Prime is next to useless/superfluous if one only buys uncommon music cds, less popular books, etc ..... Basically items which take more than two days to arrive due to low/scarce inventory.

Only thing I insist buying locally are groceries and cleaning/repair supplies.

For uncommon recreational items, it will end up being more expensive driving around town (+ parking, tolls, etc ....) checking out bookstores, record stores, comic book shops, thrift shops, etc... due to gasoline costs. Easier to just order online. (No record stores nearby).

I have to wonder how much of our collective runaway retail inflation is at least partially tied to the free shipping model? It's nice to sit back and watch all of the goods arrive on your doorstep for free but at some point we must know, logically, it isn't really free. We are all collectively compensating, offsetting and paying for the luxury of "free" in one form or another.

Yes -- and at least you and I know that. FREE is a luminous procuress- a succubus. One of the biggest blinders is the "FREE" moniker. It leads to stupidity, poor choices, and a false / deluded feeling of getting something for nothing -- getting away with it, for consumers, like leprechaun who sneak away into the night, validated. It's brandished as a phychological and sociological weapon of choice by greedy vendors. They know they're going to make up for it -- and then some. Most people will be blinded by the panacea of "FREE!" and not do the simple math and the simple calculations of logical pragmatism.

Didn't most us learn the aphorism that nothing is FREE in life very early on? So we thought! Problem is, FREE is so well hidden behind corporate wolf's clothing now, the line muddles and "confuses" folks. And the psychological fear of "missing the deal" with FREE is too great to actually induce some critical thinking, as it should.

The "free shipping" is figuratively another form of the "buy three, get one free" sale. The entire point it to convince customers to "buy more" to get that discount, whether it is "free shipping" or "... get one free".

Is this with or without tracking from origin to destination?

In my limited experience in regard to shipping from Western Europe, there is only one semi-reliable service without tracking: DHL / Deutsche Post. (In particular, if the origin is from the British Isles or Germany). Other services are a crapshoot for the most part.

Yes and no. The example of "buy three and get one free" is simply an old advertising tactic of offering 25% off much like "No Tax!!" which really means 12% off - or whatever the sales tax rate is.

The free shipping model employs a entire distribution set-up and the associated costs involved. A widget can be purchased at the sale price of the brick-and-mortar store for $15 OR purchase it on the website for $15 and we'll ship it for "Free". This is where "free" costs the merchant in secure packaging, dispatching, printing waybills and the cost of delivering that $15 item to a specific address for that one individual purpose. In addition there is the no-questions-asked free return shipping most retailers are obliged to offer. All of this service costs extra money and that will need to be accounted for by the merchant in one form or another.

Last time I received a business-rate quote from Canada Post or a local courier, $13 was the lowest rate for an envelope going across town on a next-day service.

It's not free shipping. It's hyper-intelligent inventory and finance management, followed by repricing software.

More than ever before, every larger company knows, down to the penny, what each cubic inch of each piece of inventory costs them. They know every penny of accrued interest. Every penny expected in stockholder value. If a forklift needs repair, it can be tallied into the cost of goods it was managing. Before this happened, there were, let's say, "ledgers" that would contain the cost of item, pallets, estimated facility costs, etc. Ultimately, the profits would land where they may. It's not like that anymore. Their inventory and finance systems are hyper-intelligent. JC Penny's would lose money, then make money, then have leftover inventory, etc. They've moved beyond that. Likewise, the cost of shipping and returns is all part of their calculations.

To follow up to that cost of goods sold, we have repricing software that looks at website traffic, competition, and more. So nobody has to sell a TV for $799 at Target, and $599 at Wal-Mart. They all have intelligent pricing software that basically colludes in setting prices. Furthermore, they can throttle the prices, to test out how much people are willing to pay. And it can all be done from a few cubicles at their headquarters. There's no store-to-store software updates.

This intelligence goes all the way up the chain. For example, if they're using third party logistics, that warehouse has their costs calculated down to the penny. Thus they will never underbid a project like they might have in the past. It's all very accurate. Makes it very hard to anyone small to compete.

Hence, the game is rigged 100% of the time, and the jig is up on the customer having any real power over the vendor.

This certainly is true in the used book market. It's basically geared toward Amazon's lowest prices. When the raise or lower, other sellers "magically" lower or raise their prices in tandem. Some algorithmic "intelligent" algorithms that preclude the customers' getting a super deal or a lucky find. Even Ebay vendors do this, of course. I'm talking only about books as a single blanket example...

We really do have the deck stacked against us with all of this "intelligent" control and button-pushing, don't we?

Shopping for a serendipitous deal is more a time-management issue now and lucky happenstance at clicking that item at *just* the right time, rather than any controllable activity on the consumers' part.

They haven't in a while actually. The last time they did was when OrbitDVD and some boutique sellers were adding them. That went away a while ago.

This guy got charged a $33 tariff on a used movie from Canada that he bought on EBay

With the exception of used books, I largely stopped buying much of anything from overseas including music cds, dvds / blurays, new books, etc ....

Too chaotic to figure out what will get tariffed and what will not. Largely a crapshoot.

My understanding is that music is okay. I purchase many Blu-ray audio discs from SDE Shop in the UK on a monthly basis without any tariff or added fees.

Sounds like he's done overseas purchases lots of times. Why this one gets a tariff? Is it just the particular eBay seller?

Just speculating but it may have had to do with the item being sent via UPS Courier who often charge a flat-rate brokerage fee of, say, $30 + whatever the tariff is. If the item was sent via Canada Post/USPS, it may have only been only subject to the tariff itself.