[HN Gopher] Amazon Prime inflates prices, using the false promis...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon Prime inflates prices, using the false promise of 'free
shipping'
Author : yarapavan
Score : 662 points
Date : 2021-05-30 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com)
| soheil wrote:
| Let's believe Amazon is able to find seller's selling their
| products elsewhere and ensure they're not selling it any cheaper
| thus forcing them to raise prices everywhere. Ignore the PR
| nightmare for a second as a result of people finding this out.
| I'd like to argue it may not be as bad as it looks at first
| glance.
|
| The scale at which Amazon operates at improves many aspects of
| the online shopping as a whole for every consumer even if not on
| Amazon. For example the shipping efficiencies resulted from FBA
| have distribution centers close to consumers, moving products
| much more efficiency across the country than if there were many
| small e-commerce stores each doing it their own way causing
| massive friction. The true cost wouldn't be apparent in the later
| case since the added friction would seem just normal and part of
| life as there wouldn't be anything as efficient as Amazon to
| compare it to.
|
| There are other inefficiencies that would result in having
| competing online stores on various platforms making it harder to
| find a product at a reasonable price without spending more time
| searching various stores and truly understanding the offered
| price after all the fakeries of promotions, cash-backs, pay later
| but with insane interest that we won't disclose to you at the
| times of purchase, hidden subscriptions fees instead of a one
| time payment and other scams used to be employed by numerous
| online stores before the days of Amazon.
|
| The cost of products sold to run a successful operation like
| amazon must be very close to the real cost that those products
| should be sold at when taking into account the shipping costs,
| supply logistics, cost of warehouse operations, etc. any devision
| from that by increasing prices and people see you as a
| monopolistic evil and your days are numbered, any lower than that
| and you wouldn't be able to scale as fast as economically
| possible.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| _Amazon founder Jeff Bezos knew that the number one pain point
| for online buyers is shipping - one third of shoppers abandon
| their carts when they see shipping charges._
|
| I'll wager this is due to sites that won't let shoppers see
| shipping charges until they get to the end of checkout.
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Until you where you're shipping, the cost is not knowable.
|
| You can build a feature for that but it adds complexity both in
| development, and (more importantly) the user experience.
| caturopath wrote:
| I think you're extending too much credit to many of these
| sites, who purposefully sequence a shipping estimate after
| four screens (to boost perceived sunk costs and committment)
| and after requiring your email address (so they can spam you
| in the future).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Dead on.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| If they ask me for email or full address to show me
| shipping prices, I just close the tab and never go back
| jankassens wrote:
| They could show a shipping rate to their typical target
| market (eg. "$5 shipping to continental US + tax") or use a
| IP based address estimation.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Until you where you're shipping, the cost is not knowable.
|
| Helpful sites handle this by offering to compute shipping at
| any point in the order, using my supplied postal code.
| Rockauto is one.
|
| Less helpful sites make me finalize the order as far as
| possible. I've seen sites withhold shipping amounts until I
| submit my payment info.
|
| Crap like this is what drives me back to Amazon and Ebay.
| [deleted]
| jeromegv wrote:
| Withholding shipping info after payment is processed? That
| would be illegal. All Shopify sites will show it to you
| after entering your address and before payment. It's hardly
| a reason to not shop at small business.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Withholding shipping info after payment is processed?
|
| I said submit - as in to the site.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Helpful sites handle this by offering to compute shipping
| at any point in the order
|
| Exactly. Some sites have an input field on the product
| page, under the product price, so you can add your postal
| code and see the total price
| detaro wrote:
| I've definitively not bought something from sites that didn't
| offer me the "complexity" of that user experience, and
| insisted I enjoy the "simpler" user experience of entering an
| email address, shipping address etc. pp. before getting told
| what this would cost me.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| You know, in Santiago, near where I lived there was a kiosk owner
| making, no joke, a million USD a year, in Chile of all places,
| just because he had a killer location. I knew the guy, I think
| his name was CG or similar, I never saw the name in print, and he
| was a pretty solid guy but he knew exactly how much to charge for
| the convenience. Now it is pretty convenient, but finally someone
| put up a shop close by, explicitly to compete with CG, and he
| undercuts him a lot.
|
| I feel like college economics classes teach you a version of
| perfect competition (like kiosks in Santiago) that is what I
| would call "hyper-lubricated." Profits lead to competitors
| instantly, without any friction or delay. You can't raise your
| prices long enough to profit. And that's not real, many
| businesspersons can raise prices and profit from it for a period
| of several years thanks to this friction. But eventually people
| figure out you're giving them a bad deal in a way they can't
| forgive.
|
| That happened to me with Amazon. They sold me some fake shit, not
| much fake shit, not expensive, but that was it, after all that
| bluster about how I'd never do business with a company that did x
| or y, I found out x and y consist specifically of selling
| counterfeits.
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Key paragraphs:
|
| > Now, if this were all that was happening, sellers and brands
| could just sell outside of Amazon, avoid the 35-45% commission,
| and charge a lower price to entice customers. "Buy Cheaper at
| Walmart.com!" should be in ads all over the web. But it's not.
| And that's where the main claim from Racine comes in. Amazon uses
| its Buy Box algorithm to make sure that sellers can't sell
| through a different store or even through their own site with a
| lower price and access Amazon customers, even if they would be
| able to sell it more cheaply. If they do, they get cut off from
| the Buy Box, and thus, cut off de facto from being able to sell
| on Amazon.
|
| >Amazon has between a half and three quarters of all customers
| online, so not being able to sell on Amazon is a nonstarter for
| brands and merchants. As a result, to keep selling on Amazon,
| merchants are forced to inflate their prices everywhere, with the
| 35-45% commission baked into the consumer price regardless of
| whether they are selling through Amazon.
|
| [...]
|
| > Amazon also uses its bazooka of cash from Prime members paying
| high consumer prices, laundered through third party sellers, to
| distort industries across the economy. Amazon spent some of it to
| build out a Hollywood studio, offering its original content
| 'free' to Prime members, who are of course indirectly paying for
| it with higher consumer prices. Prime also offers free video
| games and millions of songs. But none of this is actually free,
| it's paid for by Prime members in ways that Amazon disguises with
| its coercive arrangements.
|
| Screams monopoly. I think if the regulators and courts are just
| they'll sunder Amazon's "flywheel" and force them to deal
| honestly.
| orlovs wrote:
| _drake meme about free shipping_
| atum47 wrote:
| I tend to analyze memes on Reddit and see what effect it have on
| real life (prior to the boys, HBO show). One frequently recurrent
| is the one where Drake refuse a item for 10 dollars plus 2
| dollars shipping and accepts a 12 dollars product with free
| shipping. Seems most people prefer it this way. It's only logical
| for Amazon to do that (they probably have a deeper data analysis
| that confirms the meme).
| eshaan7 wrote:
| The article is much more about than just added shipping fees.
| It mainly points out how amazon doesn't let the sellers offer
| lower prices elsewhere.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| I always take this into account given that they are more often
| than not not the cheapest online -- of course the extra expense
| is for shipping. shipping costs money. especially if you want it
| on your doorstep tomorrow. do other people not see this?
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| >Amazon founder Jeff Bezos knew that the number one pain point
| for online buyers is shipping
|
| I disagree. I can't speak for everyone, but for me I want to know
| the full price of something as soon as possible. Most online/mail
| order retailers used "shipping" as an opportunity to milk
| customers for a few more dollars as the amount charged really
| didn't reflect how much it cost to ship an item.
|
| Customers are well aware today that "free shipping" just means
| "shipping included". I think this is one thing Amazon has
| pioneered that is actually _GREAT_ for customers. I would rather
| see a law passed that makes it illegal to add more fees than the
| first price you see (after choosing a non-specific shipping
| location). It 'd still be legal to _subtract_ from that to
| combine on shipping of multiple items, but never add.
| [deleted]
| 015a wrote:
| You're effectively asking for the government to legislate
| screwing over customers.
|
| Yes, shipping can be used as an opportunity to milk customers
| for a few extra dollars. Let's flip it and build it into the
| price of the item. You buy two of these items. The seller ships
| them together; there's a few cents in cost due to extra weight,
| but otherwise, they're pocketing that extra $X the 2nd item had
| set aside for shipping.
|
| Upfront priced shipping literally only and exclusively benefits
| the consumer when you buy one thing (or, if the seller is an
| idiot and ships one item per box, which never happens). And
| even then, it doesn't benefit the customer _more_ than
| backside-calculated shipping, its just slightly more
| convenient.
|
| My Etsy shop makes hundreds of dollars just on this oddity in
| consumer behavior; that they're more likely to buy something if
| it has free shipping, so we'll just tack on $4 to the price of
| each item. A consumer comes along and buys three things; they
| just paid $12 for "shipping". We put them all in one box, pay
| USPS $3.50, and pocket the remaining ~$8.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| I specifically said retailers should be able to reduce the
| cost for multiple items.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Sounds like you agree, not disagree then? This single
| simplified price is the point.
| Retric wrote:
| You don't see the final price in US stores it's all + sales
| tax. Except concession stands can magically tell you the
| actual price.
|
| His point is all online stores _can_ do the same thing as
| soon as they have your address. That's not what the market
| wants.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Whether a concessions stand includes the tax in the listed
| price depends very heavily on the particular stand in
| question. Very few do. The overwhelming majority don't. For
| example, the concessions stands at my local movie theaters
| (representing 3 of the 4 major chains), and the 9 local
| professionals sports teams, do not include sales tax in the
| listed price. Sales tax is levied separately.
|
| In many cases, that is because local law requires the sales
| tax to be listed separately on the receipt. (For example,
| in GST and GET jurisdictions, the tax charge _must_ be
| broken out separately to be passed on to the customer.)
|
| However, if the price you see is the price you pay and it's
| a round number, that concessions stand probably isn't
| bothering to collect sales tax at all. A lot of times
| that's because they sell items that are not subject to
| sales tax alongside items that are, and don't bother to
| keep track of the separate buckets.
|
| For an example of why they wouldn't: cold prepared foods
| can be taxed differently from hot prepared foods; packaged
| items are taxed differently from prepared foods; foods
| prepared on-site can be taxed differently from freshly-
| prepared foods prepared at another location; a food that
| includes a particular ingredient may be subject to sales
| tax but that same food without the ingredient may not be,
| etc. A large concessions stand, like the kind you would
| find at a baseball stadium, has the resources to figure
| this out. The mom-and-pop stand does not.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > His point is all online stores can do the same thing as
| soon as they have your address.
|
| Right... so agreeing then?
| Retric wrote:
| No, because they are incentivized not to. The point is
| customers are willing to pay for hidden fees otherwise
| online stores wouldn't separate things out.
|
| It's the same reason airlines added all those fees,
| people prefer to minimize sticker shock rather than
| minimize actual costs.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Customers don't want that, they don't have a choice in
| the matter.
|
| The reason fees, taxes, shipping, handling, and
| everything else are hidden is because that's how
| retailers compete with each other on price.
|
| They hide the true cost from the customer and make them
| jump through hoops to determine the actual price. By the
| time you've provided all of your information to determine
| the final price, it's easier to complete the sale than go
| elsewhere.
|
| If customers had all of that information up front they
| could compare prices between retailers easily.
|
| When has anyone ever said "gee I'm sure glad Comcast hid
| those $25 in equipment rental fees and regulatory fees
| from me so I could avoid sticker shock"
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But not doing this is what Bezos thinks as well. That's
| why he collapses all costs into a single price. He's in
| agreement.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Having worked on systems that vendors use to ship products,
| there's a reason it's called "shipping and handling." The
| shipping cost is usually calculated immediately via an API from
| the shipping company. The handling cost is whatever you want to
| tack on after shipping is calculated.
| rubyfan wrote:
| This sort of reads to me like Amazon have mastered the last mile
| that people really care about and are charging a premium for
| sellers to leverage their last mile solution. I just don't see
| how this constitutes a monopoly when you have tons of other
| options out there. Walmart, Target, Wayfair, Shopify all are
| competing.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| It's pretty clear that you didn't read the article because
| Stoller outlines why it's a monopoly very explicitly.
| eshaan7 wrote:
| This entire HN thread is "it doesn't affect me/ I like one
| day shipping, so it's not a monopoly".
| gigatexal wrote:
| Amazon's scale makes it unlikely that we will ever see a true
| competitor in this space and that sucks. Imagine how quickly the
| site would iterate on both quality of listings and overall UI/UX
| with a decent competitor. Or am I mistaken and there's one or two
| other everything-stores out there that has an international
| presence? (Amazon.de for folks in Germany for example).
