11 ms·

Postal Arbitrage

• ekropotin 9mo ago
  But the cost of Amazon Prime have to be factored in as well
  • happyopossum 9mo ago
    No, for anyone considering doing this it does not have to be factored in as it’s a sunk cost.
  • bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    Only if you weren't already paying for Prime. If you were, then it's irrelevant as this usage adds no marginal cost.
    • moralestapia 9mo ago
      "If you already pay for shipping then shipping adds no marginal cost."
      • OkayPhysicist 9mo ago
        well, yeah. That's what the phrase "marginal cost" means: if it costs $x to do something N times, and $x + $y to do something N+1 times, $y is the marginal cost.
• babelfish 9mo ago
  Riley Walz is easily one of the most creative people in tech today.
  • cypherpunks01 9mo ago
    Yes, Jmail.world and the entire Jmail suite is mind-blowingly impressive, apparently Walz and @lukeigel co-created it.
  • xtiansimon 9mo ago
    I believe it. There are a few more interesting projects at the site. This is fun, https://walzr.com/weather-watching https://walzr.com/weather-watching
• languagehacker 9mo ago
  Isn't postal arbitrage how the original Ponzi scheme started?
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • wat10000 9mo ago
    Indeed. Ponzi attempted to buy International Reply Coupons in countries where they were cheap, then exchange them for stamps in the US and sell the stamps for much more than the purchase price of the IRC. Of course, it didn't work. There wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with the arbitrage scheme, but the profit per coupon was way too low to make it feasible as a business. Ponzi pivoted to paying off older investments with new investments, and the rest is history.
• munificent 9mo ago
  I would delight to receive birthday cards in Maruchan Ramen form.
  • sixothree 9mo ago
    As is tradition.
• bee_rider 9mo ago
  A cheaper option (if we’re going to do away with the restriction that the post card should be sent by the sender) would be for the recipient to hook their printer up to the network, and just send bits. It is better, actually, you can even scan a real hand written post card.
  • wizzwizz4 9mo ago
    We could even make a standardised protocol, where anyone could send messages to any connected printer: like letters, except a facsimile of the original document is produced. I'm struggling to think of a catchy name for this, though.
    • kennywinker 9mo ago
      It’s not a fax unless it’s from the facsimile region of france. What you’re describing is just sparkling email.
  • sudobash1 9mo ago
    You can even still do fax machines if you really wanted to.
  • dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
    owning a printer is never the cheaper option.
    • itintheory 9mo ago
      I think it depends. I bought a Dell 1700 laser printer for the low price of $0 at a second hand store about 19 years ago. They said it was failing to pull paper from the tray, and I could have it if I wanted. I fixed the rollers responsible for feeding (turned the rubber wheels inside out), and used it for another 10 years without issue. Sure, toner costs some money, but an off-brand toner cartridge is $25, rated for 3000 pages. I have also needed to replace the drum, and at one point picked up a second 1700 into which I had to put the old drum and toner after some failure or another. I'd estimate I've put in $200 at most, and probably put 15-20k pages through it. Still prints just fine. It doesn't have color, or networking features, but I can share it on the network from the connected computer. I'm not sure they make anything this reliable these days, but I bet there's quite a few old laser printers floating around still.
• systemerror 9mo ago
  Don't give money to amazon that is better spent on an amazingly efficient postal service. Amazon is subsidized by imaginary money until they put all their competition out of business(including USPS).
  • Fwirt 9mo ago
    My honest question is: If you pull shenanigans like this, isn't it actually making Amazon burn through said imaginary money, thus hastening its demise? The cost of delivering a potato has to be on the order of at least a couple dollars.
    • relaxing 9mo ago
      Amazon will close your account before you can impact their bottom line.
      • crumpled 9mo ago
        I think they let you (not YOU necessarily, but the proverbial you.) get away with stuff because they know your habits and you probably make more money for them than you realize. I can almost guarantee that everyone mentioned in that blog post is a habitual Amazon user. They're all renewing Prime each year at full price and making a ton of regular purchases. The family has even turned on the FOMO by making Prime a family social network with social pressure to stay. I see it as a self-own, personally. Edit: I'm taking part of this to the root of the thread
    • roncesvalles 9mo ago
      I don't think Amazon is losing money. It's really just that efficient. E.g. an Amazon van rolls through my street multiple times a day. What is the marginal cost of them stopping at my house and dropping off a potato?
      • PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
        At your house it might be fractions of a cent. At my house, it's a 140 mile round trip between the fulfillment center ("are you feeling fulfilled yet?") and the drop off location. OTOH, there's likely more of "you" than there are of "me" ...
• sambaumann 9mo ago
  Turns out, at least in my area, for the grocery items you need to buy at least $25 worth to qualify for the free shipping.
  • modeless 9mo ago
    Yeah, this is misleading. You can't send a lime for $0.25. It's $3.24 minimum.
  • s0rce 9mo ago
    I checked the lime listed and it seems to be a regular amazon prime item for me (norcal) and not the grocery you described, which we also have.
    • modeless 9mo ago
      Did you press the buy button? The shipping fee is $2.99
      • s0rce 9mo ago
        Ah, you're right. Sneaky.
  • andy99 9mo ago
    I canceled prime ~8 years ago because where I am, half the stuff I wanted was considered an “add on item” that could only be shipped free if you had > $35 of other stuff, which is a complete scam because you get that without prime. Maybe that was just for me (in a large Canadian city at the time) or maybe they don’t do that anymore? I haven’t considered getting prime since, it would be a lot more interesting if it actually provided the shipping terms they advertise.
    • ics 9mo ago
      It was like that in NYC at the time as well. I'm not sure when it stopped but have not seen add-on items in a long time and most things seem to ship immediately regardless of price (with Prime).
• sanex 9mo ago
  Just sent my friend a bag of gravy mix, thank you!
• netsharc 9mo ago
  Ah, luckily the climate doesn't mind that oil was extracted, a phone case was produced out of it, shipped from China, to end up not even being used but just as a "greeting card". Why yes, I am fun at parties.
  • xxpor 9mo ago
    The oil used for shipping from Shenzhen to Long Beach is completely trivial compared to what the truck used getting it from Long Beach to Pasadena.
    • MinimalAction 9mo ago
      I'd love a napkin math calculation at this.
      • hi-wintermute 9mo ago
        I did some napkin math on this as I recently picked up a 3D Printer and wondered the environmental comparison to print-at-home vs pick something up at the store and I was surprised. Had some help from Claude but "last mile delivery" is absolutely where the majority of the kWh is burned in the supply chain. Container ships use ~0.015 kWh per ton-km[1] and a car is ~1.35 kWh/km. If you go to the store and end up getting >10 things it becomes "worth it" from an energy standpoint. Anything less printing at home seemed to be more economical... Not an expert though just saying it opened my eyes to how inefficient "last mile delivery" energy consumption is. [1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c15/page_95.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c15/page_95.shtml (old reference)
        • shagie 9mo ago
          > Not an expert though just saying it opened my eyes to how inefficient "last mile delivery" energy consumption is. One of the oddities of home shopping and delivery is that it can be more efficient. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/10/nx-s1-5020321/food-delivery-meal-kits-carbon-footprint https://www.npr.org/2024/09/10/nx-s1-5020321/food-delivery-m... > In 2022, researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. modeled a single 36-item grocery cart to compare greenhouse emissions from an e-commerce grocery delivery and a traditional trip to the store to get the same items. Gregory Keoleian and colleagues at the university's Center for Sustainable Systems found that using an electric vehicle to pick up groceries could cut emissions by as much as half, compared to a gas-powered vehicle. > They also found that home delivery could be an even better option. That's because with a delivery vehicle, orders are often clustered, with a driver dropping off not just your groceries, but also hitting neighbors during the same run. "Delivery is actually going to be more efficient in general than driving yourself in a gasoline SUV to the store to pick up your groceries," Keoleian says. The mentioned paper is https://css.umich.edu/publications/research-publications/carbon-footprint-alternative-grocery-shopping-and-transportation https://css.umich.edu/publications/research-publications/car... --- https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/what-if-more-people-bought-groceries-online-instead-driving-store https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/what-if-more-people-bought... > A recent USDA survey found that in 88% of U.S households, people hop in their car to buy groceries, driving an average of 4 miles to their preferred store. ... All these car trips result in carbon pollution: over 17 million metric tons of CO2 come from car tailpipes just from driving back and forth to the grocery store. --- https://csanr.wsu.edu/how-do-grocery-and-meal-kit-deliveries-impact-the-carbon-footprint-of-our-food/ https://csanr.wsu.edu/how-do-grocery-and-meal-kit-deliveries... > While it is common for the consumer to associate convenience in the food industry with increased greenhouse gas emissions, this is not always the case. Results from a 2013 University of Washington study indicate that grocery delivery has the potential to reduce carbon emissions anywhere from 20 to 75 percent (Ma 2013), while another study out of Finland found the potential for grocery delivery to reduce emissions by up to 87 percent (Siikavirta et al. 2002). --- https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/shop-online-sustainably/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/shop-online-sustaina... > Buying goods online can be better for the environment than in-store shopping for one fundamental reason: With online shopping, a single truck or van can replace multiple car trips, by multiple households, to stores. It helps to think of it this way: In most of the United States, almost every purchase means putting a vehicle on the road—either your own or a delivery company’s. --- Some others: https://blog.sevensenders.com/en/ecommerce-carbon-footprint-study-2022 https://blog.sevensenders.com/en/ecommerce-carbon-footprint-... https://web.archive.org/web/20250302115526/https://sustainablecb.org/uploads/1/3/7/5/137590461/dimitri-weideli-environmental-analysis-of-us-online-shopping_0.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20250302115526/https://sustainab... (this one is quite comprehensive also including the difference in packaging) And those articles come with their own citations to other articles.
• sudobash1 9mo ago
  I feel I should point out that USPS has a lower rate for postcards (currently $0.61), so the threshold might be a bit lower. I know that this is tongue-in-cheek and would be pretty funny to receive, but it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. The experience of getting a little message printed on receipt paper is nothing like the experience of receiving a note or card in the mail. Through the mail you receive something physically from someone with their handwriting and some personality to it. Getting the Amazon message is more like printing out a text message on crummy paper. Also, I don't have Prime, so it definitely isn't cost competitive for me anyway.
  • hatthew 9mo ago
    I agree in general, but as a one-off thing I'd very much enjoy getting a lime with a message saying "this was cheaper than sending a letter myself"
    • hoistbypetard 9mo ago
      I've started sending paperbacks instead of greeting cards when someone I know needs a get-well-soon card. In stores around here, greeting cards are often $7ish + postage. I can frequently ship a paperback with a gift receipt for $5 total. I include a gift message on the gift receipt, and choose a book I think someone might like to read while they're out of commission. I guess it's a bit like postal arbitrage, if I accept the cost of greeting cards themselves as part of the cost of the activity. To the extent that anyone has commented much, those who have commented had very positive reactions to what amounts to a book recommendation and a copy of the book I'm recommending along with a little note.
      • pastel8739 9mo ago
        This is a good idea, but I also want to point out that a regular piece of paper makes a perfectly good greeting card
        • hoistbypetard 9mo ago
• bombcar 9mo ago
  I've used something like this list to get "over the hump" for $35 to reach free shipping without prime. It's horribly annoying to have a product that is $34.99 and you want it, but it'll cost shipping unless you get the damn Volkswagen screw; and then Amazon ships them individually anyway.
  • mystifyingpoi 9mo ago
    Just play their stupid game. My wife does this all the time, buys random items just to go past the free shipping range, then the item goes into trash (or is returned, if possible). Even sellers started doing this, but instead of selling random items, they sell "extra hardened packaging material" conveniently at $1, $2, $3... prices. Of course when item arrives, no extra material to be seen. When questioned, one of them said "well, the package had cardboard box - that's it, wink wink, please do not report us".
  • lkbm 9mo ago
    I recently bought a small pack of pens because 1. I keep not having pens when I need them, but mostly 2. Subscribe and Save discount on some much higher priced increased by 5%-10%, easily overwhelming the price of the pens.
  • koyote 9mo ago
    I have done this specifically with the second item in the list in the OP. Not only did I do it to get free shipping, I got it to get free international shipping. For extra bonus CO2 points, the other item was coming from a different country. So I basically paid $0.42 to have a single packet of kool-aid shipped across the pacific ocean. (I'd never had kool-aid before and I must say I was disappointed.)
  • ornornor 9mo ago
    You can also get preorder items, it adds to the total. Your actual items hips right away but the preorder doesn’t. Once you get your item, cancel the preorder and you’re done.
