Twice, I have heard that Amazon doesn't make much profit How can this be ? I thought they would make good money with all the companies trading on their site Any idea on this ...........................
I haven't heard this, @Patsy Faye ... but I *have* wondered it a few times myself. Mostly it's when I buy something really inexpensive and wonder why they send it UPS when the cost is most likely the same as or even more than what I bought. I suppose that's what everyone's Prime membership money covers, but I know I save a whole lot more on shipping over a year than I pay for Prime.
@Mari North - yes its a mystery to me As for Prime - I don't have it either, seems a big payout initially
It's worth it if you order a lot of things online. Before that I was shipping all the grandsons gifts for bdays and xmas and it got to be expensive.
I do have it, Patsy... it saves me tons. I meant that people who pay but don't use it often probably helps to offset what they may be losing shipping out cheap stuff via UPS.
Yep... and I do a great deal of my shopping online so my Prime is something I wouldn't do without. I buy kinds of things from Amazon... it's rare that I can't find whatever I need there. Right now in my cart to order later today is a silicon baking sheet and a pedometer. (Unless someone can talk me into a FitBit instead?)
@Mari North - everytime I consider Prime, I think I won't be getting much now, I bet if I had gone for it back then, I would have saved Mind you - its £70 here - how much over there ?
@Mari North - its only for Amazon prime products though, that's why I can't decide Can't work out the dollar rate for you, not much in it for you and us I guess .............
I'd have a hard time believing they don't make a large profit either. I mostly buy books but have bought a few other things (like two deluxe cardboard scratchers my cats enjoy) They really are getting more and more on that site.
I order online a lot but seldom from anyone but Amazon.com. Still, it seems that when I do order from someplace else, it takes practically forever for the item to arrive, so long sometimes that I forget that I had ordered it. I've ordered a few things over the past couple of weeks and have received things that I ordered from Amazon.com almost a week after some of the other stuff, which still hasn't arrived. Apart from the price, which is usually pretty good, and their relaxed return policies, I think that has a lot to do with Amazon.com's success. Even without paying for expedited shipping, pretty much everything I order from Amazon.com arrives within a couple of days. I can order something from Amazon.com and get it before I would get around to driving to Bangor to buy it from a brick-and-mortar store. I keep hearing that Walmart is intending to go head-to-head with Amazon.com in online sales, but I don't think so. First of all, unless they close their brick-and-mortar stores, there are too many Walmart stores around to make their online sales attractive, especially if they can't offer the fast shipping that Amazon.com does. Secondly, Amazon.com has a whole lot more stuff than I want than Walmart does. As for Amazon.com's profits, I have heard that too. Often, online companies have no profit motive other than to sell the company at a huge profit at some later date. Twitter, I understand, makes no profit yet it's value is huge. McAfee, the computer anti-virus company, became huge giving its product away, then sold at a huge profit to someone who no longer gives it away. That's the sort of thing I don't understand. It could be that Amazon.com itself doesn't make a profit but the company is doing well from some of the bunches of other companies and businesses that they have acquired, but a lot of them - like the Internet Archive - don't seem to have a profit motive either.