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Important considerations. Also regarding the power of scale, I
| think people are happy to go straight to Amazon instead of
| shopping around because they're confident the price they get is
| going to be at least as good as anyone else.
|
| So consider my proposal to add to the lexicon of common market
| regulations: Same Price for All. You can't charge one customer
| any different unit price than another. (You can add a flat
| transaction/processing cost and maybe price-proportional fraud-
| insurance fee.) Volume, customer _non grata_ , negotiated
| deals...nothing changes the advertised price.
|
| Believe me, I'm one of the most laissez-faire people you're
| going to meet. But I think this ends up being healthy for all
| for the same reasons that other anti-monopoly laws do.
| wtf42 wrote:
| You just described Fair-trade laws[0] enacted during Great
| Depression and repealed around ~1971. Matt Stoller also
| described these laws in his book.
|
| [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/fair-trade-law
| [deleted]
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| This is exactly what happened with booking.com and hotels.
|
| Price parity meant hotels simply charged more on their website as
| well.
|
| That said Booking and Amazon are providing value to customers so
| be it. We pay for our collective laziness and high demands.
|
| With hotels you can at least call and get a discount or book with
| the right cancellation policy to get a cheaper price than
| booking.
| amelius wrote:
| > With hotels you can at least call and get a discount or book
| with the right cancellation policy to get a cheaper price than
| booking.
|
| Someone should write an app to automate that.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Every time I've called up the hotel directly and ask for a
| discount they say no, and tell me to use booking.com if it has
| a better price. After a few tries I've stopped doing it and
| just go with whatever booking shows online.
| jb775 wrote:
| I cancelled my prime last year mainly bc their "Guaranteed Free 2
| Day Shipping" actually meant "2-6 Day Shipping with a Guaranteed
| Apology Email if Late". Not to mention their prices not being
| better than many other places online.
| Cilvic wrote:
| After thinking about my own behavior I wanted to install an
| extension that would give me alternatives to amazon when buying
| something there. I didn't find anything that seemed to be
| popular/available in Germany.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| The issue isn't exactly inflating prices, it's aggressively
| punishing sellers for lowering their prices elsewhere where
| shipping is not included
|
| > Those sellers are effectively saying that Amazon dictates what
| happens on shopping sites all over the internet, and in doing so
| makes products more expensive for all of us.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I would have liked more detail on how this process works.
| Amazon can't very well punish Store A for the actions of
| undetectably-identically-owned Store B. Yet somehow the "Buy
| Box" has some magic way of detecting that? Maybe Amazon just
| has really good investigators, and they've made it clear that
| when they catch you, you're dead, and they'll deny the
| retribution by blaming opaque "Buy Box" algorithms.
| beezle wrote:
| The original idea with prime (for the consumer) was that they
| would get free _two_ day shipping. Amazon already had free
| shipping for Amazon sold items starting at like $25 total (is it
| 35 now?) but back then it could take 3-7 days to arrive.
|
| I can't claim to know the average amount of orders but it is not
| that hard to meet the hurdle for free 'standard' shipping and
| (pre-covid) most deliveries now are already in a two to three day
| window.
|
| Think it will be difficult to prove that the existence of Prime
| actually inflates the price of goods, net net, absent Prime.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Isn't the point of Prime next-day? Normal shipping was already
| around two days.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It was two. Now it's anything from next day to a week for
| oversized or limited stock items.
| Klinky wrote:
| No, it was free two-day shipping with cheap one-day, but that
| has morphed a bit over time, as sometimes stuff is eligible
| for free one-day shipping or is eligible for same-day
| delivery, if you buy at least $35. Also sometimes it takes
| longer than two days.
|
| Their normal ship time was up to 7 days in the past, and even
| using their non-prime shipping today that is still true.
| caturopath wrote:
| > sometimes stuff is eligible for free one-day shipping or
| is eligible for same-day delivery, if you buy at least $35
|
| Even cheap items alone on an order are often available
| same/next in many markets -- it has to do with where the
| inventory is and how they're going to get it to your home.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Normal shipping was already around two days.
|
| As the OP noted, 3-7 days is common. Amazon shopping in an
| unauthenticated/private window is an easy way to see shipping
| differences.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| Not anymore. My prime orders take multiple days to even ship
| and then 2-4 days to be delivered.
| caturopath wrote:
| US prime is marketed as "two day", though in many markets
| free next-day arrival is common.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qanMpnYsjk is a pretty good
| Youtube video about Amazon's shipping system.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qfeoqErtY is a good Youtube
| video that discusses how overnight shipping systems like
| Fedex etc. have works.
| modeless wrote:
| I mean, duh. You can see it on Amazon itself. All the "Amazon
| Fresh" items don't have the "free" shipping tax and are way
| cheaper.
|
| Like this deodorant. $1.88/oz with Prime and you have to buy at
| least a 4 pack. $1.15/oz on Fresh, and you can buy just one.
|
| Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Dove-Advanced-Antiperspirant-
| Deodoran...
|
| Fresh: https://www.amazon.com/Dove-Antiperspirant-Deodorant-
| Fresh-2...
| novaleaf wrote:
| When I search for cheap carabiner's on Amazon I notice that my
| former purchase no longer shows up on amazon search, even though
| it is prime, and offers great price+product characteristics:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016CMFESW
|
| This pattern seems to be showing up more and more. Maybe it's
| just that the FBA marketplace is flooded with too many choices,
| but my "best" often seems to be not searchable any more.
|
| In the carabiner example I present, there are plenty of tiny
| carabiners or those with weird shapes, or expensive ones. Just
| not low cost, non-tiny, normal shaped carabiners
| imagica wrote:
| For whoever considers using Amazon for convenience I say open
| your eyes. The lower prices and free shipping will disappear as
| soon as competition is driven out of business.
|
| Also working for Amazon seems to be a dystopian adventure [0] and
| [ ..]..
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4V_yAPfSr8
| mdoms wrote:
| Stop giving Amazon money. Just stop.
| willseth wrote:
| The impact of Amazon's market distorting power is somewhat
| overstated here, as the 30-45% _includes_ FBA. Walmart has a
| comparable service, WFS, which looks competitive, but it 's not
| always cheaper and can cost more than FBA
| (https://www.helium10.com/blog/walmart-wfs-fees-vs-amazon-fba)
|
| Of course that doesn't mean Amazon won't inflate FBA rates and
| squeeze sellers further, but it seems like currently the issue is
| about higher (non-FBA) seller fees forcing higher prices on
| competing services with lower seller fees because of Amazon's
| most favored nation clause. Unfortunately, Stoller doesn't break
| this down with enough detail to get a good understanding of its
| impact. In fact, this is pretty misleading:
|
| "Now, if this were all that was happening, sellers and brands
| could just sell outside of Amazon, avoid the 35-45% commission,
| and charge a lower price to entice customers."
|
| Sellers will always have shipping and fulfillment costs, whether
| or not they use the in house service, so the real consequence
| seems to be over the fee portion Stoller quotes as 5-10%, and
| it's unclear how much more this is relative to Amazon's
| competitors. Amazon's behavior is still anticompetitive, but MFNs
| aren't rare or illegal, and they're typically enforced by a
| business with more market power over its competitors (how else
| could you get someone to agree!).
|
| TLDR; It seems clear that Amazon is inflating market prices, but
| not to the degree Stoller suggests, and I suspect it will be a
| much more difficult case to make for the same reason. IANAL.
| willseth wrote:
| (I have to admit I was maybe a little too annoyed at Stoller's
| devotion to repeating essentially: "DID YOU KNOW THAT FREE
| SHIPPING ISN'T REALLY FREE GUYS??? But maybe everyone else
| didn't find it as patronizing.)
| tpg-3 wrote:
| It's not about free shipping. It's about the ability to ship a
| large product (e.g. a washing machine) often, and at no cost, to
| a very large number of people. The cost for this is still low,
| but it's growing fast. The cost is high though. Amazon is already
| much lower quality than they were 10 years ago.
| docdeek wrote:
| > Free shipping is the God of online retail, so powerful that
| France actually banned the practice to protect its retail
| outlets.
|
| That's not entirely accurate.
|
| France has disallowed free shipping for books. Every other
| category of product at Amazon qualifies for free shipping.
|
| While the article the author links to makes this clear near the
| end of that article, to write that France has banned free
| shipping is barely accurate.
| sofixa wrote:
| And Amazon just make you pay 0.01EUR for shipping when you buy
| only books, so the law is moderately effective.
| canada_dry wrote:
| > make you pay 0.01EUR for shipping
|
| Hard to imagine they (bureaucrats drawing up the regs) didn't
| see that coming. I'm guessing they did, but _saying_ they
| enacted legislation to protect small sellers was their real
| goal.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I thought everyone knew this is how it works.
|
| There's no free lunch. Loyalty programs, free offers, limited
| time discounts, etc.. are all "priced in" some how.
| brianstorms wrote:
| Have been an Amazon customer since 1996. Have signed up for Prime
| dozens of times -- for the free trials. I have never paid for it.
| I would never pay for it. Seems like a ripoff. In the early days
| they would warn you: if you end the trial you will never be
| allowed back into Prime. Heh. Then they would send you emails
| begging you to try it out again. So I would. Used it for "free"
| shipping. Over the years they added lots of other stuff like the
| movies/tv shows but the picture quality was lousy and they rarely
| if ever offered multichannel 5.1 audio. Another reason I have
| never paid for it.
| [deleted]
| LightG wrote:
| Only mentioned a few times here, but I think Amazon's "moat" is
| actually their customer service.
|
| It's the only reason I'm still strongly with them.
|
| I'd pay higher prices elsewhere for "local" or "indie" or
| whatever ... but have been stung so many times that I return to
| Amazon.
|
| I'm p!ssed off about that, as I recognise Amazon as the monopoly,
| but don't take kindly either to get ripped off elsewhere.
|
| Personally, yes, a monopoly is in the house. But the rest of
| retail has to up their game.
|
| If Amazon get broken up, which causes their prices to rise, which
| helps competition. That competition will still need to "customer
| serve" as well as Amazon for me to consider them.
| [deleted]
| drc37 wrote:
| I have some products on Amazon and hate paying the "Amazon tax".
| So, I often use Amazon as a way to look for a company that sells
| a product I want and then try to buy direct from that company.
| Most of the companies are thankful for me doing it.
| eshaan7 wrote:
| I like that approach but I'm concerned: Doesn't this also
| increase the chances of being scammed? With Amazon, you atleast
| have a decent customer service if the product you got was
| damaged or something.
| skybrian wrote:
| The bit afterwards about high-priced hearing aids that _doesn't
| mention Costco_ kind of undermined my trust in this author to
| explain the state of retail business.
| monkeyfacebag wrote:
| Can you please explain this or provide a link for those of us
| who aren't read into Costco hearing aids?
| skybrian wrote:
| Costco sells hearing aids significantly cheaper than most
| audiologists. You can see some prices here: [1].
|
| You do lose some things. There are store-brand hearing aids
| that are equivalent to some popular brands but missing a few
| features, and you don't get a 30-day trial period.
|
| I tried buying through them but went with Kaiser since
| service is better and I had insurance that would pay the
| extra cost.
|
| [1] https://clark.com/save-money/costco-hearing-aids/
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Seems like commenters are misreading the lawsuit here. My first
| instinct after reading the top paragraphs of Stoller's post was
| also "so what, this seems fine," but if you read to the end and
| see what the suit is really alleging, it's not just a policy that
| punished sellers for offering discounts on their products when
| sold off Amazon. It's the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere
| between 30-45% in fees to the sellers, which is much higher than
| other online marketplaces and obviously less than the 0% they'd
| charge themselves to sell through their own site (though they'd
| still need to pay money to operate the site), and _then_
| punishing them if they sell somewhere else that has lower fees
| for a lower price.
|
| That seems like legitimately monopolistic behavior and something
| that is illegal and should be stopped. The post is still
| misleading in that it doesn't mean Amazon is raising prices
| across the board by 30-45%. But they are raising prices across
| the board by whatever the delta is between their fees and
| WalMart's fees, or some other marketplace that charges even less,
| minus the difference in shipping.
|
| Normally, market forces would solve this problem without any need
| for legal intervention, because some other marketplace like
| WalMart can just offer lower seller fees and attract all the
| sellers. But that doesn't happen precisely because Amazon's
| massive subscribed user base represents so much of the market
| that no can afford not to sell there, which is seemingly the
| definition of a monopoly and why legal intervention is called
| for. Lower-cost marketplaces can only compete if Amazon is not
| allowed to blackball sellers from access to the only customer
| base that matters.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| The crux of the article was that you lose winning the buy offer
| if you sell elsewhere cheaper. Okay - so who wins the buy box?
| Someone who is actually offering a cheaper price, one that's
| more enticing for me as the shopper?
|
| How is that hurtful for the consumer? You're calling that
| "punishment", but in fact as a shopper I just want to see the
| lowest price with the fastest shipping.
|
| The seller fee bit part isn't relevant. Wal Mart and Target or
| any other site could well offer lower seller fees - in fact,
| they'd HAVE to undercut Amazon in order to catch up with
| Amazon. But that doesn't mean Amazon has to bring their prices
| down. I don't buy that.
|
| One other thing - as a shopper, no other shopping website comes
| close to Amazon's customer service.
|
| There is quite a bit to this article that's disingenuous, for
| example -
|
| > How do sellers handle these large fees from Amazon, and the
| inability to charge for shipping? Simple. They raise their
| prices on consumers. The resulting higher prices to consumers,
| paid to Amazon in fees by third party merchants, is why Amazon
| is able to offer 'free shipping' to Prime members. Prime, in
| other words, is basically a money laundering scheme. Amazon
| forces brands/sellers to bake the cost of Prime into their
| consumer price so it appears like Amazon offers free shipping
| when in reality the cost is incorporated into the consumer
| price.
