I see that as the absolute best approach for someone like that, leverage the platform but don't allow it to be your entire online presence.

My own use case was sadly, just leveraging the platform and as all the margins tighten not only on the amazon platform itself but on shipping costs, it just gets tougher and tougher. Happy for the experiences they offered me freedom wise, but also happy to be moving on.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500

Companies lower prices all the time. It's the competitive market at work. They just don't tend to say why, because nobody cares about the reason, so it's not necessary.

E.g. snack prices are coming down, to pick one recent example: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/03/nx-s1-5697941/pepsi-prices-ch...

But it's human bias to notice when things get worse, but not when things get better.

This time I think the surcharge will stay until the war is concluded.

Delivering less mail each day doesn't really make much difference if the mail carrier still has to come to my neighborhood 6 times a week.

I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.

https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consu...

50-60% of all mail is marketing slop

In two decades, since 2006, they've only come down by about 50%.

There’s an argument to be made that Amazon has so much of the online buying market that’s it’s not competitive and can likely get away with increasing price. And I tend to agree with that

That's what makes it a public service.

Junk mail just makes stamps cheaper. That route had to be driven anyway. You have generally what amounts to a right to put a stamped letter in your box at the end of the driveway, put up the flag, and get serviced. The route has to be driven regardless.

We could eliminate all marketing mail, make a large push to make all billing digital, and USPS would still have to drive most routes most days.

A fix would have to reduce service significantly, or introduce a new "Register for pickup" process to signal your need of service.

We could have also made those brand new mail vehicles hybrid or something.

But of course the issue is that the junk mail is subsidizing the actual mail. There's likely no way the USPS could be financially solvent, at least with the current level of service, if junk mail were eliminated. Personally I'd be fine with that. One or two mail deliveries per week would be more than enough!

Getting flyers that are subsidized by the post office for stuff like lawnmowers and patio furniture even though I live in an apartment is peak absurdity.

Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or driving their funny looking trucks) but are they really necessary?

Edit to add: since running post offices is explicitly a Federal power, a conversion of US Mail to being electronically based would be completely within scope. There would be no arguing over "states rights" that tends to become a logjam for any other national infrastructure or policy changes.

People Google things they're going to buy. Or at the very least they go to other places they're familiar with like Walmart (for the US).

Amazon is in an extremely competitive market. They can raise prices for fulfillment because everybody has to because everybody's fuel prices are going up.

The Amazon flywheel is all about reducing costs to consumers. The moment that stops happening, consumers can get caught by offers elsewhere, and the flywheel can start to go backwards.

Glad to hear that's not you, though. Amazon definitely doesn't need any more people reselling like that. And good luck! I used to sell used books on Amazon (both seller-fulfilled and FBA) when I worked at a book store and year after year it became more and more of a nightmare until it simply wasn't worth our time anymore.

I still receive her mail.

Here's the kicker: the mail is addressed to a name she hadn't legally had since the late 1970s. She divorced and remarried - which meant taking her new husband's last name - then lived another 30-ish years, died, I moved in, and it's been ten years of me there.

It's an insanely wasteful practice.

(My gut says that it would not; that the fuel use of junk mail constitutes a very small drop in a very large bucket. But I'd love to be wrong about this.)

There's all sorts of philosophical arguments as well: government services shouldn't need to turn a profit, all citizens need to be able to interact with the State and the post office provides a way to do that, mail-in voting, Post Offices can offer stuff like general delivery for those without permanent addresses, etc.

OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.

IMO, a better option is to switch to 3 days/week delivery, and where addresses are very spread out, require centralized boxes.

Your numbers show exactly what I was guessing to be true though. Incredible this has never been enforced.

Sure, by that standard we could probably reduce to weekly or even monthly mail service. It's been suggested since at least 2008 we drop Tuesday mail service as almost nobody sends mail on Saturdays and there's no mail service on Sundays.

Passports, driving licenses, polling cards, draft registration, pensions, company registrations, patents, copyrights, court summons, speeding fines, inheritance, tax paperwork, census, etc etc.

It’s much simpler to perform these duties if you have a means of communication that can reliably reach every citizen.

Even worse (this actually happened to us a couple years back), Chinese companies outright steal our images/assets and then put them on other channels like Temu or Aliexpress, selling their knockoffs there pretending to be us. We were only made aware of this when we noticed products asking to be RMA'd from our support email, but with order receipts coming in from Aliexpress.

I digress, but the beatings will continue until morale improves...

Of course, where I live the USPS person stops in a general area and does all the outgoing deliveries on foot, but it's conceivable that some days an entire block may receive no incoming mail. Also, we need to take into account things like fuel costs for planes & such throughout the entire supply chain.

No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.