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Comment by brucehart | Hacker News Reader

For comparison's sake, I recently rented a 10x10x10 ft. storage unit for $90/mo. or $0.09 per cubic foot per month.

Here's are key differences: 1) Amazon's offering scales. There's no way I'd ever be paying $90/mo in storage costs without good reason. If I just send in a few things, it'll probably be a dollar or two.

2) Amazon has an inventory control system. You can request certain quantities of items be sent back to you at any point, for cheap.

3) Amazon allows you to use their marketplace as a way to get rid of the stuff, so your average storage costs decrease over time and end up being much less as long as your stuff sells.

Of course, you get access to a much larger group of potential buyers than a storage unit. ;)

You don't count the guys of Storage Wars as potential buyers?

>When rent is not paid on a storage locker for three months in California, the contents can be sold by an auctioneer as a single lot of items in the form of a cash-only auction[0]

No, as you will gain nothing from it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_Wars

You get three months of rent. The trick is to have nothing of value in the locker, I suppose.

Can you get access to it after 2.9 months?

Unless you're actually using every cubic foot of your storage unit (which would be a remarkable feat), that $0.09 figure is a bit off. Amazon only charges you for space you actually use, whereas a storage unit charges you for the empty space too.

Even if you're only filling the floor 1` high, that's still an order of magnitude difference between the cost of a traditional unit and Amazon space. Not that Amazon doesn't offer some other advantages, but worth noting.

How's that? If you're filling the floor 1' high that's 1x10x10 or 100 cubic ft at $90, for double Amazon's price. Parity is 2' high. When I had a storage unit I think I was using about 30% of its capacity, which is cheaper than Amazon but also less convenient. Seems like a reasonable tradeoff.

Apologies; That's only for long-term storage, where the $.90/month per cubic foot is significantly less than the $4.24 ($22.5/half-year, ~$.49 per month) that Amazon charges past the first year.

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