The mail is aggregated at the country level, sorted, etc. To call it low volume is like suggesting someone using Amazon's FBA to ship a package to their customer is a low-volume shipper, rather than reflecting Amazon's huge scale of logistics.
>The claim was that someone (and, actually, this includes low volume mailers) could mail something from China for a total cost less than his cost to mail it across the street.
Actually, the claim made there was that someone could sell something including shipping from China for less than the shipping cost across the street. This claim is laughably absurd, and the comment I was replying to said that NPR had substantiated that, which is also absurd. If they'd fact checked that podcast the $6.30 figure would have never made it in.
> To call it low volume is like suggesting someone using Amazon's FBA to ship a package to their customer is a low-volume shipper, rather than reflecting Amazon's huge scale of logistics.
I can't use Amazon's FBA to ship one package cheaper than I could myself.
End, low-volume customers in China can get packages shipped to the US cheaper than I can myself as an end, moderate-volume shipper in the US.
Fair enough, but that's because China post is aggregating it. Part of the excess cost of your moderate volume shipping is because the USPS needs to sort your mail and doesn't need to sort China's mail.
I think using published rates for presorted mail is fair. It's not the cheapest the USPS charges - they give further, unpublished, discounts to Amazon, and they still make a profit there.
>The claim was that someone (and, actually, this includes low volume mailers) could mail something from China for a total cost less than his cost to mail it across the street.
Actually, the claim made there was that someone could sell something including shipping from China for less than the shipping cost across the street. This claim is laughably absurd, and the comment I was replying to said that NPR had substantiated that, which is also absurd. If they'd fact checked that podcast the $6.30 figure would have never made it in.