7 ms·

Amazon’s algorithm is hiding the best deal from many customers

103 points by known 10y ago

phreeza 10y ago
How is this surprising, given that Amazon is a privately owned, profit driven company?
- bkor 10y ago
  Two quotes: 1. "Amazon doesn’t count shipping costs for its own products, or those it fulfills for others, when customers rank a product by “price + shipping.”" 2. "Amazon said: [..]The sorting algorithms [..] are designed for that 90% of items ordered, where shipping costs do not apply.”" This is not just misleading, this is a step beyond. It's a big company, it should take care of its customers and if it does not, customer protection agencies should go after it.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    It's really not surprising that Amazon's algorithm takes "of course you'd want Prime" into the calculations.
nickm12 10y ago
This is a sensationalist title thrown onto a rehash of the real article, which can be found here: https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-customers-first-but-its-pricing-algorithm-doesnt https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-custo...
danso 10y ago
I'm a little too lazy to create an account in which Amazon Prime is not enabled, so I'm looking at listings in Incognito mode (i.e. not going through to the order confirmation screen, which requires creating an account). In the ProPublica article, the example of Loctite Liquid glue is used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004Y960MU/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004Y960MU/ref=dp_ol... The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping. The next listing is as the ProPublica article claims, from "TheHardwareCityCo", with a price of $6.75 with free shipping. Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees that you do from Amazon.com. Furthermore, the massive markup cited in Quartz/ProPublica -- $1,400 extra for buying a basket of the 250 most popular products -- only applies if you decided to buy each item individually, as Amazon automatically gives you free shipping (Prime member or not) if you buy $50+ worth of items. Not seeing the big problem here, to be honest. Frankly, I get annoyed when the default seller for an item is not Amazon, and I have to dig to find the listing that has Amazon as the seller. I have Prime, so that makes a big difference, but I prefer Amazon's reliability over spending time trying to figure out which third-party seller is the least shadiest.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping. Worth noting that Amazon has been regulated (in the UK) over their adverts and use of the term "free shipping". https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2016/8/Amazon-Europe-Core-Sarl/SHP_ADJ_304089.aspx#.V-evKFQrK01 https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2016/8/Amazon-E...
- pgrote 10y ago
  I concur. I was disappointed in the propublica article since they usually do very good work. Amazon always shows the option to see other sellers and even prompts you when there is a lower price that might not have prime shipping. Most of the time I pay the more expensive price for the following reasons: 1) It is sold by amazon. I know I don't have to worry about the possible issues dealing with third party sellers. 2) The product arrives faster. As a prime member, most items are shipped 2 day. If I look at the other options they are usually 1 week or more out. 3) I trust amazon. This one is the irrational reason due to the fact I could probably save money by looking at a meta shopping engine or ebay. I have a long history as a prime member and trust their pricing and their customer service. I do think you hit upon something with batching of orders. We rarely buy one off items and typically put things in our cart for an order a couple of times a month. Even then, Amazon offers full transparency. When you revisit your cart, Amazon shows you the price changes and offers to show you lower prices without prime.
- BGZq7 10y ago
  > The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping. When I'm not logged in, it shows it has free Prime shipping. When I do log in to my account without Prime, it shows it has free shipping with an order of $49 or more. The only way I can find to see the shipping cost is to add it to my cart and proceed to checkout, which makes it a bit difficult to comparison shop. > Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees that you do from Amazon.com. Amazon also seems to overstate these shipping dates to make Prime shipping look better. Almost every time I have ordered something via a 3rd party like that, it arrives before the earliest date Amazon says it could.
ikeboy 10y ago
The buy box prefers FBA sellers over FBM because customers prefer FBA sellers over FBM. It also takes into account length of time as a seller, feedback, valid tracking, and other things that customers want. If you want the lowest price, you can easily choose that one. But most people do not, and it's silly to expect Amazon to cater to the minority at the expense of the majority.
merb 10y ago
Actually I prefer to sometimes spend more on a product, especially if the marketplace seller has negative comments. If I buy directly from Amazon I mostly now that if it's broken I can easily send it back and that they are actually using most german laws (except financials), so as a Customer I know I have protection and the company won't die in the lifetime of the product.