    • bombcar 9mo ago
• deviation 9mo ago
  Here in Ireland, a stamp is 1.85eur. So. Many. Possibilities.
  • pkaye 9mo ago
    Wow didn't realize its much more expensive in some places outside the US. I'd think the smaller land area would make it cheaper.
    • Symbiote 9mo ago
      In Denmark it is €3.08 for a 100g letter. This appears to be the cost without subsidy, with the mail service now run by a private company. It's fine. I receive less than the average 10 letters per year (including junk mail). I check the mail box every two weeks or so.
      • autoexec 9mo ago
        > This appears to be the cost without subsidy, with the mail service now run by a private company. That just means that whatever it actually costs to deliver mail to/from whatever parts of Denmark they provide service for, the people who use the service will pay that cost plus an additional cost on top of it so that the private owner (and perhaps their shareholders) can line their pockets. The nice thing about public services is that you avoid paying that extra money just so that a small number of people can personally profit from it. You can also lose a lot of transparency and control over how the service is run. That said, I'm a bit envious of the lack of junk mail.
    • autoexec 9mo ago
      The USPS is an amazing service. Extremely dependable and affordable. They service places that no sane company ever would and they do a pretty good job. The only real downside is that it centralizes government surveillance, but the same can be said for the other large/popular private delivery services.
• _trampeltier 9mo ago
  This story comes to my mind. A pizzeria owner made money buying his own $24 pizzas from DoorDash for $16 https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-profits-venture-capital-the-margins-ranjan-roy https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-p...
  • wizzwizz4 9mo ago
    If you want to fight the VCs, you have to pull stunts like this. If they want to destroy local infrastructure because "free market", in an attempt to secure monopolies for themselves, then let them operate in a free market.
    • supertrope 9mo ago
      VC Fund My Life!
      • jaggederest 9mo ago
        The appropriate musical accompaniment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbH-U2b_EsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbH-U2b_EsQ
        • BrenBarn 9mo ago
          I was hoping this would be a rickroll.
      • Dylan16807 9mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi Win everything you need from sweepstakes!
    • PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
      > then let them operate in a free market. I think you meant to say "operate in a market that is regulated in precisely the way they want it to be".
• scottmcdot 9mo ago
  Is there a simple way to search for everything and order by price descending? I'm in Australia so those items aren't much use.
• m-hodges 9mo ago
  lol everyone in the comments is taking this way too seriously
• johnfn 9mo ago
  Somewhat off-topic, but when I click on "Case-Mate - Case for 2009 LG Xenon - Marsala"[1], the "About this item" section simply states: About this item - Do - Not - Buy - This - Product What on earth is going on here? [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D51KNQM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D51KNQM
  • crumpled 9mo ago
    Jeff Bezos has more money than the Federal Trade Commission. That's how we pick the winner in any conflict.
  • jp191919 9mo ago
    You can pre-order it... I actually used to have(maybe still have?) a LG Xenon
  • brk 9mo ago
    It’s an 18 pound phone case for less than a dollar. How bad could it be?
  • nunez 9mo ago
    It might be a placeholder product to hold the ASIN. Some (many?) vendors on Amazon will recycle pages this way. Sell some item, change the item and description to dummy values when it stops selling, change to another item that will be sold, repeat. This is usually done to keep the reviews, though I've also heard about this being used for money laundering.
    • tdeck 9mo ago
      It's amazing that this has been going on for decades and Amazon still doesn't give a shit.
      • ornornor 9mo ago
        Amazon gets a commission on the sale and doesn’t bear the cost of the returns. What’s not to like/where is the problem/everybody wins/nothing to see here
• TheJoeMan 9mo ago
  To the author, would you consider changing the “key photo”? I sent the weblink to a friend, and the key photo in iMessage is the pregnancy test and they got the wrong impression about the site/prank. Pick the lemon or can of beans perhaps?
  • kyleee 9mo ago
    Link previews were a mistake
• crumpled 9mo ago
  I can almost guarantee that everyone mentioned in that blog post is a habitual Amazon user. They're all renewing Prime each year at full price and making a ton of regular purchases. The family has even turned on the FOMO by making Prime a family social network with social pressure to stay. I see it as a self-own, personally.
• chatmasta 9mo ago
  This is just being rude to delivery drivers.
