zlacker

It's odd, since presumably if everyone stopped paying for Prime for the fast shipping, Amazon probably would go back to shipping things slower since it's almost definitely pretty expensive to do so, but since so many people pay for Prime to get the fast shipping, everyone else nearly gets it for free because the system has to be optimized enough to cover the demands of Prime customers.

>>noirbo+(OP)
Amazon ships fast to retain customers over brick and mortar competitors. At this point, logistics costs are baked in to seller fees (ie item price).

Prime fees were always a free money stream for Amazon to direct in to risky bets/build-outs rather than ongoing operations, iirc multiple billion USD per month.