brownbat 10y ago
Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees. Maybe, as some have argued in this thread, the algorithm is agnostically detecting Amazon's popularity. So I don't want to pick on just Amazon. I have the same problem if I drive to a new state. I'll have no idea how much things really cost, because I made the mistake of not memorizing all local sales tax schedules along my route before getting in the car. We should make all merchants play on the same playing field, one with the lowest possible incentives to confuse customers by showing them any price they won't actually pay.
- dazc 10y ago
  >"Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees." I guess that would be difficult when there are several shipping methods being utilized. If I buy an item stocked by amazon I'll usually get it the next day via amazon logistics, DPD, or royal mail (when I'm in the UK). If it's a marketplace seller it could be royal mail first class, royal mail signed for, royal mail 'wish upon a star' class or, if I'm really unlucky, some random 'gig economy' courier. That's an awful lot of options to weigh up and most of the time I get no choice in which will be used. Like someone else has commented, I'll buy items stocked and fulfilled by amazon, whenever it is an option, and I don't care if that means I pay a bit more. Buying cheapest usually costs you more in one way or another.
  - brownbat 10y ago
    I will usually pay a little more to have Amazon fulfill as well, but that is completely orthogonal to my desire for more transparent pricing from all merchants. Yes there are options, but if sites can store billing information, they can store shipping preferences. They can pick a reasonable default. In fact, they already have all the necessary information, you can tell by the way some online merchants will have a single price in bold, then below that in fine print +$x shipping + $x tax, like so: http://imgur.com/krReEkz http://imgur.com/krReEkz They just don't have any interest in advertising more accurate (and thus higher) prices than their competitors. They know the numbers, there's no reason to hide the final price here, except that the competitive market is forcing anti-consumer behavior.
petra 10y ago
One thing i don't get: what role do small retailers play in this world, between the manufacturers and the large retailers/distributors like Amazon ? Because idealy the manufacturer just sends stuff to FBA, pays FBA it's 15% percent, and becomes the lowest cost supplier, right ?
- hga 10y ago
  This can be very dangerous, because if for any reason Amazon decides to stop doing business with you, you must pay them to either ship back your stock or to destroy it. A little time with your favorite search engine should find plenty of horror stories, especially from merchants selling used CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, there's been suspicion in the past that false claims of piracy were being used to suppress the supply of these items. And don't they charge for holding your inventory? They'd be insane not to, and that charge might be higher than you can arrange.
petra 10y ago
One thing i don't get: what role do small retailers play in this world, between the manufacturers and the large retailers/distributors like Amazon ? Because idealy the manufacturer just sends stuff to FBA, pays FBA it's 15% percent, and becomes the lowest cost supplier, right ?
kefka 10y ago
and I quote from the article, "It is not clear why Amazon’s algorithm now pushes its own products ahead of better deals offered by others." Really now? Can you be that obtuse? It's to sell directly and make more profit than having a 3rd party sell an item. Tl;Dr. Amazon prefers to return Amazon's stuff on top of searches. News at 11.
- pgrote 10y ago
  I've noticed in the last couple of months that amazon will tag things as AMAZON CHOICE or BEST SELLER that Amazon doesn't sell itself. For instance, if you search for mouse pad in the US you'll see the Amazon Choice is a third party product as is the Best Seller. The Amazon Choice has this right under the price: Note: Available at a lower price from other sellers, potentially without free Prime shipping. When you click on it you see you can save $1.30 if you're willing to wait 3 weeks. To me, this is handled properly.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    But you don't really need to wait three weeks, so that delivery "estimate" is misleading. UK suppliers tend to ship same day or next day, with delivery within one to three working days. If a supplier isn't overwhelmed with orders, the rational choice is to ship ASAP, because it increases positive feedback and the prospect of reorders. Not all suppliers understand this, but most do. You only have to wait weeks on orders shipped from abroad. But the product source country is usually obvious from the listing, so you can allow for that - if you want to.
a3n 10y ago
> Amazon bills itself as “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” In general, when a person or company proclaims something like this, it should be viewed with robust skepticism. If it were undeniably true and obvious from evidence, they wouldn't need to say it. If they need to say it, it could be because no one else is saying it. Similarly, if your boss or a co-worker says "I'm all about X," it may be that they just read a book that mentions X, or heard it in a meeting and just now decided that it would be good to be seen in that light. If they really were all about X, you'd already know it.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  At some point in my life I realized I need to apply this to every single claim made by everyone, including people I trust and even my own thoughts. It's exhausting, but I can't not do it.