|
| If pricing on Amazon is too high, consumers won't buy those
| products at Amazon and get rid of their Prime memberships too.
| But this isn't quite true. Using hyperbole like "money
| laundering" also doesn't help the case.
|
| > Amazon also uses its bazooka of cash from Prime members
| paying high consumer prices, laundered through third party
| sellers, to distort industries across the economy.
|
| Again, hyperbole. The author merely brushes off the fact that
| these sellers don't HAVE to sell on Amazon in the first place.
| Presumably, Amazon is growing because more and more sellers
| flock to their website. If it's a bad deal for sellers, they
| can sell on other websites. The article makes a one line claim
| - representing it as a ground truth - that a new business HAS
| to sell on Amazon. So this is clearly stating that no business
| can survive if they only have their own store presence or sell
| on Amazons competitors. I don't believe this is true (based on
| a very successful family business). Yes my data point is
| anecdotal, but if we're saying no business can survive without
| the ability to sell on Amazon, then the entire article is moot
| - the simple reason for breaking up Amazon is that no small
| business can survive without Amazon.
|
| Again, I don't think that's true, and the author knows that -
| hence, the long wordy article to come at the issue from other
| angles while sprinkling in hyperbole.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The person who wins the lowest price box is not the lowest
| price. It is the lowest price who agreed not to sell on other
| sites for a lower price than one Amazon.
|
| You as the customer are being tricked.
|
| I sell for 15 on Amazon, 10 on my own site and someone else
| sells the same product for 20 everywhere. Guess what price
| goes in the buy box. 20.00
|
| "One other thing - as a shopper, no other shopping website
| comes close to Amazon's customer service"
|
| Where is the chat button? Where can I ask a question? Where
| can I let Amazon know something was wrong with the refund
| they sent?
| tracer4201 wrote:
| >The person who wins the lowest price box is not the lowest
| price. It is the lowest price who agreed not to sell on
| other sites for a lower price than one Amazon. You as the
| customer are being tricked.
|
| There's no dark pattern involved here. When the buy box
| doesn't show you the lowest price, you usually see
| something like "Available for a lower price from these
| sellers" or some wording like that. In my 15+ years as a
| Prime customer, I've seen this quite a bit where I can find
| a competing offer for a lower price, often though with a
| longer delivery time.
|
| >Where is the chat button? Where can I ask a question?
| Where can I let Amazon know something was wrong with the
| refund they sent?
|
| I'm going to assume you're not writing this in bad faith
| and that this isn't a rhetorical question. From Amazon.com,
| I see "Customer service" is the second link from the left
| just below the search box. From that page, I see a big box
| in the center titled "Returns and Refunds".
| ipaddr wrote:
| If you click that it asks you what product. If you select
| a product that was returned you can't do anything
| further.
|
| I had a refund where the seller shorted me on the
| shipping and the refund ended up costing me money. I had
| no way to contact Amazon.. I would hope for the best
| customer service they could provide a chat button where I
| could address an issue like this.
|
| Others sites have a floating chatbox ready to assist you
| on your purchase. The best customer service should
| include something similiar, I am right?
| Riseed wrote:
| > If you click that it asks you what product. If you
| select a product that was returned you can't do anything
| further.
|
| The chatbot has always given me an option along the lines
| of "I still have a question about this", which then
| connects me to a human. If that option weren't there, I'd
| simply choose another order so I could reach a human, and
| then explain the situation to the human.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I don't understand how losing the buy box for offering your
| products cheaper elsewhere can be anything but punishment.
| You say yourself that picking the cheapest price plus
| shipping is what consumers want, so how a companies pricing
| elsewhere relevant to a consumer buying on Amazon?
|
| You're also making the assumption that the buy box always
| offers the lowest price, which isn't true if Amazon are
| factoring non-price variables like is the manufacture
| undercutting Amazon on their own site. So as a seller you
| could be offering the lowest price with the fastest shipping,
| but still lose the buy box because you had the audacity to
| offer a better price on your own site or at Walmart.
|
| This in turn creates a very strong incentive to sell your
| products everywhere for the same price, regardless of your
| actual costs. So your prices at Walmart and your own site go
| up.
|
| If pricing at other stores wasn't a factor in the buy box
| algorithm, then consumers could find lower prices else where
| if they wanted to. Thus allowing competitors to slowly loosen
| Amazon strangle hold on online retail, and reduce prices for
| consumers.
|
| > If pricing on Amazon is too high, consumers won't buy those
| products at Amazon and get rid of their Prime memberships
| too.
|
| How can this ever happen if selling cheaper elsewhere loses
| you the buy box on the biggest online store?
|
| > If it's a bad deal for sellers, they can sell on other
| websites.
|
| Again you're completely ignoring the size of Amazon market
| share here. Who is voluntarily going to give up 50%-60% of
| all online sales? It's a bit like US ISPs, if Comcast screws
| with fees stupid prices on your cable contract you can just
| go to a competitor right, we'll just ignore the fact the
| competitor is selling 2mb DSL.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| >You're also making the assumption that the buy box always
| offers the lowest price, which isn't true if Amazon are
| factoring non-price variables like is the manufacture
| undercutting Amazon on their own site. So as a seller you
| could be offering the lowest price with the fastest
| shipping, but still lose the buy box because you had the
| audacity to offer a better price on your own site or at
| Walmart.
|
| I'm on Amazon page right now. It tells me that I can get a
| product the fastest with the buy box offer, or I can get a
| cheaper price from other "offers". And when I click that
| link, it shows me higher and lower prices, but the lower
| prices have a delivery date (actually a range, between X
| and Y) more than a week out.
|
| Let me start just by saying that the offer is still shown.
| It's not immediately in the buy box, but as a shopper, I
| have access to the lower prices and can buy from a
| different seller. This information is not obfuscated from
| me or hidden through some dark pattern.
|
| >This in turn creates a very strong incentive to sell your
| products everywhere for the same price, regardless of your
| actual costs. So your prices at Walmart and your own site
| go up.
|
| >If pricing at other stores wasn't a factor in the buy box
| algorithm, then consumers could find lower prices else
| where if they wanted to. Thus allowing competitors to
| slowly loosen Amazon strangle hold on online retail, and
| reduce prices for consumers.
|
| The incentive goes away if you don't sell on Amazon, right?
| Any Amazon "strangle" (your word, not mine) only exists
| because people choose to sell on Amazon, right?
|
| >How can this ever happen if selling cheaper elsewhere
| loses you the buy box on the biggest online store?
|
| See my previous point. Don't sell on Amazon.
|
| >Again you're completely ignoring the size of Amazon market
| share here. Who is voluntarily going to give up 50%-60% of
| all online sales? It's a bit like US ISPs, if Comcast
| screws with fees stupid prices on your cable contract you
| can just go to a competitor right, we'll just ignore the
| fact the competitor is selling 2mb DSL.
|
| I don't agree with this. Companies like Comcast are deemed
| monopolies because their customers don't have a choice.
| Just as you stated, Comcast gives me high speed broadband.
| But my choice is limited to Comcast, and the only
| competitor (if there even is one in my neighborhood) will
| offer 2MB DSL.
|
| This is NOT the case with online shopping.
|
| I can purchase an iPad from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, and a
| bunch of other websites.
|
| I can purchase my razor blades online from Target, Amazon,
| Gillette, etc. including several of the grocery stores in
| my city (who will ship them.
|
| Yes people shop at Amazon, but it's because they choose to.
| I have the option of not shopping with Amazon. As a matter
| of fact, I bought 10 "5 Star" brand notebooks on Amazon. I
| saw later that Wal-Mart had them for $3 instead of
| $7/notebook. I sent them back to Amazon and got them from
| Wal-Mart instead.
|
| With internet service, many people don't have a choice but
| to go with Comcast, Cox, or whichever single provider
| offers the service in their neighborhood.
| dpwm wrote:
| > That seems like legitimately monopolistic behavior and
| something that is illegal and should be stopped.
|
| IIRC they do something like it with books through Kindle Direct
| Publishing: you have to sell on Amazon at the lowest price
| available anywhere, or else they take a much bigger cut.
|
| It will probably be argued that Amazon isn't actually a
| monopoly in these areas, therefore it's not an abuse of
| monopoly. I'm only half joking.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I've seen local restaurants and takeaways with (presumably)
| similar contracts with the food-ordering aggregators (Just
| Eat etc).
|
| Some have a clear statement on the website like "10% discount
| for ordering by phone", others will apply a similar discount
| when ordering in person, or will put a 10% off coupon (must
| order by phone / their own website) in with every delivery.
| dpwm wrote:
| I think I've seen it more directly with Amazon sellers
| including discount vouchers that only work on their own
| store.
| namdnay wrote:
| > That seems like legitimately monopolistic behavior and
| something that is illegal and should be stopped
|
| The type of contract you are describing is common in many
| industries. They're known as "full content agreements" in the
| airline industry for example, and they're a continual source of
| tension between the distribution networks and travel agencies
| (who want these rules) and the airlines (who would like to be
| able to sell cheaper on their own direct channels). The same
| thing exists for hotels etc
|
| I guess the question boils down to whether Amazon can be
| considered to have a monopoly position in the indirect
| distribution of the specific type of goods being considered. I
| imagine that might be possible for books, not sure about other
| goods
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Booking.com's "best price agreement", which prohibited hotels
| from offering lower prices on their own website, was just
| declared illegal by the highest German court because it's
| anti competitive.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| For online shopping for most goods under $100, and many over
| $100, they really do. I've seen a few balance sheets, and
| Amazon is usually over 80% of online sales.
| setum wrote:
| > and then punishing them if they sell somewhere else that has
| lower fees for a lower price
|
| how would Amazon know if a particular seller is also selling
| elsewhere?
| lallysingh wrote:
| A web crawler
| jannes wrote:
| I have read that they even go so far and crawl+scrape other
| shop websites.
|
| Of course that is hard to prove because they have plausible
| deniability.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| The trick is to have "Amazon-exclusive" SKUs, or vice-
| versa: "NotAmazon-exclusive" SKUs that are ever-so-slightly
| different to justify a different price.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Eyeballs.
| skystarman wrote:
| Not defending Amazon's behavior but the standard for government
| intervention in antitrust cases has for decades been how the
| anticompetitive behavior affects consumers, NOT other
| businesses/sellers.
|
| And it's pretty clear that Amazon has led to much lower prices
| and a consumer surplus compared to alternatives in the market.
|
| And for all the shit AMZN gets on HN and over social media,
| broadly it is still one of the most widely respected and
| popular companies in the US across a broad spectrum of
| consumers.
|
| You can argue whether that's overall good or bad, but I'm
| talking about the law as it is and has been enforced vs. what
| people WISH the law said.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I don't think current antitrust law really covers it. I
| think in the next decade we'll get new versions of what a
| monopoly, oliogopoly, and antitrust cover as umbrella
| descriptors. Amazon may get even worse since Bezos is leaving
| soon.
| ticviking wrote:
| Except that the lawsuit literally says the opposite. That
| Amazon punishes people offering lower prices elsewhere.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Your point might be true in small sub-markets - for example
| for AliBaba imports, especially those where tens of sellers
| all import exactly the same items at broadly similar prices.
|
| As a general point, it's not even close to being true.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >That seems like legitimately monopolistic behavior
|
| It seems monopsonistic to me, I believe it should be illegal
| but not sure it actually is?
| sanderjd wrote:
| It is probably illegal if they have a monopoly market share.
| But they don't, so it probably isn't. They have a large
| market share, but are very very far from monopolizing the
| entire retail market.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Correct. A lot of people assume that if something doesn't
| seem "fair", then it must be illegal. And they assume that if
| a company uses it's market power in some way to benefit
| itself at the expense of others in the market, then this must
| also be illegal. This goes to the idea of viewing the world
| as a type of HR department where you can always appeal
| unfairness to some authority that will punish appropriately.
| Many people go through life endlessly looking for an
| authority figure, or manager-in-the-sky to file complaints
| with and make things right.
|
| But that's not how it works, you have to actually violate
| some law on the books, and I'm not sure what laws against
| monopsony we have -- for example, Apple is ruthless in
| driving down prices (for itself) due to its market power, and
| if it forces vendors to agree to never charge Apple more than
| what they charge another customer, this would not be illegal,
| even though the end result might be vendors raising prices
| for everyone except Apple, and thus seeming "unfair" to
| everyone else forced to compete with Apple. Demanding the
| best possible deal is not unfair competition.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It works whatever way public sentiment wants it to work.
|
| Most of us live in a democracy, laws aren't black and white
| and can be changed on a whim with little more than a single
| election cycle, or interpreted by courts in any arbitrary
| fashion. Sure, a large company can push unfair practices to
| a point, and can throw lawyers at it to a point but I think
| some large companies fatally underestimate the danger of
| flouting their position; the US government or a pissed off
| Judge could shut down Amazon's entire operation in a day if
| there was the political will or some scandal came about. So
| it is absolutely in their self-interest to make sure their
| practices are "fair".
| cerved wrote:
| I'm not familiar with US antitrust legislation but usually
| these laws stipulate that you can either be "unfair" or
| have no competition, but not both.
| testcase_delta wrote:
| I own a consumer goods business and sell via Amazon and
| traditional retailers. Amazon's 30% to 40% fee is much less
| than traditional retail, which starts at 50%. Amazon is where I
| get my best margins.
| dpwm wrote:
| This is an interesting perspective.
|
| It fits with my understanding of traditional retail as pretty
| brutal for new entrants, taking more of a cut and putting up
| a much higher barrier to entry than Amazon.
|
| Ebay may have lower fees, but Amazon is where many people go
| for convenience.
