[gfo]

It surprises me the large shipping companies (UPS, Fedex) haven't pushed fulfillment to the level Amazon has. Frankly, I would be shopping directly through retailers more if I could get everything for free two-day shipping.

I get part of that is funded through the Prime annual fee and Amazon's cut of the proceeds but given their large distribution networks I would think they could come to Amazon's level (but this also probably depends on the volume of other packages they handle which AREN'T retail).

[shantly]

I'm pretty sure Amazon offsets a fair bit of their "free Prime shipping" costs by raising prices, perhaps selectively. UPS and Fedex can't really do that since they're not also setting the price of goods sold.

[sct202]

A lot of companies have 3 parties do all the fulfillment (warehouse/packaging) for them and then the carriers are always FedEx, UPS, USPS. I've pushed almost all my online shopping off of Amazon (except for Kindle books) and haven't really notice a drop in service or speed, except that the same day delivery isn't an option.

[justinclift]

Something like a "UPS Prime" or "Fedex Prime" even?