  • rationalist 9mo ago
    I think they would prefer to deliver small items than large, heavy items.
    • chatmasta 9mo ago
      The alternative is delivering no items. Spamming all your friends with $0.83 items is a waste of resources, period. When Temu did this on an industrial scale the USPS was not happy about it and it shouldn’t be any different when you’re abusing the postal system as a gag.
• kazinator 9mo ago
  Why stick to strictly under $78? Something that costs $2 with free shipping has a built in $0.78 discount if you consider its free postcard function.
• kazinator 9mo ago
  Has this person tried it? Doesn't Amazon shipping have to go to the billing address on the credit card? Being able to purchase on a credit card and have it sent anywhere makes it that much easier to use stolen credit cards.
  • SoftTalker 9mo ago
    Pretty sure if you buy something as a "gift" (which is what allows the inclusion of a message) then you can send it to a different address. I rarely use Amazon and never have used it to send a gift so could be wrong.
    • School-Cotton 9mo ago
      You can send things to other addresses regardless of whether it's a gift or not.
      • kazinator 9mo ago
        Like so many awaited packages, it is neither here nor there. :)
  • toast0 9mo ago
    You have to provide the billing address for the card. But you don't have to ship there. Plenty of people ship to the office. I buy stuff for my parents from time to time. When I'm on vacation, I might ship to the hotel or a friend I'm visiting or ...
  • AnssiH 9mo ago
    > Doesn't Amazon shipping have to go to the billing address on the credit card? No, I've had stuff shipped to plenty of addresses.
    • kazinator 9mo ago
      It looks like the billing address restriction was a "thing" years ago, but is simply too impractical for modern day e-commerce. People want to do gifting, or get things delivered to temporary accomodations like vacation spots. They are relying on approaches like heuristics (sudden purchase for something expensive going to an unusual address), plus CVV verification to help ensure that the purchaser physically has the card (still allows theft, but adds a layer).
• mystifyingpoi 9mo ago
  In Poland, OLX (basically equivalent eBay) commonly has promotional campaigns, where you can buy something from a select category with 1 PLN shipping to box machine (around $0.30). So people figured out, that you can abuse it to send anything to anyone in the country. Just create a fake listing for 1 PLN, let the receiver "buy" it (there is some extra service fee, but like $1) and there you go - probably the cheapest shipping possible, much cheaper than regular ~$5-7 box machine package.
  • corentin88 9mo ago
    Same thing in France with Vinted
• graup 9mo ago
  Last time I checked (a few years ago), it was cheaper to send letters and small packages from South Korea to Germany than from Germany to Germany. The delay was also not that big (maybe 1-2 weeks instead of 3-5 days). I already envisioned an arbitrage business for this: a simple page where people upload their non-urgent letters as PDFs, and I just print and mail them from Korea.
  • Sesse__ 9mo ago
    This is already a thing; political parties sending out their mass mailings from Poland to Norway.
    • eru 9mo ago
      I'm surprised Poland is still cheap enough to make that worthwhile. (Compared to poorer EU countries you could send from.)
• blauditore 9mo ago
  I'm super surprised there is still free shipping for small things. In (some) other parts of the world, they will charge significant delivery fürs for anything below $50 or so. It basically changed during Covid, and since every shop is now doing it, there's no competition on that.
• ck2 9mo ago
  A more recent question I have is how Amazon is skipping DeMinimis fees which are now massive on 50 cent or $1 items from their "Amazon Haul" which come from overseas It arrives in a few weeks by Amazon's own carriers, not USPS/UPS/FedEx Who is paying the $80 DeMinimis fee on the $1 cable I got last week from China?
  • rootusrootus 9mo ago
    Is it always $75 minimum, or is it alternatively 90% ad valorem?
    • ck2 9mo ago
      good luck figuring it out, the king constantly changes his mind note the last three sentences, $80, $160, $200 MININMUM > The duty was initially set at 30% of the value of the postal item, but on April 8, the duty was increased to 90% of the value of the postal item. On April 9, President Trump increased the de minimis duty to 120%. > Then, on May 12, the president issued an executive order lowering the duty rate for de minimis mail shipments to 54% effective May 14, 2025, at 12:01 a.m. ET. > The per postal item containing goods duty for low-value postal shipments is $100 as of May 2 (after being increased by executive orders dated April 8 and April 9) This fee increased to $200 on June 1, 2025. > There are new duty rates for international postal shipments in the executive order that eliminates de minimis for all countries, as described here. The specific duty for postal shipments: > $80 per item for countries with an effective IEEPA tariff rate of less than 16%. > $160 per item for countries with an effective IEEPA tariff rate between 16% and 25%. > $200 per item for countries with an effective IEEPA tariff rate above 25%.