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Yeah people love bitching about Amazon but traditional retail
| was scum. How quickly everyone forgets why internet shopping
| got big...
| andersonvom wrote:
| It's great that we can use this as reference for what it used
| to be. Presumably, this is what competition should bring in:
| "traditional retail sucked, so amazon comes in and takes over
| it by offering something better."
|
| The same thing would still apply now too: "if sellers are
| able to offer their goods elsewhere for cheaper, they should
| be able to", instead of being forced to raise prices
| everywhere.
| la6471 wrote:
| For whatever reason HN seems to have a rather unhealthy
| obsession with Amazon that is evident in somewhat regular
| articles about Amazon's dominance in the online retail space.
| Frankly it gets a little tiring after sometime , specially when
| walmart.com exists and these posts smells like some underhanded
| SEO type activities. Anyway hopefully HN moderators will take
| care of this before it becomes a tool in the hand of SEO
| agencies paid for by other companies.
| serf wrote:
| the existence of a competitor is poor reasoning about whether
| or not monopolistic intention exists.
|
| When a single entity in the market can control and set the
| prices for the entire market it indicates an uneven shift in
| market power. Amazon has such market power at the moment, and
| this puts them at risk of committing monopolistic behaviors.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Frankly it gets a little tiring after sometime , specially
| when walmart.com exists
|
| You didn't read the article, which demonstrates how Amazon's
| actions raise the prices at Wal-Mart.
| hammock wrote:
| >It's the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45%
|
| You ought to see what b&m retailers charger their suppliers !
| waitwhat333 wrote:
| Please explain, I thought B&M was just a discount store that
| purchased surplus inventory and knocked it out cheap? why
| would they be charging their suppliers
| nhooyr wrote:
| Brick and mortar.
| mprev wrote:
| Brick and mortar, not the UK retail chain.
| forgithubs wrote:
| That's just far from being a monopoly. I subscribe to Amazon
| because I've always got an excellent service.
|
| I also buy on Ebay, Craglist, Walmart and diverse retailers
| that are entering the eCommerce game.
|
| The thing here is that markets take longer to work but if you
| look around, there is plenty of competition.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > That's just far from being a monopoly.
|
| Correct, but besides the point. The relevant laws are not
| just about monopolies.
|
| >but if you look around, there is plenty of competition.
|
| Also correct, but again not really relevant.
| forgithubs wrote:
| I guess it is relevant to the "Amazon is an evil and
| monopolistic organisation" theme.
|
| Maybe not relevant for the lawsuit specified in the report,
| they are certainly entitled to sue for any reason. But the
| classic theme still show its nose.
|
| On an other note, if amazon has 128 million prime
| subscribers and they like the service, it is something
| politicians need to be aware if they still want to be
| elected.
| matsemann wrote:
| Many other comments here in addition to yours fail to grasp
| that one doesn't have to have a literal 100% monopoly to show
| monopolistic behavior that leaves the customers as a whole
| worse off.
|
| Like this article says, prices are increased across the board
| because of how Amazon acts.
| forgithubs wrote:
| Don't paint amazon subscribers as victims here. I am
| entirely satisfied of the time saved and the cost of Amazon
| products I buy.
|
| The yelling comes from the Amazon sellers side, not from
| the customers.
|
| There is plenty of competition for me to shop around, and
| if there are none, I'd rather buy from Amazon as I trust
| that they reduce the costs , fees and taxes effectively.
|
| I would argue that the government should do less and not
| more. If they really want competition to grow, they could
| stop charging capital gains on every item a seller flip.
|
| For example, when I was selling on Ebay, after the platform
| fees, the shipping fees, and the government taxes, it's
| just not worth it to enter the sector as a small guy.
| lukifer wrote:
| There is a subtle tipping point of negotiating leverage
| where an agent has the ability to influence or dictate
| prices for the entire ecosystem. The formal term is
| "market power" [0].
|
| Say you're a vendor producing widgets for $10 each,
| costing $9 each to produce. 80% of your buyers prefer the
| buying and service experience of Amazon, for all the
| reasons you describe. They have no brand loyalty to you:
| they go to Amazon, type "widget" in the search box, and
| buy the first result with 4+ stars costing roughly $10.
|
| Amazon decides out of the blue that they want $1 per
| sale, and what's more, they will drop you from their
| platform if you offer a different price on Amazon and
| other storefronts (be it another giant like Walmart, or
| your own low-traffic e-commerce website). Because this $1
| is the entirety of your profit margin, your only way to
| stay in business is to raise the price to $11, and
| because your widget competitors have been given the same
| deal, all widgets now cost $11, and when consumers are
| price-shopping, they're now conditioned to see $11 as the
| normal price for a widget. You could opt out of Amazon
| entirely, but that would limit you to 20% of revenue,
| which is also a dealbreaker. (You theoretically get a
| higher cut from that 20% at the new price-point, but you
| also suffer the deadweight loss from buyers who
| can't/won't transact at that price point.)
|
| The standard libertarian retort would be that the seller
| consented to their contract with Amazon, while no citizen
| or market actor ever signed some imaginary "social
| contract" with state regulators, and it's a legitimate
| point. But saying that a vendor whose livelihood is
| dependent on a presence on Amazon.com (whose revenue
| rivals the GDP of many nations [1]) "chose" that
| relationship is like saying that each citizen "chooses"
| the laws of the nation-state they live in, because they
| could have moved elsewhere. Yes, technically there is an
| exit clause; but in both cases the table is tilted such
| that exiting is deeply against the interests of each
| actor, thus each actor is incentivized to perpetuate the
| asymmetry in negotiating power.
|
| Market competition is a great thing when it works, and
| many times it does. But oft it's forgot that the whole
| point of a competition is to win. And whether we're
| talking political power or economic power, concentrations
| of power tend to snowball and entrench.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/big-techs-power-in-4-numbers-
| de8a5bc3-...
| matsemann wrote:
| You're kinda proving the point here. If it weren't for
| Amazon's behavior, you could have gotten a better/cheaper
| service. But you can't, as the prices are raised across
| the board. And the true cost is hidden from you.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _Don 't paint amazon subscribers as victims here._
|
| The point of the lawsuit and detailed in the analysis is
| that _ALL_ online purchases end up being influenced
| (controlled?) as a result. This creates prices that are
| 30-45% higher across all retailers for a given item.
|
| That would include Amazon Prime subscribers and random
| internet guy buying the same thing from a different site.
|
| If Amazon controls their own storefronts, that's one
| thing. When they can exert control over competitors'
| storefronts - or worse, _all_ competitors ' storefronts -
| that's a different matter.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Don't paint amazon subscribers as victims here. I am
| entirely satisfied"
|
| My grandma recently bought some snake oil and she's been
| very happy with it, apparently it prevents health issues
| with blood pressure - ehich she never had to begin with.
| She also invested in a monorail company registered in
| mongolia.
|
| Just because you are happy does not mean you have not
| been amused/mislead/defrauded.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| Ive def noticed Amazon becoming more and more of rip off. I
| cant even find things for less than $10 anymore. There are
| numerous items I've looked into buying from them, but it's
| priced at $12 on Amazon, where i could walk into a target or
| Wally World and get it for $5...
|
| I haven't found any sites where I can get cheaper small items
| anymore. I'm up for suggestions for other online retailers.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Yes, I've also noticed that the cost of small items has
| gone up significantly. Amazon passing shipping costs and
| fees onto sellers explains this finally.
| monoideism wrote:
| > Ive def noticed Amazon becoming more and more of rip off.
|
| Yes, and more and more counterfeit goods.
|
| They must feel really confident with their market position
| (ie, monopoly), because they just don't seem concerned
| about counterfeit products.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I wonder how long the momentum will run on this working.
| There's still a lot of earned assumption that Amazon is a
| competitive price.
|
| I'll usually let a slight increase in price slide for the
| convenience, but I'm always looking for a reason not to use
| Amazon if I can - and a rip off price is a good trigger for
| me to be patient and get the product next week with a
| smaller shop.
| as300 wrote:
| I think this is Amazon's goal, where you're expending
| energy _not_ to buy from them. You need a reason _not to_
| and then it only lasts _for a short time period_.
|
| They're banking on being people's default retailer which
| lets them get away with this behavior.
| stefan_ wrote:
| A putting a clause into a contract they enter into with B
| that B may not sell to C (competitor to A) is obviously anti-
| competitive. Think of the whole Intel "you can't buy AMD"
| clauses with OEMs.
| davoneus wrote:
| They are a monopoly and are being accused of being so because
| their mandatory policies forbid the merchants from selling
| that product anywhere else cheaper than Amazon.
|
| This means that if I buy the product from say Walmart or
| Target, then I am paying 25 to 35% more for it. This is
| because the merchant cannot list it anywhere else cheaper
| than they list it on Amazon.
|
| That is a clear violation of monopoly laws and I applaud that
| AG for his efforts to abolish these "most favored nation"
| status agreements.
| forgithubs wrote:
| Nothing stops walmart to enter the market and cut the price
| off 25% to 35%.
|
| And the buyers will move towards it.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| You were already told that that is literally not true and
| exactly what the lawsuit is about.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > It's the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45%
| in fees to the sellers
|
| I'm glad this was stated. It is new insight for me.
|
| I got in the habit of only buying from the actual manufacturer
| store on Amazon, thinking it was benefiting the company. For
| example: buying Bose speakers on the Amazon Bose site, instead
| of the bose.com. Now I realize that Bose loses a lot of money
| going through amazon. I should just be going to the bose.com
| store and cutting out amazon. I never really need anything I
| buy online "tomorrow".
|
| The only thing I've run into is the vendor site saying out of
| stock, but the vendor -store- on Amazon in stock. E.g., I
| bought a PixHawk4 flight contgroller from HolyBro. The HolyBro
| site was out of stock, but Amazon's HolyBro store had it in
| stock. /bangs head on wall/ I understand why, it's just...
| weird.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I would like more information on that number. It doesn't
| sound tenable as presented for physical goods.
| brnt wrote:
| The rule of thumb is simple: more middlemen equals lower
| share going to the person actually making the thing.
|
| I had this revelation too when I started buying food from
| farmers direct and was surprised at the low prices. Its kinda
| obvious, when you think about it.
| nanis wrote:
| > more middlemen equals lower share going to the person
| actually making the thing.
|
| Most people forget that the transaction might not have
| taken place were it not for said middleman.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| What you get by shopping at Amazon isn't just the pricing,
| it's the convenience not to enter your details again and
| again and again for the sake of getting a single item. I'd
| love if someone could solve it and instead of 'sign up here'
| I'd get 'pay with superDuperSingleSolutionForAllECommerce'
| and it's done. Maybe I should ask for VC money and start
| working on it?..
| willj wrote:
| Isn't this the same as "pay with PayPal/Amazon pay/etc"?
| nanis wrote:
| > Isn't this the same as "pay with PayPal/Amazon
| pay/etc"?
|
| There is always the issue of how well the integration
| performs. It is not uncommon for merchants software to
| get confused in the process and ship your order to the
| billing address or for other things to go wrong. When
| that happens, you now have to deal with customer service
| of varying quality.
|
| In most cases, the purchase decision is easier for me to
| make on Amazon than anywhere else. I've been a customer
| since almost the first days and while I can count a lot
| of minor irritations, there isn't anything better.
| mdaniel wrote:
| The very problem that PayPal solves, and why Elon now
| builds rockets (and Google Pay, and Pay with Amazon, to
| come full circle). However, inevitably the vendor wants
| your details in their own database and now you're back to
| having to interact with their terrible UX, just with the
| benefit of a breach no longer exfiltrating your credit card
| info
|
| That's not even mentioning the network effect, where a
| service has to have enough adoption or demand to "force"
| other merchants to accept it
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I understand the vendor wants my details,I'd want it too,
| but the reality is that the buyer is voting for
| convenience and going to Amazon instead. Paypal kind of
| does it,but only to a degree-I'd love wider spectrum of
| payment methods+ some flexibility on what the vendor
| can/can't do with my data,similar to how app permissions
| work on Android. If it's some 'local brooms and stick',
| they only get my address for delivery,but if it's some
| specialist store with fountains of knowledge,then
| yes,sure,send me texts,emails and so on.
| mrnaught wrote:
| > it's the convenience not to enter your details again...
|
| With more and more adoption of ApplePay and GooglePay to
| power the checkout experience this advantage might away..
