Re: [gpsd-dev] PPS over USB

[Ed W]

On 06/05/2012 22:58, Jim Thompson wrote:
> On May 6, 2012, at 4:46 PM, "Eric S. Raymond"<address@hidden>  wrote:
>
> > Gary E. Miller<address@hidden>:
> > > The 3 units we received were hand made engineering samples.  Not sure
> > > what their production schedule is, or any USA [retail] vendor.
> > They don't have one yet AFAIK.  That the last phase of my hack, which
> > I'll be working this week.  I have a friend at Amazon.
> You have a friend at Amazon, I've run a storefront there for a good while now.
>
> "When your item sells, Amazon collects the sales price and shipping costs from the 
> buyer, deducts a referral fee of 6 to 25 percent of the sales price, a variable closing 
> fee, and a per-item fee of $0.99."
>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161240
>
> Consumer electronics are 8%.   Assuming a $50 price, Amazon is going to pay you 
> less than $45.
>
> Note that you still have to stock it and ship it at this level.   Amazon is 
> going to pay you $0.45 + $0.05/lb to do so.  You don't get to charge 'extra' 
> for this, so you'll need to build
> that into your price.
>
> If you want Amazon to 'stock and fulfill', that costs more.  (Sell enough of 
> them and they'll ask to bring it in-house.)   You'll pay for shelf space, 
> inventory counts, and every 'pull'.
>
> Is your $30 each a landed cost?  (import duties, import shipping, 
> cost-of-captial, etc)  At what volume(s)?
>
> Jim

Further sob story: I spend something like 6-9 months getting a new 
product added to their catalogue (it's *SERIOUSLY* hard to get a new 
item added unless you have a pre-allocated unique part number for it (I 
forget the name for this number now)).  Finally got the part added, had 
to pay them £20/month to be a premium store during all that time, then 
we finally sold three items of the new part, one week later we got an 
email saying that Amazon no longer wanted to trade with us and that our 
account would be closed... Now here is the interesting part - without a 
vendor login to amazon you can no longer even phone them (wierd, but 
it's how they structure their business).  So they currently have £2,500 
(about $4,000) of my money and I have no way to phone/email and ask for 
it back - their general channels refuse any attempts to negotiate and 
decline to pass a message - emails to the correct department are never 
replied to.

Amazon is a tough nut if things go wrong.  I still don't know how this 
story is going to pan out - I think we need to actually sue them to get 
the money back, but in Europe it's not that obvious even how to do that 
because of their unusual trade structure....

Good luck...

Ed W