[InToWishin]

Andrea on Amazon & the business of online retail
SeattlePI.com Dec 19, 2008:
... skip ... Bernstein Research downgraded Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. to "market perform" from "outperform," Reuters is reporting this morning.

The research firm said that both companies could under-perform in the wake of layoffs and falling spending. Also, the report says, Amazon.com is facing increasing competition around the world from companies offering deep discounts.
... snip ...

[Snowrunner]

I can see this being a problem for Amazon, but doesn't eBay get some money everytime you try to sell something? Regardless of it getting sold or not?

I expect a lot more people will try to unload their junk there.

[Snowrunner]

I can see this being a problem for Amazon, but doesn't eBay get some money everytime you try to sell something? Regardless of it getting sold or not? I expect a lot more people will try to unload their junk there.

Its only good if there is someone to buy the junk! It appears that a lof of folks have decided to hold onto their money, rather than buy more junk.

Ah, I thought they'd get paid for everything that was posted. I never sold anything on eBay only bought there (recently some nice photographic equipment for a song from the states, which would have cost me an arm and a leg up here in the Great White North).

[TWilliam]

I can see this being a problem for Amazon, but doesn't eBay get some money everytime you try to sell something? Regardless of it getting sold or not?

I haven't had anything on ebay in several years, so maybe it's changed, but at least it used to be that they only charged a percentage on things actually sold...

[Windmills]

Regardless of the recession, their long-term viability is just about non-existent. Once oil depletion and/or an economic recovery drives oil prices back up, the cost of shipping will rise along with it, and the fortunes of those companies will be inversely related.

[PhebaAndThePilgrim]

Good day from Pheba, still from the farm:
I was an E-Bay junkie. I sew, and buy a lot of sewing equipment from E-bay, dirt cheap.
For instance, a sewing foot for my Bernina machine that cost me 50.00 retail can be picked on E-bay for 15 to 25 dollars.
Personally I think E-Bay is doomed.
E-Bay charges a listing fee,
then E-Bay charges a selling fee if you sell.
If you don't sell, you can relist.
If the customer does not pay, you can file for a returned credit fee for the selling fee.
The fees were pretty reasonable.
then, E-Bay did something that in my opinion was completely stupid.
Starting on October 20,2008 E-Bay enacted a new rule:
Sellers must have a PayPal account to sell on E-Bay, and sellers can not state or encourage payment with check or cash or money order. PayPal or credit card only.
I spend about 20 minutes a day scanning certain items on E-Bay.
Sales are dismal. Sellers are desperate, and every seller I have contacted state that they will gladly accept my money order.
What was E-Bay thinking? In an economy this bad, with credit at a standstill, they demand payment with a system of credit.
I have two theories as to why they did this:
First, E-Bay owns PayPal, and the PayPal fees are much larger than the E-Bay listing/selling fees. E-bay makes a lot of money from PayPal. They got greedy.
Second, a PayPal account, and credit card payments can be audited.
Just my opinion.
Pheba.

[mos6507]

Post peak, craigslist will do better than ebay. That's relocalization for you. The big advantage of ebay is for finding rare stuff that is spread out all over the US. Like collector's items or old car parts.

[verax]

Talked about Snowden being an "actor" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4044364/boa ... f_=tt_bd_5 ) and talked about Peak Oil, EROEI, Petrodollar on IMDB (Amazon) and now my electronic device shipments are being re-routed and interdicted by NSA!

https://forum.truecrypt.ch/t/my-amazon- ... routed/629

[Shaved Monkey]

Its possible but its probably done through some malware
http://www.afr.com/p/technology/nsa_hid ... 59XBBPwMRK
or
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... hone-calls

[Outcast_Searcher]

I took a look at this briefly.

This is the USPS. To anyone who has used the USPS a lot, especially for packages, bizarre and inept behavior, including losing and LONG delays for packages isn't exactly unheard of for the USPS.

Examples:

1). I use Amazon's Prime shipping simply to make UPS the primary carrier, instead of the USPS. Why? Well for many years my post office was literally a mile from the Amazon warehouse in our small city. When I used Prime (and UPS) my packages always arrived the next day if tracking showed them shipped from the local Amazon warehouse. With USPS, they often would sit for a good 10 days at the main post office. Then sometimes they would go to me and sometimes they would be returned. Every time I went to the main post office, stood in line, and showed them the tracking data, a clerk would go to the back and come with my package, except where the package had been shipped back. No one at any level at the USPS I could talk to could explain why my mail was repeatedly treated this way, and no one cared - especially management.

2). I have sent my large, complex tax forms via physical mail for years. I'm still not crazy about electronic filing, since most of that goes through corporate servers where the security is, let's say, often shoddy at best (and tax returns have LOTS of personal data). So I always use Certified mail. It doesn't matter. My taxes have repeatedly been delayed a long time, lost (once), and many times not had the certified tracking done -- so I couldn't have proven the package was delivered if the IRS lost it (which is the whole POINT of certified mail).

3). In my apartment, we had MANY occurrences of mail being put in the wrong box. When I would report this, the post office would ALWAYS try to blame the public for incorrectly marked mailboxes, etc.

One time I brought the mail that had been delivered to me (for the 12 units in my building, apparently). "Well" said the employee, "you got EVERYBODY'S mail!". No, I replied -- I got everybody's mail BUT MINE. The employee got a manager who said he'd get back to me. Like 100% OF THE TIME WITH USPS MANAGEMENT, I never got the promised follow-up response. My mail showed up a few days later, without explanation of course. Hopefully they actually delivered the other mail to the other tenants.

I never could get this fixed no matter how we marked the mailboxes, and no one ever cared, though the postman was good at denying it happened.

