Amazon Launches 'Home Services' For Repair, Installation, and Other Work

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has quietly rolled out a new business called "Home Services," which aims to be a middleman between customers and all sorts of contracted services. It includes things like appliance repair, home cleaning, installation/assembly of products in your car or home, tutoring (academic and musical), and even performance art. Amazon makes money on this by taking a cut of the total price — between 10 and 20 percent. Since everything is geolocated, they have many more options available in big cities than in small rural communities. One of Amazon's goals is to help standardize the price for various services, so there aren't any surprises when the bill comes due.

Comments

Re:Not sure, if this is "news for nerds"

[lister king of smeg]

Sorry, but Amazon took over the market by operating at a deficit for decades. I've heard that they are still operating at a deficit, which, if true, is frankly amazing. How *do* they stay in business.

When most companies use this policy (pricing below the cost of service) the governments put them out of business. Somehow Amazon is allowed to "prosper". (I'm not sure that proper is the right term if they're actually still operating at a deficit. I know they did for over a decade, as there used to be many financial people commenting about it.)

they aren't operating at a deficit per say they make lots of money but they reinvest all of their profits back in to r&d, infrastructure, and expanding into new areas, so they make no net profit but aren't exactly at a loss either.