  - a3n 10y ago
    Self-skepticism is particularly hard.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I've started to notice: If a company says that they are the "best at $x", they are usually terrible at it. Comcast says they are the best at customer service, health companies say they have the best websites, etc. In my very limited experience: Advertising/PR groups are given the negative stereotypes for a company, and are told to combat that image. It's because that is cheaper/easier than fixing the actual problem. The result for me has been: Advertisements like that generally tell me what everyone else hates about that company.
childifchaos 10y ago
This article is complete nonsense. I expect Amazon to recommend me products that it itself is selling or it itself has in its own warehouse, the sellers are secondary, if I wanted to buy from another seller I would use eBay. The fact that there is even an option to then price compare with other sellers and purchase direct from the seller while on the Amazon website is a pretty cool bonus, not Amazon trying to scam me. It's not a price comparison site searching for the best price and giving it to me (if I wanted that I would use a price comparison website) and it's not eBay or a marketplace, it's Amazon, a direct retailer with an added bonus of allowing you to search a separate marketplace but it's main business is selling directly! The marketplace is mainly clever marketing by Amazon, people use Amazon because they don't need to look else where because it has everything, since even direct order companies sell on there, hence once some people discover this they just use Amazon for everything (I know lots of people that do this)
- adolph 10y ago
  almost wholly unregulated Is the key bit. They aren't trying to be coherent, they are advocating for anti-democratic law, aka regulation.
ajju 10y ago
"The prices Amazon shows are ranked correctly for those who pay $99 per year for Amazon’s Prime shipping service " This may not refute the main point of the article, but if you are a prime customer it seems Amazon is still doing the right thing for you. (Unless I missed something).
bogomipz 10y ago
Price discrimination in eCommerce has been known for some time now. This is an interesting read on the subject: http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/price_discrimination.pdf http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/price_discriminati...
Hydraulix989 10y ago
This doesn't even bother me, but the fake reviews are driving me nuts. You have the influx of Chinese sellers that "bribe" top reviewers into writing "unbiased" reviews (lol!). I am a Top Reviewer, and I get about 3-5 emails a day asking for reviews in exchange for free items. Not only that, sorting by Best Rating no longer sorts by a weighting of the number of reviews and the average rating, so items with 3 reviews all 5-stars beat items with 1000 reviews average 4.9 in the search results. No wonder people play this game now.
i4i 10y ago
I think the article helped me realize that Ebay is a better match for me philosophically. Ebay is incentivized to provide a fair and transparent marketplace that empowers anyone. Their product is really the marketplace.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  It's too wild for my tastes. I'm always worried about the seller, genuine brand, shipping .. Amazon built a reputation of good enough customer service I believe.
  - i4i 10y ago
    The reputation engine built into Ebay seems to be taken very seriously. OTOH as someone who has avoided joining Prime, typically waiting until I have enough purchases to qualify for free shipping, I've experienced constant nudge (the increase in free shipping sale amount moving from 35-50, the obvious skew towards Prime in search results) shopping at Amazon in the last two years. I'm just suggesting that for me, having a philosophical reason to support Ebay over Amazon (democratic, bottom up, vs. top down) will help assuage the nuisance factor.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      I understand and agree with all your points. Just saying that amazon tames the psychological risk factor better than ebay, at least to my eyes.
skookum 10y ago
This article seems to be much ado about nothing. Amazon's buy box algorithm is weighted towards sold or fulfilled by Amazon because Amazon's metrics show that Amazon's customers prefer sold or fulfilled by Amazon. Many Amazon customers prefer sold or fulfilled by Amazon even if the final price paid is higher than the best price. Sometimes the best deal is not the best price - one has to factor in the hassle of deciding whether a given 3rd party is worth dealing with. Lastly, I'm also not sure how many customers use Amazon in a way where this supposed hiding of the best prices would be detrimental to them. Speaking as a non-Prime customer of over 15 years, I have never once paid for shipping for an Amazon.com/FBA item. I tend to accumulate items that I'll order eventually in my cart's "Saved for later" and use them to pad out orders I want shipped now up to the free shipping threshold.

