
Free shipping from China - Ecco
http://romain.goyet.com/articles/free_shipping_from_china/
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kls
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_zone)

China uses free trade zones extensively. This means that some items a moved in
bulk to domestic staging areas, so not everything is leaving from China, I
believe that there are requirements that they be postmarked from China due to
import export rules.

Second, China's postal system is a social system of a communist state, it is
heavily subsidized and therefore much of the costs are hidden in the system.

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Ecco
Hi, thanks for your help sorting this out! I quite don't understand your point
though:

\- The Free Trade Zone seems to be related to customs (which, by the way, I
was never asked to pay…).

\- Even if China's postal system is heavily subsidized, there's a part of the
shipping that is handled by non-chinese people (once the package is in the
customer's country). So who would be paying for that part?

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kls
Customarily the seller pays customs which is a percent of the price IIRC, the
free trade zones allow China and other countries to ship stuff in bulk to
another country and stage it as well as offset the cost of customs until the
time of purchase. So it allows them to pre-ship bulk items to domestic staging
areas. This may account for how the item gets to your country, but yes is does
not account for domestic shipping. China may have agreements in place for
domestic rates in other countries but that I do not know. I do know the
Special Economic Zones account for the ability to get items from China to
consumers at extremely low cost per item.

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tired_man
Amazon isn't losing any money on prime shipping. If you look at "other
purchase options you can see that many other vendors offer the same products
for about $3.99 less, but charge for shipping. Amazon's merely hiding the
shipping cost with an elevated retail price.

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adimauro
I often hear people talk about how you're not really getting 'free' shipping
since you are paying $99. Well, yes, but, that $99 doesn't just get you free
shipping. Also free music streaming, quite a few free movies/tv shows, free
photo storage, free music storage.

Honestly, I think $99 is a steal for all you get considering the music
streaming alone costs you more than $99 a year on Google Play or Apple Music.

~~~
tired_man
That's true, and it's great if you can use it. I don't care for their content
delivery.

