New shipping charges at Amazon

Viridian, if I follow your reasoning, I think your comment is very insightful and is something that has occurred to me as well. We all seek low prices, but in the long run, our interests may not be well served by driving prices to the lowest possible point. Unintended consequences = carnage.

"I believe that Amazon has actually pushed down prices almost across the board for many commoditized items, much as Wal Mart did. I don't really know if that's a good thing though. They left a lot of carnage in their wake."

I believe that. But by their recent price increases, I think they'll soon learn that there are other players in the market. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for alternatives.

Thanks, Brownsfan. Presto looks to be cheaper than Arkiv.

Look at what happened to Netflix when they got greedy.

I just noticed that myself and I do ( did ) buy allot of disc's through Amazon. I was averaging about 3-5 per month....the overall increase is $1.01 so it is now a $4.00 charge to ship a single disc. They are no longer competitive and I will find somewhere else to buy my music

What got my goat was Amazons practice of breaking up shipments into groups instead of just one shipment (when it came to CDs and DVDs). They tried that once with me and it set off a mini campaign of acrimony on my part that was followed by all sorts of excuses on their part. It never happened again.

As for the price increase, I guess with that 1/2% profit that they're choking on they didn't notice what effect it would have. :-)

Monopolization has always ended up in price increases and lower customer service since, de facto, they're the only well known game in town. Amazon just wants to become another utility, like the gas company. No one looks for another source of gas.

All the best,
Nonoise