4). I did get a nice window employee to admit to me once that a lot of the package mis-shipment problem was when they got way behind they'd pull in all employees to help with "sorting runs". She stated that a LOT of packages got put in the wrong pile, and therefore sent to the wrong place when that happened. This explained why some of my packages and important documents (like large checks for stock I'd sold through IBM for the Employee Stock Purchase Plan) would be mysteriously returned to the sender with no explanation. It could well also explain the odd shipping the paranoid poster this thread is about is having with the "NSA".

Disclosure: I have had other minor issues with private shippers, especially Fed-Ex Home. At least with private shippers, they pretend to care or actually do, they do get back to you with information on your package, and in my experience - packages are NEVER lost -- they just get mis-delivered and the problem is miscommunication. Occasionally I had stuff stolen by the private carrier not following delivery instructions (NEVER abandon packages at my place, given the part of town it's in.) My issue with the USPS is their problems are nearly two orders of magnitude more frequent than the private carriers.

Edit: Corrected various typos and made minor clarifications after proof reading.

[KaiserJeep]

Then we liked the way the government handled our mail so much, that we put them in charge of national defense, law enforcement, homeland security, tax collection, our retirement plan, and our healthcare.

The theory is that the more they have to do, the more competent they will become. Everybody needs a Nanny, we cannot possibly be expected to take care of ourselves.

How is that working out for you?

[Outcast_Searcher]

Post Offices incompetence is a consequence of the continuing conspiracy by the right-wing FOX/Koch/corporate cabal to defund and reduce government services. We all suffer, and the wealthy get wealthier. But not their toadies.

pstarr, the more you post nonsense like that where it has no merit, the more you discredit your "all government all the time" (no matter how badly it performs) ilk. So congratulations.

So now it's Fox News' fault the post office is massively incompetent, and has been for decades. Good to know. (facepalm) At least your ilk always has a ready-made excuse when a government or quasi-governmental entity screws up (and you need a lot of them, I know).

Funny how it works. In the real world, when a private company like Enron screws up real bad, it's an excuse for liberals to try to expand government by regulating ALL companies with any possible similarity to the bad company because we know (cough cough) how well government regulations always work, and that they have no (cough cough) corruption or inefficiency.

But if a governmental entity massively or persistently screws up, then liberals insist the answer is throw more money at the problem -- more government entities or a far better funded bad government entity MUST be better, right?

And of course, if anyone dares object to such madness, quickly throw out Koch and Fox, because of course, the likes of Soros and MSNBC don't exist or at least don't count... (facepalm)

Oh, I forgot, you threw in the mandatory far left "blame the rich" in there for good measure. Yeah. What a screwed up post office has to do with a competent hard working person becoming rich by working at a job or making smart investments or both -- sorry -- I just don't see it.

But you did a good job there of throwing out the left wing talking points. (And I know, it's only a bad thing when the far right does the same thing). *Sigh*

[GHung]

I've had great service from the USPS. Most of the problems I've had in the last couple of years has been with FedEx (2 major screw-ups last year on next-day packages; important parts). UPS has been solid for the most part.

[Shaved Monkey]

Snail male is slow because it takes so much longer to steam open and read all the letters.

[vox_mundi]

Talked about Snowden being an "actor" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4044364/boa ... f_=tt_bd_5 ) and talked about Peak Oil, EROEI, Petrodollar on IMDB (Amazon) and now my electronic device shipments are being re-routed and interdicted by NSA!

https://forum.truecrypt.ch/t/my-amazon- ... routed/629

Only if your getting Cisco Network routers. They have to install their 'backdoor' implants. The NSA has better turnaround than USPS or UPS, I'm surprised.


http://cryptome.org/2015-info/nsa-cia-s ... t-cafe.jpg

[davep]

The whole point of this is that it's done really quickly so that it's not noticed. I doubt they'd need to spend such time messing with an SD card (firmware update?). That's the sort of thing that can be done using QuantumInsert etc directly without needing the direct human intervention of interdiction.

[vox_mundi]

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance (HBO)

There are very few government checks on what America’s sweeping surveillance programs are capable of doing. John Oliver sits down with Edward Snowden to discuss the NSA, the balance between privacy and security and ...

DHS Seeks Increase in Domestic HUMINT Collection

The Department of Homeland Security aims to increase its domestic human intelligence collection activity this year, the Department recently told Congress.

In a question for the record from a September 2014 congressional hearing, Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-GA) asked: “Do we currently have enough human intelligence capacity–both here in the homeland and overseas–to counter the threats posed by state and non-state actors alike?”

The Department replied, in a response published in the full hearing volume last month (at p. 64):

“DHS is working on increasing its human intelligence-gathering capabilities at home and anticipates increasing its field collector/reporter personnel by 50 percent, from 19 to approximately 30, during the coming year.”

“We are also training Intelligence Officers in State and major urban area fusion centers to do intelligence reporting. This will increase the human intelligence capability by additional 50–60 personnel.”

DHS Acquisition of License Plate Reader Data from a Commercial Service Privacy Impact Assessment

[Cog]

Kroger dropped 18% yesterday and 13% today at market open. There was a very good buying opportunity if any of you noticed it. Just saying.

[Cog]

Amazon stock has done just fine without pstarr's brilliant analysis of why they can't make a profit but ending up doing so.

Doomers make very scary news but very bad stock price predictions. Amazon stock(AMZN) is up 2.43% on the day. You should have bought in Pete.

[Cog]

Kroger dropped 18% yesterday and 13% today at market open. There was a very good buying opportunity if any of you noticed it. Just saying.

If I were a smug foodie I'd say invest in local foods. The corporate chains are dinosaurs.

Then you would lost out on a substantial 4% bump in the stock price today, from the low. But don't let that hold you back from offering financial advice to us lessor mortals.