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I'm not aware of any evidence that Amazon sells stuff below cost.

• nrmitchi 6y ago
  And really you're not going to get any direct evidence of this. Amazon is a private company that would have to willingly release this information related to their costs, and obviously won't. However during congressional testimony last week Bezos was directly asked this in relation to Echo devices. His response was that "at list price" Echo devices "are not below cost", however stated "sometimes when it’s on promotion it may be below cost, yes." Echo devices (for example) are "on promotion" a significant amount of the time. Hell during Prime Day last year Amazon was selling Fire tablets for like $12 (although that was widely believed to be a pricing error that was still honored).
  • jdm2212 6y ago
    > Amazon is a private company Amazon is a public company. > however stated "sometimes when it’s on promotion it may be below cost, yes." Using hardware as a loss leader isn't unusual -- you get a discount on the hardware but on average they make it back on products/services that are complements of the hardware. Keurig and every printer manufacturer do this, too.