• einpoklum 9mo ago
  > You're not only saving money. That's right, you're also cementing Amazon's control of the US economy. Both by doing more business there, and by spending time on that site which will lead to you doing even more of your business there. Not to mention having to be an "Amazon Prime" person to begin with. This may sound weird to some, but - you should really avoid using Amazon where possible.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• gowld 9mo ago
  Debunked in the first click: $0.25 - Lime - Amazon Fresh -FREE 2-hour delivery on orders over *$100* Other products have similar shipping restrictions, or the prices are higher than claimed. Also, most of the cheapest products (at least before tariff effects kicked in) don't allow customized messages that postcards allow, for obvious reasons.
• pruetj 9mo ago
  Funny seeing this. I've been working on a site to allow people to send a letter as cheaply and conveniently as possible. I actually think letters (physical) are a great way to make an impression, often times much more so than an email. Had never considered sending an actual object lol. At current scale (which is very small), the cheapest I can get it down to without losing money is $1.55 per letter (postage, paper, print, envelope, stripe fees, misc. hosting fees, etc.). Sadly, I have no way to compete with a $0.25 lime! If you're curious, https://mappymail.com https://mappymail.com
  • Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
    What if you also start providing the 0.25$ lime feature as well (by making use of the amazon prime itself as well?) xD?
    • cellular 9mo ago
      "Include a note with this purchase" = Free postage for a letter!
    • weird-eye-issue 9mo ago
      At any scale your Amazon prime account would be shut down, you can't do account sharing in that way
      • tempestn 9mo ago
        However, you could offer a service to existing Amazon prime users to help find these fun, cheap gift items. Maybe generate punny jokes people could include in the notes if they want. Join the Amazon affiliate program and earn a few cents from each...
    • pruetj 9mo ago
      "Special offer: 80% off if you send a lime with a note attached instead of a letter!"
      • 9mo ago
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• focusedone 9mo ago
  All of these items appear to have received the HN hug of death. They're all showing as unavailable for me, who just wanted to drop a friendly lime hello to a friend across town.
• jervant 9mo ago
  There are also things on eBay with a starting price of less than a dollar with free shipping that never get bids. I "won" two auctions like this the other week for brand new USB-C cables, each of them costing me 13 cents shipped. I have no idea why sellers would do this with eBay fees and USPS small package shipping costing well over 13 cents.
  • crazygringo 9mo ago
    Presumably they are inexperienced sellers who haven't learned about reserve prices? Now you're part of their education. Or... they are sophisticated and trying to get a ton of relatively inexpensive positive ratings before selling things that are actually expensive?
  • qingcharles 9mo ago
    I did this on a mass scale. There are auction items that close at 1 cent with free shipping, so I signed up for the eBay API and wrote a bot to scrape all the auctions and bid one cent on them a minute before they closed. I ended up with an enormous overflowing mountain of packages every day for weeks. I might have gone crazier, but there was a serious bug in eBay's checkout. Try checking out with 400 items in your cart. It really gets upset. 99% of the packages were Chinese sellers but the packages all came from Mongolia, so there must be some sort of postal arbitrage going on there. It was all random stuff. Hairclips, 500 bicycle lamps. Dozens of tubes of ICs of every flavor. Crazy times.
    • tempestn 9mo ago
      What did you do with all the random stuff?
      • qingcharles 9mo ago
        I was mostly handing it out to anyone and everyone that wanted any. Someone left a space heater on and burned the entire building down, so I lost everything in the end. I kept debating about whether to take it further and just go nuts and order a million items, but while it was "lulzy" as hell, it was also pretty wasteful.
• jackfranklyn 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • alexfoo 9mo ago
    The USPS have been on the receiving end of it themselves back in 1916 when someone mailed a building: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_2022.2007.1 https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_2022.2007.1 https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/bank-of-vernal.pdf https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/bank-of-ver...
