i didn't bother to count but it's more than 0.
As was pointed out already, you seem to have quoted everyone who said anything about the change, not those who complained about it. I certainly didn't complain about the change, and if you read my other posts, you'll see that I'm actually in favor of businesses directly charging their shipping costs to the consumer.
[...]We can't so UPS raises their rates 5% every year and fuel charges go up but we have to keep our prices competitive and we can't raise the shipping rate. So, we lose margin. Different stores have different margins. Walmart 3.6% margin, Target 4.2% margin. Walmart is not making the margin up on you.
Sure, and at the end of the day the measure of a successful business is absolute profits rather than margins. But as I said, based on my price checking, the final, shipped prices from AHS as well as a few of your competitors work out to be about the same. This suggests that, assuming you're all paying the same to your suppliers, the effective margins are about the same. Obviously my evidence is limited and perhaps not representative of the overall situation, I'm just pointing out my own observations.
zeg was dubious as to how margins were figured, and shared that he'd found some items cheaper elsewhere. He also stated that he understood businesses exist to make money.
Exactly. And for the record, I'm not at all critical of this business move, I'm just a bit skeptical of a specific claim. Like I said above, though, I'm basing this on my observations of buying the things I've bought. It's quite possible that, overall, their margins are lower than the competition and I've just been in the market for relatively high-margin products. It could also be that they get better or worse deals from their wholesalers, so identical prices represent different margins.
In the end, it's mostly curiosity and discussion on a discussion forum. I do think there were a handful of posts that were too critical. E.g., someone called this move a "game changer," which is absurd. In my experience, shipping charges were never a big enough factor to dominate the decision of what retailer to go to. Maybe in some unique circumstances, but those are probably circumstances where AHS would actually like to lose the business. You can't make up for a negative margin with sales volume!