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| I've seen a good number of sites recently where you can pay
| with your Amazon account or PayPal. Also with browsers auto
| filling everything these days including credit card
| numbers, I haven't found it too troublesome purchasing one-
| offs from stores online.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I don't notice because Bitwarden takes care of entering my
| details for me.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Klarna does this quite well here in Sweden. Almost too
| well, it often loads an Iframe with my information filled
| in already on a checkout page of a random store, without
| any input from me.
| dpwm wrote:
| I would be surprised if Amazon had the same non-negotiable-
| take-it-or-leave-it terms with Bose as it has with others.
|
| Which raises an obvious asymmetry: Amazon makes no guarantee
| that it is not offering more favourable terms for bigger
| suppliers - and although mere speculation, I would be
| surprised if that didn't go on, because I seem to remember
| traditional retailers doing similar things.
|
| I'm not saying this is good or bad, just pointing out that
| with all retail there has been almost a phase transition once
| the supplier is a household name, and the dynamics change
| almost to the point where retailers would offer their
| products at cost price or even a loss just to make sure that
| their customers could buy the household name through them.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I never really need anything I buy online "tomorrow".
|
| Gifts generally have strict deadlines. Sadly, Amazon has
| stopped offering any shipping speed guarantees -- there is no
| longer even an option in the purchase flow. It will get there
| when it gets there.
|
| They won't refund if they miss their own self-imposed
| shipping deadlines, either.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I think that might be regional?
|
| Prime customers get pretty much anything delivered in two
| days.
|
| I still haven't figured out how they do it. I ordered two
| obscure oil filters, and they were delivered within a day.
| I think they had driver go into a local automotive store,
| and buy them?
|
| Anyhoo, they were cheaper than the store price.
|
| (I don't hate Amazon. I'm pretty amazed how effient they
| are. I never thought I would pay for Prime, but that MGM
| buy was brilliant. Local retailers need to up their game.
| I'm getting tired of being quoted a cheaper price online,
| just to pay more if I go in to buy. Automotive parts stores
| are notoriorious for this behavior.)
| victor106 wrote:
| > I should just be going to the bose.com store and cutting
| out amazon. I never really need anything I buy online
| "tomorrow".
|
| That's another point of the article. Amazon forces Bose not
| to sell at a lower price anywhere else. So the price you pay
| at Bose is also the 30-40% Prime premium that Amazon charges.
| Although you are right that premium goes to the manufacturer
| as opposed to Amazon but overall a significant loss to all
| customers prime or non-prime
| dtnewman wrote:
| In this specific example it's probably the opposite. Bose
| is very good at locking down their supply chain to make
| sure no one is selling their headphones below list. They
| always have been. They probably imposed this restriction on
| Amazon even if now Amazon wants it too.
| felixfbecker wrote:
| +1 the point of their algorithm not putting sellers in the buy
| box that offer their product elsewhere cheaper is the problem
| they should absolutely be ruled to stop that practice by a
| court. Nobody can make an argument for how that is possibly
| GOOD for competition and the consumer.
| bonzini wrote:
| You could argue that it's good for the customer, in that the
| customer won't see offers that are less convenient than what
| is available elsewhere. In practice sellers will just update
| prices on the other markets.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Perhaps in the short term.
|
| But the capitalist notion of buyer/seller/market, with
| government as referee, gets wobbly when a seller buys the
| market.
|
| It's almost as though Amazon behaves with impunity toward
| the market, having already purchased the referee.
| varispeed wrote:
| They should also be required to return all fees few years
| back. If that would bankrupt them, then so be it.
| murgindrag wrote:
| As a consumer, I've been !@#$%'ed a few times when I've
| bought from Amazon and didn't notice it was a 3rd party
| seller with their own shipping method. One time, I was !@#$%
| to the tune of a few hundred bucks.
|
| Amazon can do more QC if it goes through them.
| the_local_host wrote:
| I don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is my
| experience as well. It's to the point where if it doesn't
| ship from Amazon, I don't buy it.
|
| The last thing I accidentally bought from a non-Amazon
| shipper arrived in a semi-destroyed box, inside a too-small
| bubble-wrap envelope, apparently shipped from someone's
| condominium (I guess they bought in bulk and repackaged?)
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Probably "buyer beware", if you're buying something that
| expensive then you should look around and not just assume
| Amazon has the lowest price.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| It is not always that simple. Part of the arbitrage can
| be generic things from aliexpress bought in bulk and
| shipped from china over 8-10 weeks. The mark up on amazon
| is partly the fact that the long ship time has already
| been done.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Absolutely. I'd pay more if I could look at Amazon
| without any of the third party garbage.
| random42_ wrote:
| _I guess they bought in bulk and repackaged?_
|
| I know somebody who sells stuff at Amazon as a third-
| party seller. It's a common strategy to do exactly that:
| find items that are selling for more than the local
| store, buy it from the local store and sell it on Amazon.
| There's more to it for selecting which products to sell
| but this is basically how it works. There are people
| selling courses teaching these things.
| rizwank wrote:
| Retail arbitrage.
| eigenvector wrote:
| Search for any Costco-exclusive item on Amazon and you'll
| find exactly this strategy at work, complete with 300%
| markups on the Costco price.
| cerved wrote:
| probably because there's a lot of anal downvoters on HN
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm confused. You somehow clicked through the order summary
| and confirmation pages without noticing that the total
| included unexpected hundreds of dollars in shipping fees?
| derefr wrote:
| Sellers can avoid charging you import duties up front,
| instead saying to the logistics company that the import
| duties are COD. The logistics company them pays the
| import duties themselves as a "loan", sends you the
| package, and a few weeks later you get a bill from the
| logistics company for 10x the import duties to pay back
| the principal of the "loan" + a "convenience fee."
|
| A few months back, my partner ordered some books from
| Taiwan. The books -- including nominal "shipping" -- were
| $20; the logistics provider's bill for the "convenience"
| of handling our import duties for us, when the seller
| neglected to do so, was $40.
|
| The worst thing is that there's no way under an
| individual shipping _recipient_ account to declare that
| you want to pay these fees in advance instead (such that
| there's no "loan") or to reject shipment at point of
| origin if the shipper tries to pull this on you. This is
| because the "recipient pays" logistical arrangement is
| intended for _businesses_ , that do both shipping and
| receiving, and operate without much cash flow, to allow
| them to postpone the costs of receiving orders until
| they've sold (and profited on) the same goods to others.
| It's supposed to be something that they _buyer requests_
| the seller to use, for their sake; not something the
| seller uses unilaterally. So you actually have to
| register _as a shipper business-account_ to get access to
| the UX where you can declare that _your company_ wants to
| pay import duties in advance.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Why would someone ever pay a non-authorized bill for
| hundreds of dollars, after already having purchased the
| product and paid for shipping??
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > and a few weeks later you get a bill from the logistics
| company for 10x the import duties to pay back the
| principal of the "loan" + a "convenience fee".
|
| So mail the bill back with a (obviously-)form letter to
| the effect of "I did not agree to pay this, whoever told
| you I would has defrauded you, feel free to send me a
| letter at this address if you want me to testify against
| them in court."?
|
| > the "recipient pays" logistical arrangement is intended
| for businesses,
|
| > It's supposed to be something that they _buyer
| requests_ the seller to use, for their sake; not
| something the seller uses unilaterally. So you actually
| have to register _as a shipper business-account_ to get
| access to the UX where you can declare that _your
| company_ wants to pay import duties in advance.
|
| Sounds like evidence/precedent that they're using this
| mechanism intentionally fraudulently, rather than out of
| a mistaken belief that you'd actually want that.
| derefr wrote:
| Oh definitely they're using it fraudulently; but whether
| or not the seller defrauded the logistics provider, it's
| the logistics provider that put up the import duty bond.
|
| Legally speaking, you owe the logistics provider money
| _separately_ from any contract between the logistics
| provider and the seller. And so the logistics provider
| will attempt to collect on it, up to the point of
| impacting your credit score.
|
| Its similar to if you had a valet park your car, and they
| parked it in a pay parking lot they don't have
| authorization for, and your car got ticketed/towed. The
| fact that the valet is in trouble, and the fact that you
| owe money, are independent facts.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Legally speaking, you owe the logistics provider money
| separately from any contract between the logistics
| provider and the seller.
|
| No you don't. A transaction occurred That was separate
| from your quoted price, purchase price, shipping cost,
| and after a period of time passed since the delivery of
| the product. The purchaser is not responsible for the
| costs incurred by other parties.
|
| > It's similar to if you had a valet park your car, and
| they parked it in a pay parking lot they don't have
| authorization for, and your car got ticketed/towed.
|
| Nope. That scenario is entirely different.
| cerved wrote:
| I thought it was because the default buy box choice
| wasn't the cheapest
| axaxs wrote:
| I know how some can see it as shady or misleading, but I still
| prefer it. That is, I prefer having the price baked in, right in
| front of me...no surprises. Versus some indy site I'll think 'oh
| only six bucks? sure I'll try it' only to be shown it's actually
| closer to 20 after shipping and tax. That just wastes both our
| time.
|
| Further, even if it's a hair more expensive, I'll still pay it
| for the no hassle returns. I recently purchased a knife I saw on
| Amazon, but decided to go through the seller's official site to
| save a couple dollars. It was not worth it, and not something
| I'll do again.
| thn-gap wrote:
| > That just wastes both our time.
|
| No. That just wastes your time, not the seller's. And some of
| these people will just buy the product anyway.
| miked85 wrote:
| I am not sure how this is really surprising to anyone.
| Consumers will pay for shipping one way or the other.
| FabHK wrote:
| Indeed. And with "normal" shipping fees, customers have an
| incentive to make one big order rather than many small ones,
| which is more economical and more ecological, I'd think.
| manigandham wrote:
| Amazon stopped having the best pricing long ago, but their real
| advantage is convenience. Everything is fast, easy, and
| straightforward - and that's worth the premium (if any).
| katbyte wrote:
| not to mention free and easy returns for anything which is
| trash or doesn't work out
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Would be better if they weren't selling trash though
| lenkite wrote:
| You have proposed a strawman. What does this have to with
| Amazon forcing sellers to use Amazon's warehousing and
| logistics service and ensuring that sellers can't sell through
| a different store or even through their own site with a lower
| price.
| slownews45 wrote:
| There were a lot of basically scams for a while where because
| people trust amazon so much, they buy amazon. So sellers
| would take something that sells for $99, and sell it on
| amazon for $199 or sometimes for even more ($299 etc).
|
| In the short run amazon makes more money (commission on the
| sale) but in the long run this hurts Amazon's brand.
|
| I manage an amazon business account where this is a
| particularly bad issue because buyers are not spending their
| own money. They will literally spend $500 on something that
| is $50, because they like Amazon's reliability around
| delivery, the purchasing is very smooth, returns are smooth
| etc. I feel like they cracked down on this maybe 4-5 years
| ago? But still stuff slips through.
|
| So yes, I very much like that they don't allow sellers to
| mark up crazily on Amazon's site.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Do you have an example of a product that is $500 on Amazon
| but can be found somewhere else for $50? Seems to be way
| far off.
| makomk wrote:
| Yeah, I think that's the thing that's missing from the
| narrative in this article - if certain goods on Amazon are
| really heavily marked up compared to other sites, it's
| better for Amazon's long-term reputation if people don't
| don't automatically buy from Amazon and maybe get them from
| other sites because of the reputational damage when those
| people realize they got screwed, and so Amazon have an
| incentive not to add a default buy box button under those
| circumstances. (Usually this seems to happen with in-demand
| items that are out of stock from Amazon themselves, and the
| sellers that aren't allowed in the buy box are third party
| ones. So basically, it mainly screws over canny middlemen
| who hope to resell things bought at retail elsewhere at a
| big markup, maybe even literally getting them shipped
| direct from places like Walmart to the purchaser.)
| Bubbadoo wrote:
| Yes, the whole drop-shipping scam that get-rich-quick types
| were pushing on instagram had to do with buying merchandise
| at market price then marking it up for sale on Amazon.
| Amazon seems to be using many more third-part merchants and
| pricing, which was originally a great deal on AMZN, has
| become more of a buyer-beware thing. Amazon is no longer
| necessarily the best price for merchandise.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > They will literally spend $500 on something that is $50,
| because they like Amazon's reliability around delivery, the
| purchasing is very smooth, returns are smooth etc.
|
| I tried to avoid Amazon a couple times, to give other
| stores a change and all. Wasn't that great, and it was more
| expensive.
|
| Bought something on Best Buy, thought about returning it.
| On the product page and invoice, didn't say the date I
| could return. It only said the return periods where on a
| FAQ. FAQ didn't have a specific category for that product.
| I thought it was something (with 30 day), but when tried to
| return it, got a 'no' because it was 14 days. Why not add
| how many days in the product page? Why not show me the
| exact date on my order details?
|
| Also tried the same with books, buying on Indigo. Bought an
| extra book to get free shipping. The price of the books
| where already a dollar or 2 higher than Amazon. 10 days
| delivery, and one of the books has some marks like someone
| put a paper over the book and scribbled on it. Never had a
| problem with Amazon, and it's cheaper and delivery is like
| 2 days.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| That's an accusation the author just kinda throws in at the
| end without explanation. It's a big problem if true, but
| what's the evidence for it?
