Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

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Unless one of the cases is manufactured under considerably different environmental standards and locally that isn’t the case.

The higher price on Amazon is due to two factors - local reseller markup and expedited shipping.

Heck many AlizonExpress sellers will have multiple listings for the same product at different prices based on how fast they’ll ship.

So we can safely assume that both items ship from China.

So we can more or less safely assume that both are shipped from China.

Now when you wait 4-6 weeks for a delivery from China you are essentially waiting for them to fill a container, when you pay more for a shipping you pay for the extra shipping space wasted by expediting your shipping.

This is because of how international shipping economics work, international shipping is economical when it’s full to the brim since shipping companies have a flat tonnage tax.

This means that shipping companies are taxed based on the total tonnage capacity of their vessels not the actual amount or value of the goods they transfer.

Unless you source something locally in a manner that it’s actually environmentally more sounds that statement is false.

And don’t forget that even buying locally doesn’t guarantee any better environmental outcome, for example buying a 3D printed case form someone on Etsy is likely just if not more polluting than buying an injection molded case from China since the filament, resin and heck even the 3D printer itself came form China.

I used to run a small business when I was in college in Canada 2010-2012, selling sunglasses on Ebay, and later Amazon.

It was super low effort. Buy wholesale on Alibaba, tell the seller to send goods to packing, and silkscreen shop, and send by regular post to my apartment. Very often, fancy packaging was costing more than sunglasses themselves.

Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years. Customs bill was pretty much nothing, and they never contested the valuation, but the extra paperwork was very unpleasant at the time when I had to study.

Then you sell $1-$2-$3 sunglasses at $100+ prices. Just make decent websites for all made up brands you have, have good marketing fluff, and make sure to call them with some Italian/French sounding name.

You make at around 10-15 sells per month, but what else you want with that level of effort? Second to that, I was very unsure of my tax/legal status at large if that business were to become too big. Being kicked out of the country, with all my money in that degree wouldn't be fun.

Did you ever check to see if they filtered UV correctly?

I'm sure, I was at least not picking polycarbonate glasses for reason they look, and feel too toyish, and too many of them would be scratched in transit/pop out of frames unless overmolded.

For the same reason, I did not risk buying plastic frames. They break/bend too easily.

I'm still amazed that Chinese factories managed to make optical grade glass, cut, and polished for glasses almost as cheap as molded polycarbonate.

It should be the exact opposite.

When buying fake sunglasses or unknown orgin, always buy polycarbonate plastic lenses as these filter out most UV light.

It's the fake glass lenses that are a culprit and can be very harmful to your eyes.

I have tested this with a UV light.

When I was at high school I used to import all kinds of memory card adapters from dealextreme and sell them on immediately for 10x the price on ebay. My dad ended up helping me pay taxes on the money I made because it was actually getting really significant

>>Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years.

Tbf, you should have been paying for every crate, even if the customs agency didn't intercept it. It's up to you to make sure the duties are paid - if you ever got caught you would have been wholly responsible for not paying the duties even if you weren't asked to. But yeah, I know how it works in practice.

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