    • xoxxala 9mo ago
      People used to mail their babies for a while, but the USPS put a kibosh on that. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/mailing-babies-postal-service/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/mailing-babies-postal-servi... Mailing a building is impressive!
• notherhack 9mo ago
  The lowest I found is two clip-on CAT5e cable termination jacks for $0.80 + 0.08 tax. Available in a rainbow of colors and shipped free to Seattle by Sunday if you order in the next 10 hours. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T63ST97 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T63ST97 Or 3.5oz filet mignon flavor dog food for $0.84+tax with FREE two day delivery. https://www.amazon.com//dp/B07VBFLCKT https://www.amazon.com//dp/B07VBFLCKT Beat that!
• reader9274 9mo ago
  What a waste
• crazygringo 9mo ago
  I get the point, but this seems pretty out of date. Seems like it needs a [2025] (?) at least. A couple of these are still valid with Prime, but most of them are Amazon Fresh items ($9.95 service fee for orders under $50), or out of stock, or the price is now way more.
• cadamsdotcom 9mo ago
  Tempted to start paying cash to mates to drive us to and from the airport. We have to pay for the ride either way - may as well put it in a friend’s pocket. Tempted to vibecode a little tool to manage ride requests..
• dheera 9mo ago
  I mean, you just gave Amazon free advertising, which is kinda what they probably were looking for.
• JSR_FDED 9mo ago
  There’s an even better way to send an actual letter for free. Simply switch the destination address on the envelope with the sender address, and drop it in the mailbox. When then post office returns the letter to sender because of insufficient postage it will have delivered the letter for you.
  • lkbm 9mo ago
    Keep in mind that in the US this is illegal, and it's unreliable, since insufficient postage mail isn't necessarily returned. This is one of the oldest forms of mail fraud, and they're well aware of it.
  • astura 9mo ago
    Mail fraud is illegal, dude.
• Jill_the_Pill 9mo ago
  How much did they pay to have Prime? Have to add that in.
  • autoexec 9mo ago
    Exactly. It'd probably take a while before you actually cost amazon more than what you'd already paid them in shipping plus the cost of all the <78 cent items you sent along with your messages. While screwing over amazon is noble enough, the end result of people doing this would only result in higher fees for prime and fewer items being eligible for "free" shipping. At the same time, you'd be depriving a very valuable public service of the few cents they ask to offset the cost of message delivery to anywhere in the nation. I'm sure they'd be happy to deliver something besides spam too.
• dawnerd 9mo ago
  This needs to be updated to check if an item is just local delivery. Most of the items are not available for delivery unless you live close to a fresh.
• Surac 9mo ago
  this is a litte bit like the AI bubble works. I can't point to the thing with my finger but it feels wrong.
• ada1981 9mo ago
  The lime is .25 but the s&h is 2.99 even with Prime; and tax too. Prime seems to only offer free shipping if it’s over $25?
• yujzgzc 9mo ago
  It's not arbitrage until you can make money by selling something that costs you less than what you bought it for. What it is is bundled product (item + shipping) being priced lower than just one of the elements in the bundle (shipping) therefore making a case that one might as well always buy the bundle.
  • stevage 9mo ago
    Yeah, "arbitrage" is not the right term here. This is just a complicated way to get a lower quality version of a service (sending a letter by mail) at a lower price.
  • kmoser 9mo ago
    Theoretically you can offer a service that sends a physical message for less than the cost of a letter, and use this hack to do it profitably.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• keepamovin 9mo ago
  This is beautiful. Thank you for this! Beautifully execute, beautiful idea :)
• euroderf 9mo ago
  As an ex-pat, I'm really surprised by the pervasiveness of Amazon in the US. I guess if you wanted to quickly convert the US economy to market socialism, the first step might be to nationalize Amazon, fix the treatment of its workers, fix the IPR-related crap, electrify all of its transport, and then base the country's consumer economy (of non-perishables, for simplicity) around the resultant post-Amazonian logistics spiderweb. "Now with delivery drones on land, sea, and air!"
• stevage 9mo ago
  There are some of us going to great lengths to reduce the amount of plastic we consume, the crap we buy and then throw out, distances travelled on our behalf. And then there are these people. Sending a pregnancy test to their grandma. What a hoot!
