in the early 2000s. One year full time, temping while doing uni for another two. Full time employees were salaried, with 8h work day averaged over a month. When work was done, you went home. If you worked 6h one day, 10h the next you would not get overtime. Overall, I would guess I worked about 80% of the monthly hours, and I never hit overtime. Longest day I worked was 13h, shortest day was 3.5h. Temps were hourly. The extra time cost of adding a piece of mail to a route is mostly negligible. There are a few exceptions. The first piece of mail that will take you inside an apartment complex adds a good bit of time (since you have to get off your bike and go into the building). I may have occasionally have forgotten to deliver something that was going to the 4th floor if that was the only thing in that apartment complex on a given day, and delivered it the next day instead. The first piece of mail to a house doesn't matter - 95% of the time delivering to houses is the transport time between houses, not the delivery. For us, routes were typically limited by physical effort and in-between transportation time, not the volume. Houses were limited by the time of going from house to house, to about 2.5h time total. Apartments were limited by the effort of going up and down stairs to about the same time. A usual route would be ~600 houses, or ~80 4-story apartment entrances. High rises were more limited by volume (and were typically mixed with 4-stories for that reason) so that a normal route would be maybe 8 high rises and 70ish apartment entrances.
iSnow 11y ago
Even the envelope and the time to pack the button would completely destroy any profit. Even in China.

jrockway 11y ago

What if it's like airlines, where the full-fare and business class passengers subsidize the economy class? Maybe for every 3 cent button, someone is paying more than the marginal cost for their shipping, so it all evens out in the end?

monochromatic 11y ago
I mean, I'm sure it is like that. But you have to ask yourself, why bother with the 3 cent transaction?
- pdxandi 11y ago
  Repeat business on presumably larger transactions?
rhino369 11y ago
Even in airfare, the economy seat costs more than the marginal cost.
xanderstrike 11y ago
That's what I'm figuring. AliExpres's bread and butter is dirt cheap computer components and wholesale chargers and stuff for gas stations and the like. Their margin on that $100 android tablet is big enough to cover the shipping loss on hundreds of $0.03 buttons.
- nebula1 11y ago
  Aliexpress won't loss money, but vendors do.
  - tempestn 11y ago
    Then why would they sell the 3-cent buttons?
    - cconcepts 11y ago
      So that people who need a 3-cent button use the service, are impressed by it and become higher margin customers later on.
      - tempestn 11y ago
        Is there really any vendor loyalty on a site like AliExpress though? It just doesn't seem that likely to pay off. On the other hand, I assume the amount the vendor is losing on a transaction like this is also minuscule, so maybe it would.
        cconcepts 11y ago
        I feel like I'm subconsciously much more loyal to services I have used than I would otherwise like to think. There is so much other stuff going on and I just can't be bothered going through the (probably easy) task of understanding a new service. So I just go back to the service that I've already used, know works, and does amazing things like ship 3 cent buttons for nothing.
        tempestn 11y ago
        But it's not the service you need to be loyal to in order for this to pay off, it's the specific vendor selling that 3 cent button, since they're the one losing money on the transaction.
    - 11y ago
eitally 11y ago
And besides that, the commercial airlines do courier postal packages & letters for high priority stuff. all the major courier services offer same day delivery across the US. I learned this when I flew from NC to CA and left my car keys in NC. I could have gotten them on the next plane to CA for about $300. It wasn't worth it.

makomk 11y ago

I suspect the vendor screwed up and lost money on sending that button. I don't generally see free shipping on anything much under a dollar on AliExpress which presumably says something about how much it costs to ship stuff. (Even then, some of them might be losing money. AliExpress doesn't have a good way of combining shipping costs for multiple items so if you want to offer competitive prices for customers who want to buy a bunch of different small items from you...)

wallacoloo 11y ago

So I don't know much about how mailmen are employed, but there are a few scenarios in which it could turn out that the mailman would have been paid those 3 cents regardless. The simplest: he's salaried. However, I don't think mailmen generally are. Alternatively, the mailman is paid hourly but is expected to put in 40 (or some other constant) hours of work per week. His primary role is to deliver mail, but any extra time he has after doing his route he fills by sorting packages, filling out paperwork, etc. If he had a longer route that morning, he'll try to work through the sorting faster. If it was a shorter route, he might pace himself more casually. You might say - in response to either of these - "but this doesn't scale! If there were fewer packages, the company wouldn't have hired as many mailmen and would have saved money!" Again, I don't know much about this industry, but in some (e.g. rural) areas, staffing might be done based more upon geographical coverage than the expected number of packages to be delivered per day. Furthermore, the company may be choosing to deliver such a package in order to secure its branding. Does offering to deliver this unprofitable (on its own) package lead to a promise of further, profitable delivery contracts? In the case of Alibaba & its courier, it probably did have some weight. Maybe the extra cost of having the deliveryman out on his route longer is offset by the advertising painted onto the delivery van. It's difficult to measure the value of one very small piece of a big system because its the system as a whole which generates revenue, rather than each individual component.

Spooky23 11y ago
Letter carriers were customarily paid to run their route. In the old days, that meant you could find the mailman in the pub after his rounds. Nowadays they audit them very aggressively. Also the migration away from letters to packages has led to the decline of the route and an increase in other mechanisms.
jib 11y ago
I was a mailman in Sweden for about 3 years in the early 2000s. One year full time, temping while doing uni for another two. Full time employees were salaried, with 8h work day averaged over a month. When work was done, you went home. If you worked 6h one day, 10h the next you would not get overtime. Overall, I would guess I worked about 80% of the monthly hours, and I never hit overtime. Longest day I worked was 13h, shortest day was 3.5h. Temps were hourly. The extra time cost of adding a piece of mail to a route is mostly negligible. There are a few exceptions. The first piece of mail that will take you inside an apartment complex adds a good bit of time (since you have to get off your bike and go into the building). I may have occasionally have forgotten to deliver something that was going to the 4th floor if that was the only thing in that apartment complex on a given day, and delivered it the next day instead. The first piece of mail to a house doesn't matter - 95% of the time delivering to houses is the transport time between houses, not the delivery. For us, routes were typically limited by physical effort and in-between transportation time, not the volume. Houses were limited by the time of going from house to house, to about 2.5h time total. Apartments were limited by the effort of going up and down stairs to about the same time. A usual route would be ~600 houses, or ~80 4-story apartment entrances. High rises were more limited by volume (and were typically mixed with 4-stories for that reason) so that a normal route would be maybe 8 high rises and 70ish apartment entrances.

iSnow 11y ago

Even the envelope and the time to pack the button would completely destroy any profit. Even in China.