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Comment by petra | Hacker News Reader

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petra·

Why ? What's the big deal if a package costs a few more cents to fulfill?

Is it a competitive disadvantage - or just standard greed ?

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Amazon's sales are in the billions of items annually [1]

If you can save two cents on each of 5 billion packages, you save $100 million per year. Most employers will give raises and promotions to people who deliver operational expense savings that large.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518... Five billion items to prime users

The problem with this is the savings are usually negligible compared to spendings of higher management.

I think it utterly destroys the image of the company if it cannot act "humane".

It's fine to keep costs under control ..but..if you are then organizing super expensive meetings across the world it just looks bad.

It is a competitive disadvantage. That's how Walmart got to where they are, they cared about a "few more cents" for each item, which adds up in high volume low margin businesses, and crushed everyone in their market.

Ever day low cost is the motto

To me, nothing. On a macro scale? Everything.

Exactly. One package that costs 5 cents more? 10? 100? Not a big deal.

50 millions packages that cost 5 cents more? Kind of big deal.

> Why ? What's the big deal if a package costs a few more cents to fulfill?

When you shop online, do you choose the most expensive purchase option? Or perhaps the least?

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