A Facebook post during our family sojourn in Ft. Lauderdale:
Amazon said that the four items I ordered had shipped, but that they were canceling my Prime membership…
Comment from MIT graduate from roughly my year (i.e., the last Ice Age): “Why would they cancel your membership??”
Ha ha. So you ordered a yacht via Amazon prime. But can you afford to fill it up with diesel when you get it? A small 50 foot yacht holds 1000 gallons. So a fill up is $2500. And that will only go 1000 miles at 7-10 knots. If you go faster they eat more fuel. So it takes a lot of time and $$ to move a big boat across the Atlantic. So many really rich people buy a good boat and have it hauled back and forth to use in Europe or Florida as they move around.
Lol, took me awhile.
I though yachts are supposed to transport themselves tough….
Also, can’t you just tow them? Perplexing…
Towing is is a very slow and dangerous process on the open ocean. And the boat towing uses a lot more fuel. So putting them on the big boat is better.
do you think we are headed back to another ice age or will the globe warm?
You’d be on Jeff Bezos’s personal hit list.
That’s what I call “free shipping”!
The yacht for the thoughtful engineer can be found at http://www.setsail.com. Those boats will never be carried like this, instead they safely and efficiently cross oceans on their own hulls. But they also don’t look like those floating palaces, either.
@Bill
You forgot to factor in the cost of shipping the boat to your ex-wife after she divorces you for buying a boat.
Very funny but Amazon “free” shipping is not really free. It’s factored into the price of the item so often it’s cheaper to buy the same item locally.
OTOH, I buy low value stuff from China (cables, etc.) for $1 delivered on ebay. $1 CANADIAN (I’m not in Canada). Apparently there is some loophole in the postal treaty that makes shipping of small items from China really cheap. OTOH, the stuff takes a month to arrive. But so does your yacht.
I am surprised that Phil did not take a picture of a 18 wheel car carrier loaded with cars headed for Boston or NYC. It is very common in Florida to ship your car down there for the winter and then ship it back for the summer. But of course most of these rich people travel by private Jet so they just let the butler do the car shipping task. Iced tea anyone while we load the car?
Amazon stopped being the cheapest on most things a few years ago. I order stuff on ebay and walmart.com all the time and save some bucks. No prime subscription needed.
Amazon is probably the Enron of this decade. Their accounting is totally fraudulent, never mind the stated losses.
3bobs might be right. Amazon is the equivalent of a digital Montgomery Ward . . . slowly the specialty sites will eat into the margins. Furniture is a good example, Amazon will have trouble competing with Wayfair.
Amazon has reached its limit in eCommerce, this is why they entered the entertainment business and Web services such as Cloud.
To me, Amazon is the go-to web site for researching product, just like Google is the go-to web site for search the Web. I use Amazon to find out about products, read reviews and ask questions. Compared to any other site, Walmart or eBay to name two, Amazon beats them hands down in this area.