| hbuzi wrote:
| The evidence is in the linked NY Times article, in the
| section titled "Price Control." They also cite a paywalled
| Bloomberg article.
| axaxs wrote:
| I certainly didn't intend to do that. It's hard to write a
| comment addressing an entire article, but perhaps I should
| have quoted the tagline specifically. I was only rambling on
| about the 'trick of free shipping', not so much the bad
| practices mentioned.
|
| As far as using AMZ logistics, that makes complete sense.
| I've come to expect a high standard from items I buy from
| them regarding when I'll get the item. If that starts varying
| wildly...well what's the point of Prime? Fast delivery is
| AMZ's entire schtick.
|
| The price fixing I can't defend or make an argument about.
| randyrand wrote:
| that's great and all until you need to buy 2 of the same thing
| and now you're being extremely overcharged.
|
| I always try to look elsewhere .
| thathndude wrote:
| The number of times I've gone through the dance of adding to
| cart, inputting all my information, and then bailing when I see
| $57 2-day shipping ($97 for next day) and $40 for 5-7 days--
| it's ridiculous.
|
| Amazon simplifies my life. To be blunt, I don't care about the
| "cost" (fiscal or otherwise).
| tchalla wrote:
| I know you probably didn't mean it but I still want to state
| it. Your personal simplification of life or the amount you
| personally care or not doesn't define monopolistic behavior.
| The entire population may not care about something but it
| could be disallowed.
| canjobear wrote:
| > The entire population may not care about something but it
| could be disallowed.
|
| In a functioning democracy, not for long
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah, I agree, we may have bigger fish to fry with an
| entire party actively trying to redefine what voting is
| in America. It seems like if they didn't win that there
| certainly must be voter fraud and more minorities voters
| should be disenfranchised (or enough votes thrown out by
| 1 party lege committees so that they win) and if they do
| win then clearly voter fraud was no where to be found.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Also, clearly that person makes a lot of money to not care
| about costs, they can afford convenience. Not everyone can,
| which is what makes the "I got mine, so what about everyone
| else?" attitude dangerous in any circumstance.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Modern US antitrust law is based solely on benefit to the
| consumer [1]. If the entire population doesn't care about
| something (by which I assume you mean they are not harmed
| by it or even benefit from it), then it's not prohibited.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_l
| aw#Th...
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > If the entire population doesn't care about something
|
| It is a _huge_ leap to assume that the entire population
| doesn 't care about the _literal cost_ of something they
| are buying.
| [deleted]
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yeah, and I think this is fundamentally what's wrong with
| our anti-trust law. Trying to decide what harms the
| consumer is far too narrow in scope, and instead we
| should have some broader goals related to the promotion
| of markets and competition, rather than just focusing on
| consumers. e.g.
|
| - competition is good in and of itself, so new entrants
| should not be harmed and competition should be promoted
| and monopoly restricted purely on the basis of promoting
| competition as a policy goal.
|
| - creation of new markets should be viewed as a policy
| goal in and of itself. Thus if a firm impedes a
| burgeoning secondary market or new derived market, that
| impediment should be viewed as a violation of anti-trust
| law.
|
| - consumer harm is also a factor, but only one of three
| factors.
|
| IMO, our maniacal focus on consumption while abandoning
| promotion of production and healthy market competition is
| behind many of our economic policy blunders.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Many well-run ecommerce sites do let you enter a zip code and
| see shipping quotes. Some don't until later in the checkout
| process, and I'm more likely to abandon the checkout on those
| sites. I won't hesitate to bail at the last moment either if
| I don't like the final price on the deal.
|
| We're talking about a difference of seconds in the checkout
| experience. It adds to the perception of convenience, but but
| I don't see the miniscule time savings of the Amazon
| experience as being worth a higher price on the same item I
| could get for less elsewhere.
|
| I've wasted _far_ more time with Amazon trying to decide if
| an item is legitimate, and dealing with returns of broken,
| counterfeit, or misrepresented goods, than I have saved in
| their checkout experience.
| caturopath wrote:
| They put shipping quotes four screens in -- after requiring
| an email address -- in hopes of getting you committed and
| having chances to harass you to buy stuff after.
| xmprt wrote:
| I once bought $99.80 worth of stuff on this website after
| seeing an advertisement for free shipping on orders $99+.
| It was only after getting to the final screen that I found
| out it was only $99.99+ so I needed to add another useless
| item to my cart to avoid the $10 shipping. It's not a huge
| deal but what's the recourse to false advertising like
| that? I still needed the bulk of that order so I wasn't
| about to cancel the order but it also wasn't nice spending
| more than I wanted. Is there a simple place to report
| violations like this?
| nacs wrote:
| A similar situation I've run into is an online store I
| buy regularly from that has free shipping over $X amount.
|
| The item I buy normally costs over that but every once in
| a while they'll send a coupon that offers 15% off that
| literally drops the price to like $1 under that free
| shipping price.
|
| So the "coupon" ends up making it more expensive in total
| because the free-shipping is based off the post-discount
| price.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I think this is the case. Otherwise, you could just input
| your zip and see quotes. Also, if this were hurting prices
| overall, then I should be able to routinely just click on
| `Other Sellers` and find price+shipping to be less than
| prime.
|
| Usually, if it is cheaper at all, it's for a week plus
| delivery and only a few percent cheaper in total. Most of
| the time though, it's actually still more expensive.
|
| I've also bought from sellers off of Amazon as they offered
| coupon codes and paypal purchases. It's not ideal, but it
| seems possible to get around this. I think it's easier for
| manufactures that sell direct than resellers though.
| [deleted]
| warmfuzzykitten wrote:
| I agree. When I buy through Amazon Prime, I can safely buy with
| one click because I can see the exact price I will be charged
| and, usually, the exact day it will arrive. For next day
| delivery, I can't recall they have ever missed the date.
|
| It's logical that they add the cost of shipping to the item
| price, but their cost must be much lower than alternative
| sellers, as it is hardly noticeable on low-cost items, and
| comparable to prices charged by Walmart, etc. who charge extra
| for shipping.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > For next day delivery, I can't recall they have ever missed
| the date.
|
| This depends a lot on where you are (or at least, it did). I
| canceled Prime a couple of years ago, because among other
| things, I hardly ever got things on time, whether it was next
| day or two day.
|
| I don't really use Amazon much anymore. I go out of my way to
| find other retailers whenever I can.
| notahacker wrote:
| I can rank items by price plus shipping (and filter out stuff I
| need to wait to arrive from China) for all eBay's inventory,
| not just some subset of it which they do the fulfilment for.
| mrkurt wrote:
| Yes, people like it (for a while). This is why it works. But it
| gives Amazon more tools to abuse their market power.
|
| The cost is high though. Amazon is already much lower quality
| than they were 10 years ago.
| meh99 wrote:
| But would somebody please think of the billionaires?
|
| I mean if we took away their ability to manipulate the labor,
| finance, insurance, food, healthcare, manufacturing, housing,
| technology markets extreme personal gain, we risk having the
| government tear down our own private global hegemony some
| day!
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Also have to factor that Amazon's customer service is
| _fantastic_. That 's the hidden cost in using something else:
| How is their customer service? How much hassle are they going
| to give me to return an item? How much does it cost me to
| return an item?
| timeinput wrote:
| The customer service of my credit card company accepting a
| charge back is better than Amazon's. If the customer
| service of <no name vendor> is terrible the remedy is
| simple.
| te_chris wrote:
| And they can absorb the higher cost of this customer
| service via monopoly behaviour, where their competitors
| can't.
| katbyte wrote:
| monopoly? walmart costco canadian tyre london drugs ikea
| are all huge retailers with billions that are trying to
| provide online platforms like and none of them come
| close. bestbuy and wayfair are the only comparable one
| imho and they still kinda suck compared to amazon
| bbarnett wrote:
| I still don't get Walmart. So much fiscal might, so much
| capability to expand into full, well thought out,
| competitive online experience, yet they're barely
| competitive.
|
| It's almost like the Walmart family thinks this online
| thing is a fad, and growth/sales spiraling downward will
| turn around any day now, just you wait and see!
|
| I don't get it.
| axaxs wrote:
| I don't want to say too much specifically...but I think
| whoever is responsible managing their entire 'online
| thing' is doing a poor job. No offense meant to anyone
| who works there.
|
| I spoke a while informally to someone who worked there.
| Sounded like a really smart person, and they were
| describing in detail how their team was writing this
| 'thing' from scratch, where thing is something numerous
| rock solid, fast, open source alternatives exist. Didn't
| seem like a good use of resources -at all- considering
| the sorry state of their web experience.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Amazon is definitely the dominant online retailer, but
| there's serious competition from Walmart, some
| competition from ebay, offline competition, and niche
| competition. It's not even close to Google search market
| share.
| katbyte wrote:
| But that's just it, Walmart with all its money and might
| have a store and experience miles behind Amazon
| slownews45 wrote:
| Uh, you can purchase from any retailer, walmart, target
| etc.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Also have to factor that Amazon's customer service is
| fantastic.
|
| I only need their great customer service because of the
| poor quality products they are shipping. With other
| retailers, I don't know how good their customer service is
| _because I almost never need to utilize them_.
| axaxs wrote:
| I think for the typical consumer, most time spent on
| Amazon support are shipping mistakes. I didn't get it,
| the quantity is wrong, or in some cases, I got too many.
| Their support is fantastic on all accounts... they've
| never even hinted or accused me of being dishonest. If I
| get something later that was already refunded...they just
| tell you to keep it. That small gesture goes a long way,
| to me.
|
| If you get junk from Amazon, just send it back. No
| support needed.
| [deleted]
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Their support is fantastic on all accounts... they've
| never even hinted or accused me of being dishonest.
|
| When I compare this with all major retailers, this is
| true for everyone else. This isn't "fantastic" - it's
| standard.
|
| Walmart was the one exception, where the employee didn't
| know Walmart's return policy.
| axaxs wrote:
| That's fair to say it's standard, but then I'd say the
| standard is fantastic.
|
| Not long ago I ordered 4 pair of sunglasses from a small
| outfit online. Only 2 arrived. Support took a few days to
| get back to me, then asking for pics of what I got, the
| box, etc. I don't think that was unfair of them to ask
| and I provided all that, but it's a stark contrast to
| 'yeah here's your money back' in 5 minutes, no questions
| asked.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| No, even more modern stores, especially as it relates to
| online, are _just_ starting to be better at it. I 've
| still seen where I have to pay shipping to send it
| back... which you know I can understand the cost of
| things... but also Amazon doesn't do this, and it's
| really nice. You don't have to even think about it.
|
| We've had groceries accidentally shipped to the wrong
| address (our shipping address is different from where we
| live b/c the building contracts a 3rd party to deal with
| packages). They either refund the order or send out a new
| delivery (mind you the other products are already
| delivered elsewhere and will eventually even make it to
| us... just with dead cold items), no questions asked.
|
| It's things like this that make it much more comfortable
| to buy from Amazon than other places, as much as I would
| like to buy direct or from a smaller shop, etc.
| klabb3 wrote:
| I ordered a monitor from Newegg that I needed for work,
| so time was important:
|
| - Delivery time was like a week longer than they claimed.
|
| - When it arrived it had a dead (red) pixel.
|
| - Their customer support told me that dead pixels below a
| ridiculous amount (8 or so) do not qualify for a
| refund/replacement and told me to reach out to the
| manufacturer (overseas) for warranty replacement on a
| brand new item.
|
| - Eventually I was able to return it under the regular "I
| no longer want this item" policy, but I had to pay a
| substantial restocking/returns fee (~20% of the price).
|
| A quick search confirmed that this was very common with
| monitors and other items like GPUs have even more
| dissatisfaction/delayed shipping/shady practices.
|
| Sure, I've had a couple of issues with late deliveries or
| broken products with Prime, but they've always corrected
| their error eventually. Returns and product issues are
| highly asymmetrical, where mostly you don't need it but
| when you do it's really important.
|
| For expensive items, Amazon is 100% worth the peace of
| mind in case something goes wrong. For anything cheaper,
| I'm assuming I won't get help and I'll just have to eat
| the cost (which is ok, but of course not ideal). Not
| saying this could never happen with Amazon, but the risk
| seems a lot lower to me.
| rexf wrote:
| This is true. I don't trust Amazon's products to be the
| best, but their return policy & customer service is miles
| ahead of any competition. I've tried buying from non-Amazon
| places recently, but their shipping (and even returns
| process) is so bad I prefer buying from Amazon.
|
| Amazon delivers stuff to my place for "free" and very fast.
| They also make returning things as painless as possible
| since I don't even need to re-package my item when dropping
| off at UPS. It's easy to underestimate the hassle (from
| other merchants) of re-packaging your items and possibly
| paying for return shipping.
| jelling wrote:
| The main reason Amazon has kicked the crap out of their
| competitors is that they built a multi-billion dollar
| fulfillment platform that is better than anything out there.