  • globular-toast 9mo ago
    Sometimes it's a curse to think. My friend group years ago started "Secret Santa" at Christmas and I quickly realised it wasn't about giving useful or even entertaining gifts, it was just about the joke of the item itself. The more useless or stupid the better! I didn't realise this and chose a gift I thought would be appreciated but they were super disappointed that they weren't part of the joke. I've boycotted Secret Santa ever since.
    • jmmcd 9mo ago
      Jokes are one of the good parts of human existence, so - while I see your side of the story - there is another side.
      • globular-toast 9mo ago
        Yes, that's why I said it's a curse.
• cameronehrlich 9mo ago
  Send a $0.01 check with your bank’s Bill Pay feature, and write your message in the memo.
  • tempestn 9mo ago
    As a Canadian, the free printing and mailing of paper checks anywhere in the country is perhaps the wildest US bank feature to me.
• NedF 9mo ago
  [dead]
• rahimnathwani 9mo ago
  At the time of writing, the cheapest item in the list is a $0.25 lime. When I add that to my basket and go to checkout, the only available delivery option 'Fast - Tomorrow' costs $2.99. There is a non-food item in the list, which costs $0.51+tax, i.e. $0.54 including free shipping.
• TrackerFF 9mo ago
  I used to import a lot of stuff from the US to Norway. I lived all the way up in northern Norway, so parcels would take roughly 5 working days from Oslo to where I lived. Domestic overnight mail / express mail was prohibitively expensive, something equivalent to $150 for small items. However, if I ordered something via USPS International Express, those items would automatically be shipped as overnight / express mail once inside Norway, and handed to the Norwegian postal system. A parcel from New York to where I lived would take 2-3 working days, and as a bonus, USPS Int'l Express only cost around $50 for the same size parcel! So while not the same type of arbitrage as OP posted about (where items become cheaper due to free shipping), I could save a lot of time and money. Maybe a more extreme example would be the ultra cheap shipping prices from China. You paid like $1 in shipping, which would have cost $10 if you bought the same service domestically. IIRC, the root of these practices go back many, many decades. And has a been a thorn on the side of modern shipping ever since Chinese e-commerce exploded.
  • stevage 9mo ago
    Yeah in Australia I remember seeing a lot of small electronic items on eBay that were $1 shipped from Hong Kong or China. You literally could not post a letter within Australia for that price.
  • tallanvor 9mo ago
    I'm guessing you quit after the small value toll exemption was removed?
  • abcd_f 9mo ago
    > ultra cheap shipping prices It’s either "ultra cheap shipping" or "ultra low shipping prices". Prices can't be cheap. /nitpick
  • alibarber 9mo ago
    It's similar here in Finland - I can get stuff from DigiKey with all taxes paid and whatnot, free shipping over 50eur and it'll arrive by DHL in less than 48hrs from the States. If I order something locally, maybe it'll have made it to the departure sorting office in that time.
• helsinkiandrew 9mo ago
  This reminds me of Digikey International Shipping rates - free for orders over $60. Without the massive bulk discount rates they presumably get the DHL Express International/FedEx International Priority cost is far more than $60. https://www.digikey.com/en/help-support/delivery-information/international-shipping-rates?country=FI https://www.digikey.com/en/help-support/delivery-information...
• amiga386 9mo ago
  This is madness. Prime costs $139 per year. It may be a sunk cost for you, but it's explicitly a cost. Try giving the USPS $139 per year and see what you can send with them.
• AlgorithmicTime 9mo ago
  [dead]
• ramonga 9mo ago
  This is why my AWS bill is so high?
• danesparza 9mo ago
  Yes, but Amazon Prime costs $140 a year. That means you would have to do these shenanigans roughly 1/3 of the year without ceasing before you even started to touch Amazon's profit margin for your account alone.
  • non- 9mo ago
    If you have Prime it's probably already justified by your normal usage. So shenanigans are effectively free.
• nzealand 9mo ago
  Looks like they already closed this arbitrage opportunity? When I try to ship a lemon to a friend I get "There was a problem with some of the items in your order (see below for more information): Sorry, Lemon can't be shipped to the address you selected. Please remove the item or select another address." Pity, my friend needed a lemon, to know I was thinking of him. Edit: I can ship a lemon for $3 shipping if I select my friends address prior to adding the lemon to the cart, but with no option for a gift note that I can see.