103 points by known 10y ago

phreeza 10y ago

How is this surprising, given that Amazon is a privately owned, profit driven company?

bkor 10y ago
Two quotes: 1. "Amazon doesn’t count shipping costs for its own products, or those it fulfills for others, when customers rank a product by “price + shipping.”" 2. "Amazon said: [..]The sorting algorithms [..] are designed for that 90% of items ordered, where shipping costs do not apply.”" This is not just misleading, this is a step beyond. It's a big company, it should take care of its customers and if it does not, customer protection agencies should go after it.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  It's really not surprising that Amazon's algorithm takes "of course you'd want Prime" into the calculations.

nickm12 10y ago

This is a sensationalist title thrown onto a rehash of the real article, which can be found here: https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-customers-first-but-its-pricing-algorithm-doesnt https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-custo...

danso 10y ago

I'm a little too lazy to create an account in which Amazon Prime is not enabled, so I'm looking at listings in Incognito mode (i.e. not going through to the order confirmation screen, which requires creating an account). In the ProPublica article, the example of Loctite Liquid glue is used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004Y960MU/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B004Y960MU/ref=dp_ol... The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping. The next listing is as the ProPublica article claims, from "TheHardwareCityCo", with a price of $6.75 with free shipping. Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees that you do from Amazon.com. Furthermore, the massive markup cited in Quartz/ProPublica -- $1,400 extra for buying a basket of the 250 most popular products -- only applies if you decided to buy each item individually, as Amazon automatically gives you free shipping (Prime member or not) if you buy $50+ worth of items. Not seeing the big problem here, to be honest. Frankly, I get annoyed when the default seller for an item is not Amazon, and I have to dig to find the listing that has Amazon as the seller. I have Prime, so that makes a big difference, but I prefer Amazon's reliability over spending time trying to figure out which third-party seller is the least shadiest.

DanBC 10y ago
> The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping. Worth noting that Amazon has been regulated (in the UK) over their adverts and use of the term "free shipping". https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2016/8/Amazon-Europe-Core-Sarl/SHP_ADJ_304089.aspx#.V-evKFQrK01 https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2016/8/Amazon-E...
pgrote 10y ago
I concur. I was disappointed in the propublica article since they usually do very good work. Amazon always shows the option to see other sellers and even prompts you when there is a lower price that might not have prime shipping. Most of the time I pay the more expensive price for the following reasons: 1) It is sold by amazon. I know I don't have to worry about the possible issues dealing with third party sellers. 2) The product arrives faster. As a prime member, most items are shipped 2 day. If I look at the other options they are usually 1 week or more out. 3) I trust amazon. This one is the irrational reason due to the fact I could probably save money by looking at a meta shopping engine or ebay. I have a long history as a prime member and trust their pricing and their customer service. I do think you hit upon something with batching of orders. We rarely buy one off items and typically put things in our cart for an order a couple of times a month. Even then, Amazon offers full transparency. When you revisit your cart, Amazon shows you the price changes and offers to show you lower prices without prime.
BGZq7 10y ago
> The first listing is indeed from Amazon.com as the seller. It has the cheapest price at $5.97 with "FREE Shipping" if you have Prime. So I assume that without Prime, there is a cost for shipping. When I'm not logged in, it shows it has free Prime shipping. When I do log in to my account without Prime, it shows it has free shipping with an order of $49 or more. The only way I can find to see the shipping cost is to add it to my cart and proceed to checkout, which makes it a bit difficult to comparison shop. > Assuming that that free shipping, unlike Prime, is unconditional, it is worth pointing out that TheHardwareCityCo offers a shipping date from "October 3-12". I'm assuming that you also don't get the return guarantees that you do from Amazon.com. Amazon also seems to overstate these shipping dates to make Prime shipping look better. Almost every time I have ordered something via a 3rd party like that, it arrives before the earliest date Amazon says it could.

ikeboy 10y ago

The buy box prefers FBA sellers over FBM because customers prefer FBA sellers over FBM. It also takes into account length of time as a seller, feedback, valid tracking, and other things that customers want. If you want the lowest price, you can easily choose that one. But most people do not, and it's silly to expect Amazon to cater to the minority at the expense of the majority.

merb 10y ago

Actually I prefer to sometimes spend more on a product, especially if the marketplace seller has negative comments. If I buy directly from Amazon I mostly now that if it's broken I can easily send it back and that they are actually using most german laws (except financials), so as a Customer I know I have protection and the company won't die in the lifetime of the product.

brownbat 10y ago

Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees. Maybe, as some have argued in this thread, the algorithm is agnostically detecting Amazon's popularity. So I don't want to pick on just Amazon. I have the same problem if I drive to a new state. I'll have no idea how much things really cost, because I made the mistake of not memorizing all local sales tax schedules along my route before getting in the car. We should make all merchants play on the same playing field, one with the lowest possible incentives to confuse customers by showing them any price they won't actually pay.

