It’s very common for stores to advertise money losing items to get people into the store. In store they often promote their extremely low price on something to make a positive association with their customers and move more products.

Amazon’s approach is micro optimized to make money today at the cost of customer satisfaction, a long term losing strategy.

PS: It might just be my circle of friends, but many Amazon early adopters have mostly moved on. That opening the box and wondering how you where screwed this time feeling is a major issue for the company.