|
| Whatever degree of effect that building shipping costs into
| pricing has given them is negligible in comparison. And it is
| dead simple for even small retailers to do this with most
| e-Commerce tools including Shopify.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| > Amazon is already much lower quality than they were 10
| years ago
|
| Could you expand on 'lower quality'? I personally have not
| noticed this.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Could you expand on 'lower quality'?
|
| The review/rating system has become untrustworthy.
|
| It's extremely common (>50%) for me to see a 4+ star rating
| that turns out to be dominated by 1 star reviews and tons
| of complaints.
|
| It's not unusual to find that what positive reviews there
| are, are for a wholly different product.
|
| Even more frequent is that reviews for several different
| products are all bundled together.
| cronix wrote:
| > Even more frequent is that reviews for several
| different products are all bundled together.
|
| I can't stand that. This doesn't matter if the product
| comes in various colors or something that would not
| change the product at all from one to the next, but then
| you also have things with computers with different
| options like video cards, memory configurations, cpu
| type, etc. That makes it VERY hard to find a review for
| the specific machine you ordered because it shows the
| reviews for all possible configurations.
|
| It should show reviews only for the specific
| configuration chosen.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _It should show reviews only for the specific
| configuration chosen._
|
| Here is how to do that.
|
| First, make sure you've selected the product variation
| you want. Then:
|
| 1. Click the "nnn ratings" link at the top of the product
| page to go to the "Customer reviews" section.
|
| 2. On the left is a list of the percentages of each star
| number. Click any of them.
|
| 3. Now you have a page with a row of drop-down lists at
| the top. One of them will be something like "All
| formats". Change it to "Show only reviews for Style:"
| listing the product variation you selected at the
| beginning. You can also change the "n star only" back to
| "All stars", or "All positive" or "All critical".
|
| They could make this easier to find! But once you know
| how to get there it's pretty useful.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > It should show reviews only for the specific
| configuration chosen.
|
| Amen brother. Other review issues could be attributed to
| Amazon playing catch-up but this crappery is clearly by
| design.
| randallsquared wrote:
| I stopped paying any attention to reviews on Amazon when
| I noticed that the item being described in some reviews
| had nothing at all to do with the one currently in the
| listing (something more like trash can vs curtain rod,
| not different sizes, configurations, or colors). Once I
| noticed this, it seemed really common, which means only a
| review which explicitly describes the item entirely could
| possibly be relevant, and then I have to worry if the
| seller laundered the item to enter "verified purchase"
| reviews... so reviews on Amazon are now a worthless waste
| of space.
| fooker wrote:
| Books printed on demand are essentially garbage. Amazon
| basics items are the worst of the crop.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What's wrong with books printed on demand?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I only bought one (by mistake, not knowing), which had
| pretty bad print quality compared to a proper four-color
| offset or high-end digital print. Also bad paper quality.
| This seems to be common.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| I think it's that they're often of lower quality and less
| durable.
| shagie wrote:
| Paper and ink quality. Quality of the binding.
|
| This isn't so much a "all print on demand suffers from
| quality issues" but rather "the quality of the print on
| demand services is often an exercise in cost cutting."
|
| I am certain that there are POD material that are as good
| as the traditional book print (and there are certainly
| non POD that employ similar cost cutting), but rather
| that in general, there is more investment in quality on
| the larger runs of a paperback book.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If you're buying the book for the content not as an art
| item or for archiving I'm sure it's fine.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You may as well download ebooks from Library Genesis. At
| least the missing / repeated pages and corrupted
| formatting is fair at the price this way.
| handrous wrote:
| They're also not edited to fit the page well, nor with
| much care for typography or anything else. "Rivers" all
| over the place, weird page breaks, various formatting
| errors commonly creeping in. Page numbers in e.g. an
| index may not match the page numbers in the book. All
| kinds of problems, at least with public-domain print-on-
| demand, which books are surely purchased more often by
| accident (i.e. not realizing you're buying POD junk) than
| on purpose, since they're usually not meaningfully
| cheaper than Dover or Modern Library or whatever, and
| even Dover puts out a much better product. They exist to
| trick unwary shoppers and gift-buyers. They're basically
| scams, in that they're relying on buyers' mistakes to
| make money.
| matsemann wrote:
| Hard to grasp the content when whole chapters are
| missing, though.
| tzs wrote:
| I remember reading several years ago about a major
| independent bookstore that got one of those high quality
| POD systems, and also installed computers for customers
| to use to go on Amazon to search for books and to read
| reviews.
|
| The customer could find the book they wanted on Amazon,
| purchase it for the same price or less via the
| bookstore's POD service, go have a snack and drink at the
| bookstore's cafe, and their book would be ready when they
| are done with that.
|
| The bookstore essentially turned Amazon into a free book
| research services for the bookstore's customers.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Poor quality, rampant piracy.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Is any store's generic brand actually good? Maybe
| Kirkland at Costco is alright.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Kirkland Signature is reliably great, especially in
| comparison with other store brands. I'm a bit of a Costco
| fanboy though, in full transparency.
|
| My partner and I used to argue over who gets to make the
| monthly Costco run but now we just make it into a big
| family outing (Friday evenings are an amazing time to
| shop there).
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Around here (Ontario, Canada), Loblaws "President's
| Choice" and Metro "Irresistibles" are good. Both chains
| have a lower tier of branding, "No Name" for the former
| and "Selection" for the latter. Agreed that Costco's
| "Kirkland Signature" is reliably OK.
| caturopath wrote:
| I don't really have complaints about store brands in
| general, I think the quality I see is par for the course
| for non-high-end brand-name items, especially for non-
| food items (where some are better than brand name or
| white labels of popular brands, but the average quality
| seems lower).
|
| I have had good experiences with Amazon Basics and
| Amazon's clothing brands.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Sure. Sometimes they're better than brand. When price is
| no issue, my basket will be a mix of store and name
| brands.
| klipt wrote:
| Kirkland is great. I've also found Target's generic
| brands to be fine for many basic items.
| MAGZine wrote:
| The vast majority of the time the store brand is
| manufactured by one of the competitors anyhow.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I've only used Amazon Basics for keyboards, wired mice,
| batteries, and hdmi cables. The keyboard/mouse are
| basically best-in-class for budget items imho.
|
| I'm honestly not sure about the batteries or hdmi cables.
| But my appreciation for the brand makes me wonder about
| your own experience.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| For me, Amazon used to be a bit like going to a mid-tier
| department store. Items were curated and higher-quality
| than, say, dollar store or clearance items and there was a
| certain level of trust with them as a retailer. I would buy
| something from a known brand and enjoy it, and rarely do a
| return. Customer service reps were a phone call away and I
| could google the model number and see other people's
| experiences with it as well.
|
| Now I'm seeing so many sponsored results to brands I've
| never heard of and seemingly only exist for drop-shipping
| or rebranding some OEM product. Worse, the non-sponsored
| results would also be no name brands, where I'd gravitate
| towards the ones with high reviews. Then I buy the product
| and see a little gift card I could monetize if I was to
| review the product with 5 stars, so seemingly most of those
| reviews are fraudulent. Worse again, the quality on this
| product is below, sometimes even way below, a normal brand
| I could get retail locally but priced about the same. I
| must return 1/4 of the products I buy because of poor QC or
| later breakage from normal, if not, light use. Support or
| customer service for these brands is almost non-existent
| too and this brand will disappear in a year anyway, so why
| bother trying to build any sort of reputation. Amazon is
| always happy to do a return so it solves that problem, but
| its a still a big hassle and I'm sure the carbon footprint
| of all these returns is scary. Then I'm playing random OEM
| roulette again with a similar product that will also have
| fraud reviews and 5 star review coupons inside of it.
|
| I also dislike the dark pattern format of the site, which
| shows sponosered results in very small text and puts it in
| between related items. I'm not sure what Amazon's Choice
| really is, but its almost never a product or brand that I
| would consider trustworthy and I imagine is just a product
| that is giving Amazon good margins. In a curated department
| store model, recommended items would be actually
| recommended by staff and taste-makers at the cost or
| benefit of the reputation of the store. If Macy's is
| recommending a Braun coffeemaker, then its probably going
| to be a good coffeemaker as Macy's wants to please me as a
| Macy's customer. If Amazon recommends one, its just going
| to be some in-house rebrand or random OEM brand with lots
| of suspicious reviews (tons of 5 stars but also tons of 1
| stars, with not much in the middle) and with positive
| reviews being either "amazing i love it!!!" or referring to
| an entirely different product (bots?) and negative reviews
| being in competent English and verbose and detailed about
| all the things wrong with this product.
|
| I think like with any capitalist endeavor, without proper
| oversight and regulation, it naturally falls into a race to
| the bottom and "low road" capitalist outcomes. Amazon has
| been left more or less alone by legislators and its, of
| course, gone as bad as it can and I imagine will only get
| worse over time. Amazon moving from the department store
| model to the random street bazaar model is good for the
| bottom line but every year it gets harder to shop there as
| no-name brands with no support and fake reviews dominate
| its marketplace.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Those who don't like what Amazon is doing have many other
| choices. The correct "oversight and regulation" is
| customers migrating to those who offer better, not
| financially disinterested third parties compelling
| financial consequences without consent.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I would direct you to the article which makes the case
| that not selling on Amazon is not really an option due to
| their customer base and the fact that they use their
| monopoly position to penalize you for selling on a
| marketplace with lower fees, causing all prices to go up,
| _even on other marketplaces_. Simply reminding everyone
| that people can vote with their wallets /feet is an
| exercise in substituting the complexities of the real
| world with the ideals of free market proponents. The
| public cannot be expected to make short term aggregate
| decisions against their own personal benefit for the
| collective long-term benefit. That's pretty much the
| entire point of regulation.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| Also "go shop elsewhere" doesn't really work when all my
| favorite small shops are forever shutdown because they
| can't compete with Amazon. Amazon's real competition is
| other mega-websites like it, with very similar problems,
| like walmart.com or target.com. Anti-regulation types
| simply dont realize how much of the problem the are,
| which I find a bit depressing.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| The problem is the marketplace. Amazon was great when
| they were an online retailer. The marketplace has brought
| in vast amounts of garbage, and now ads for that garbage.
|
| The regulation you mention will probably only make it
| much worse. It is being advocated for by the third party
| sellers that are making in a bad experience in the first
| place. I don't want to see them at all, much less give
| them more prominence.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The shipping timelines from Amazon have become increasingly
| unreliable and non transparent. If it's going to take a
| little longer that's fine if I know about it ahead of time,
| but about 10% of my orders get unanticipa mid ship time
| delays now.
| shados wrote:
| Amazon is no longer trustworthy. You can't buy something
| and feel confident you'll get what you ordered. Sure, MOST
| of the time you will, but it only takes 1-2 fakes to really
| shake the trust.
|
| Just looking for an item and finding 15 of the same one at
| wildly different price with different description really
| makes you scratch your head. What's the difference, is
| there one?
|
| Then the killer for me is how they mix inventory from
| sellers. It doesn't matter how much I trust a certain
| vendor, what I buy may not be their inventory anyway, so a
| single bad apple can mess it up for everyone.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think it has become easier to buy bottom barrel stuff on
| Amazon for sure, but with a little price comparison with
| known good brands, fake spotter, and common sense, I'm
| pleased with about 95% of my purchases there and if not it
| goes right back and I get my money back.
| ArtDev wrote:
| I noticed that smaller cheaper items tend to have more
| inflated prices. It actually makes sense, from a business
| perspective. A lot of things I used to buy on Amazon are
| much cheaper at local discount stores (Bi-mart, dollar
| store, etc.)
| cm2187 wrote:
| Zero trust in their supply chain, counterfeits have become
| the norm.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's still misleading: the cost of shipping is not linear per-
| item.
|
| > Versus some indy site
|
| This is a false dichotomy. Nothing prevents showing both the
| item price and the shipping-included price next to each item.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Nothing prevents showing both the item price and the
| shipping-included price next to each item.
|
| Nothing prevents the sites from doing that, but most sites
| don't do give you an option to see total price on the product
| page.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't know why we're even comparing to other sites
| though, this issue is about Amazon without Prime vs with
| Prime.
|
| The same item, if you look at it logged out, will show 15$
| + 8$ shipping, but when logged in will show 23$ free
| shipping with a nice big Prime logo next to it. That's the
| issue at play, not what some other sites do. This is plain
| misleading and deceptive.
| axaxs wrote:
| Can you post proof of that? It doesn't make sense,
| because they do free shipping over x dollars, I think 25.
| So you're claiming it would be cheaper to buy 2 if you
| weren't a prime member, which isn't the case.
|
| Editing to add: I didn't intend this to say your comment
| isn't true. Perhaps I'm looking at something else or
| understanding wrong, so asking in earnest.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Hmm, I can't seem to find these anymore, but I definitely
| remember seeing these. So I'm either losing my mind, or
| Amazon recently (in the past year) changed this. You are
| right though that it would be strange for purchasing more
| than 1.
|
| Thinking about it more, maybe it was duty fees (since I'm
| in Canada and some items from from the US). That would
| make more sense as those would scale with the items
| maybe? I specifically recall though seeing X + Y$ on non-
| Prime and then Z$ on Prime.
| Animats wrote:
| Karl Racine is going after Amazon? Interesting.
|
| Racine is the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. As a U.S.
| Attorney, he has the authority to enforce Federal law. His is a
| unique position. All other U.S. Attorneys are appointed by the
| President via the Attorney General. He's an elected official.
|
| (This comes from the unique status of Washington, D.C. as a
| creature of Congress, and the law that gives D.C. some self-
| governing power. D.C. was run directly by Congress until the
| 1970s, and residents could not vote for anything. Racine
| considered prosecuting Trump after the Jan. 6 riots. He could
| have done that and Trump could not have fired him.)
| kbrisso wrote:
| People always complain about Amazon but I started using them when
| I could not find anything I needed at the local stores. The
| shopping landscape changed before I started buying on Amazon.
| When Amazon started two day shipping in my town it sure made it
| easier to change my habits. CVS drug store is a great example of
| a store that used to be great hat went to crap. But not because
| of Amazon because of short term profits and mergers. The
| electronic store is gone not because of Amazon but because people
| don't buy hobby stuff like they used to and the owner died. The
| mom and pop stores that are still around from way back are here
| because of good business practices and people like them. I don't
| want to go to CVS and wait in line for 30 minutes, have to enter
| my phone number to get the discount and then get 6 feet of
| receipt full of stupid coupons I won't use. Yes you need to do
| your research before buying on Amazon but in the store you need
| to check the prices too.
| gojofika wrote:
| You might check the link to get unlimited Google Voice Number
| https://bit.ly/34tc4BI
|
| (100% trusted & quality service guaranteed)
| kazinator wrote:
| Only complete, utter idiots believe in free anything that is not
| coming from the dollars they spend on the item, or their premium
| membership fees.
|
| The complete, utter idiot is a strawman model of the common
| person. (Quite literally, since a shirt stuffed with straw is a
| complete idiot.)
|
| E.g. the last time I entered into a mortgage, I was supposed to
| get free lawyer fees as a gift from the bank. Oops, that little
| offer was pulled right off the table when I informed the bank I'm
| going for a cheaper variable-rate mortgage.
|
| That's a really nasty example of "free": you pay tens of
| thousands of dollars more in interest over the lifetime of the
| mortgage because you didn't have to pay a $600-something out-of-
| pocket expense at the outset.
|
| That said, though the shipping may not actually be free, it seems
| fair to say that Amazon is competitive in that area.
|
| > _To most consumers, Prime looks like a lovely convenience
| offering free shipping, and it's hard to find better prices
| elsewhere. But the reason you can't find better prices isn't
| because Amazon sells stuff cheap, but because it forces everyone
| else to sell stuff at higher prices._
|
| How does Amazon force "everyone else" to sell stuff at higher
| prices? If Amazon offers some $50 item with no-additional-charge
| shipping, how does that raise the price elsewhere? If someone
| wants to match Amazon, they have to also sell that item for $50,
| which may appear to raise the price. But they also have to
| provide no-additional-charge shipping, the same as Amazon. If
| it's $50 with $15 shipping, the business goes to Amazon.
|
| If we accept the premise that Amazon is a leader in cheap and
| fast shipping, it follows that Amazon exerts pressure on everyone
| else to cheapen and speed up their shipping.
|
| The author's premise seems to be that shipping is _actually_
| cost-free with other online venues, and so they just jack up
| their prices to the Amazon level, and then put the shipping
| portion of that straight into their pockets that Amazon would
| have applied toward the costs of shipping. How ever does Amazon
| complete with all these other venues that just teleport items to
| your door using pennies ' worth of energy?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Let's see. If Amazon is forced to do as proposed - separate
| Amazon Prime from free shipping by third party sellers, what's to
| stop Amazon from just bringing more products in house as "shipped
| and sold by Amazon" and making third party seller products even
| less attractive? How does that help third party retailers?
|
| I already filter product lists based on whether they are eligible
| for Prime.
|
| The second question is when did poor little Walmart need help
| competing against Amazon? Walmart failed because of execution not
| because of a "monopoly" and definitely not because they don't
| have the money to go against Amazon.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Walmart hasn't died yet. They'll be hanging around, presumably
| along with Alibaba and other Chinese firms, for whenever Amazon
| screws up badly enough to get broken up/subjected to consent
| decrees/etc.
| scarface74 wrote:
| That's exactly the point. It's not evil Amazon that had some
| magical power to crush Walmart - a company that has been
| around forever. It's the incompetence of Walmart, Target,
| etc.
| sodomite wrote:
| fyv
| quadrangle wrote:
| The sunk-cost focus of just getting people to pay for a
| membership to something and then they care about getting the most
| out of their membership... that would be an issue on its own,
| though not massively distorting.
|
| The rest of the behind-the-scenes stuff is appalling.
|
| I fear that doing anything about this relies mainly on bad
| experiences. The harder it is to find a good product or the more
| commonly a low-quality knock-off makes people unhappy, the more
| they will actually listen to these other complaints about all the
| problems with Amazon. If Amazon can figure out how to keep
| customers having mostly positive experiences of finding things
| they want and being happy with them, it will be very difficult to
| get the public support needed to push back on all the problems.
|
| Lousy bread and boring circuses make it much easier to build
| movements for change. Artisan bread and excellent circuses really
| are probably enough to keep people from wanting to rock the boat
| (sorry for the mixed metaphor).
| vmception wrote:
| Now all the local shops cant say "we cant compete with amazon
| prices!"
|
| Little did they know I would have _always_ paid a premium to
| never see them again
|
| Amazon can change the wording about price/shipping and keep
| everything else
|
| The market chooses it and I never have to find out how employees
| at a retail shop are going to lie to me today
| Antheidan wrote:
| This is absolutely insane and something should be done about it.
| Amazon is getting out of hand.
| [deleted]
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Amazon is another one of those things that used to be good, but
| now it is not.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| For you youngins out there, here's a phrase you may have never
| heard: "Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery". Keep in mind that
| Amazon singlehandedly made that a cliche of the past. They're
| still that good, even if they disappoint in some ways.
| adam0c wrote:
| it's called marketing 101, offer something as free but include it
| in the price this making the customer feel like they're getting
| something for nothing...
| defaultname wrote:
| Sellers compete for the "buy box", inflating prices through
| Amazon requirements. That seems fair enough, but why then are the
| "other sellers" _never_ cheaper, at least in my experience? While
| the buy box might have the costs of shipping and FBA baked in,
| the other options don 't yet they're universally a worse deal all
| in. More often than not they're the "gimmicky" types of deals
| where the base price is "less", but the shipping is absurd.
|
| Conditions like "don't sell cheaper elsewhere" are gross across
| the board, but the fundamental point doesn't seem valid.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Like how the US Federal government makes it illegal for medical
| providers to charge anyone less than they charge Medicare?
|
| MFN is going to be a thing whether I want it to be or not.
| creddit wrote:
| > Conditions like "don't sell cheaper elsewhere" are gross
| across the board, but the fundamental point doesn't seem valid.
|
| It's Matt Stoller. The point is the tone, not the
| facts/interpretation being valid.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Isn't Matt Stoller just repeating the Attorney General's
| argument? Or are you saying he's embellishing it?
| lttlrck wrote:
| "Prime, in other words, is basically a money laundering
| scheme."
|
| Did the DA say that?
| k__ wrote:
| Free shipping is nice.
|
| But what's nicer is that I usually get my stuff in 1-2 days.
| creddit wrote:
| It's amazing how writing with a certain tone can totally change
| how people would react to basic facts. Not that Stoller doesn't
| manipulate basic facts anyway. The _A brief word on numbers_ is
| hilarious given his preceding paragraph.
|
| I do agree that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to force sellers to
| price match on Amazon, though.
| ummonk wrote:
| Good lawsuit, but stupid article. It's good practice that Amazon
| is incorporating the shipping price into the listed price of the
| product instead of charging it separately. On the other hand the
| practice of policing the prices that sellers charge for products
| outside the Amazon platform is certainly anti-competitive and
| should be slapped down by the courts.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Amazon uses its Buy Box algorithm to make sure that sellers
| can't sell through a different store or even through their own
| site with a lower price and access Amazon customers, even if they
| would be able to sell it more cheaply. If they do, they get cut
| off from the Buy Box, and thus, cut off de facto from being able
| to sell on Amazon.
|
| How exactly does Amazon achieve this? How can they tell that
| CheapGoods4u on Amazon is the same seller as BargainStuff4Less
| over on Walmart?
|
| If they can't tell the sellers are the same company, they can't
| punish one for selling cheaper on another platform.
| aimor wrote:
| "Now, if this were all that was happening, sellers and brands
| could just sell outside of Amazon, avoid the 35-45% commission,
| and charge a lower price to entice customers. "Buy Cheaper at
| Walmart.com!" should be in ads all over the web. But it's not.
| And that's where the main claim from Racine comes in. Amazon uses
| its Buy Box algorithm to make sure that sellers can't sell
| through a different store or even through their own site with a
| lower price and access Amazon customers, even if they would be
| able to sell it more cheaply. If they do, they get cut off from
| the Buy Box, and thus, cut off de facto from being able to sell
| on Amazon."
|
| This was the missing piece for me. Would like to see more
| specifics about how Amazon does this.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I came here to say the same thing. That seems to be the key
| point of their argument and it's glossed over in two sentences.
| Unless Amazon is punitively punishing sellers who sell off site
| cheaper, it doesn't seem like there's much there.
|
| They mentioned the "algorithm" which seems to imply this isn't
| an agreement entered into by the seller. Is Amazon crawling
| other market places to check seller prices against their site?
| Couldn't sellers circumvent this by using a different name?
|
| This allegation is put forth without any supporting evidence
| and, considering the amount of crummy things sellers do on
| Amazon already, it seems trivial to circumvent.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > Is Amazon crawling other market places to check seller
| prices against their site?
|
| I didn't sell directly on Amazon for long enough to find out,
| but from talking to other merchants, I understand that they
| were/are doing this.
|
| IMO, even if the merchants enter into those terms willingly,
| it's still anticompetitive. Amazon is effectively creating a
| protectionist trade zone like the British used to enact in
| the 1760s and 1770s. The merchants enter into it because the
| alternative is "don't trade with a huge portion of the
| market" and also maybe face predatory attacks from Amazon-
| friendly merchants.
| stickfigure wrote:
| The reason Amazon can charge so much for its fulfillment services
| is that it often delivers the product _next day_.
|
| I run a print-on-demand company, dropshipping for merchants. For
| me to deliver a product next day (or even two-day) costs many
| tens of dollars. The fact that I can buy a $7.95 item on Amazon
| and have it profitably delivered in a day or two is absolutely
| incredible. It should be lauded, not punished.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| > The fact that I can buy a $7.95 item on Amazon and have it
| profitably delivered in a day or two is absolutely incredible.
|
| Is it profitable though, or is this a loss leader to get more
| people shopping at Amazon?
| tzs wrote:
| I see an Amazon delivery van most days in my area, making
| several deliveries. The marginal cost of delivering an
| additional order to my neighborhood should be very low.
|
| Same for the other stages of delivery. They've already got
| something set up to move large amounts of goods between their
| warehouses to where the delivery vans are loaded. The
| marginal cost of one more item should be low.
|
| When they have that kind of distribution/delivery
| infrastructure set up and essentially providing an almost
| continuous delivery pipeline, I'm not sure it makes a lot of
| sense to ask whether or not an individual item was
| profitable.
| axaxs wrote:
| They definitely don't make any money on it, but I'm not sure
| I'd call it a loss leader, but more of a 'loss at the expense
| of keeping customers on Amazon.'
|
| That is, if Amazon didn't offer it, I may check out Walmart
| or Overstock or somewhere else, and find other things at good
| prices.
| ruined wrote:
| you just described a loss leader
| axaxs wrote:
| I was debating that. I always considered a loss leader as
| something to get you into a store to buy more expensive
| things. This is similar I guess...but I don't think it's
| identical because it isn't about getting you to buy more
| things(at that moment). More about getting you to not
| check out competitors. Perhaps it still applies.
| aimor wrote:
| The problem is that Amazon is strong arming sellers to prevent
| them from offering that item for a lower price elsewhere.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| My friend broke his phone on the way to office, ordered a new
| one from Amazon when he arrived at office (8am), and left with
| a new phone at 5pm. Can't beat Amazon shipping.
| subhro wrote:
| You should talk to FedEx and UPS and ask for discounts. I can
| ship things often cheaper than USPS flat box when shipping
| FedEx express.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| > often delivers the product next day.
|
| I haven't had the ability get next day shipping for a while.
| Anymore my order won't even ship for a few days. A little over
| a year ago next day or 2 day was the norm.
| caturopath wrote:
| I don't think you're detecting a global change in Amazon. I
| think you're detecting a change in how they service your
| address.
| barrkel wrote:
| They'll deliver something, but I'm not so sure it'll be worth
| $7.95.
|
| I don't even trust Amazon for buying books any more. Of the
| last batch I bought, about 30% have blotchy, blurry font,
| making me suspect they're knock-offs printed from imaging the
| original. Often it's the same imprint but one book has crisp
| clean lettering and the next has varying fuzzy blur around
| every letter.
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