dazc 10y ago
>"Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees." I guess that would be difficult when there are several shipping methods being utilized. If I buy an item stocked by amazon I'll usually get it the next day via amazon logistics, DPD, or royal mail (when I'm in the UK). If it's a marketplace seller it could be royal mail first class, royal mail signed for, royal mail 'wish upon a star' class or, if I'm really unlucky, some random 'gig economy' courier. That's an awful lot of options to weigh up and most of the time I get no choice in which will be used. Like someone else has commented, I'll buy items stocked and fulfilled by amazon, whenever it is an option, and I don't care if that means I pay a bit more. Buying cheapest usually costs you more in one way or another.
- brownbat 10y ago
  I will usually pay a little more to have Amazon fulfill as well, but that is completely orthogonal to my desire for more transparent pricing from all merchants. Yes there are options, but if sites can store billing information, they can store shipping preferences. They can pick a reasonable default. In fact, they already have all the necessary information, you can tell by the way some online merchants will have a single price in bold, then below that in fine print +$x shipping + $x tax, like so: http://imgur.com/krReEkz http://imgur.com/krReEkz They just don't have any interest in advertising more accurate (and thus higher) prices than their competitors. They know the numbers, there's no reason to hide the final price here, except that the competitive market is forcing anti-consumer behavior.

petra 10y ago

One thing i don't get: what role do small retailers play in this world, between the manufacturers and the large retailers/distributors like Amazon ? Because idealy the manufacturer just sends stuff to FBA, pays FBA it's 15% percent, and becomes the lowest cost supplier, right ?

hga 10y ago
This can be very dangerous, because if for any reason Amazon decides to stop doing business with you, you must pay them to either ship back your stock or to destroy it. A little time with your favorite search engine should find plenty of horror stories, especially from merchants selling used CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, there's been suspicion in the past that false claims of piracy were being used to suppress the supply of these items. And don't they charge for holding your inventory? They'd be insane not to, and that charge might be higher than you can arrange.

petra 10y ago

kefka 10y ago

and I quote from the article, "It is not clear why Amazon’s algorithm now pushes its own products ahead of better deals offered by others." Really now? Can you be that obtuse? It's to sell directly and make more profit than having a 3rd party sell an item. Tl;Dr. Amazon prefers to return Amazon's stuff on top of searches. News at 11.

pgrote 10y ago
I've noticed in the last couple of months that amazon will tag things as AMAZON CHOICE or BEST SELLER that Amazon doesn't sell itself. For instance, if you search for mouse pad in the US you'll see the Amazon Choice is a third party product as is the Best Seller. The Amazon Choice has this right under the price: Note: Available at a lower price from other sellers, potentially without free Prime shipping. When you click on it you see you can save $1.30 if you're willing to wait 3 weeks. To me, this is handled properly.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  But you don't really need to wait three weeks, so that delivery "estimate" is misleading. UK suppliers tend to ship same day or next day, with delivery within one to three working days. If a supplier isn't overwhelmed with orders, the rational choice is to ship ASAP, because it increases positive feedback and the prospect of reorders. Not all suppliers understand this, but most do. You only have to wait weeks on orders shipped from abroad. But the product source country is usually obvious from the listing, so you can allow for that - if you want to.

a3n 10y ago

> Amazon bills itself as “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” In general, when a person or company proclaims something like this, it should be viewed with robust skepticism. If it were undeniably true and obvious from evidence, they wouldn't need to say it. If they need to say it, it could be because no one else is saying it. Similarly, if your boss or a co-worker says "I'm all about X," it may be that they just read a book that mentions X, or heard it in a meeting and just now decided that it would be good to be seen in that light. If they really were all about X, you'd already know it.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
At some point in my life I realized I need to apply this to every single claim made by everyone, including people I trust and even my own thoughts. It's exhausting, but I can't not do it.
- a3n 10y ago
  Self-skepticism is particularly hard.
CaptSpify 10y ago
I've started to notice: If a company says that they are the "best at $x", they are usually terrible at it. Comcast says they are the best at customer service, health companies say they have the best websites, etc. In my very limited experience: Advertising/PR groups are given the negative stereotypes for a company, and are told to combat that image. It's because that is cheaper/easier than fixing the actual problem. The result for me has been: Advertisements like that generally tell me what everyone else hates about that company.

childifchaos 10y ago

This article is complete nonsense. I expect Amazon to recommend me products that it itself is selling or it itself has in its own warehouse, the sellers are secondary, if I wanted to buy from another seller I would use eBay. The fact that there is even an option to then price compare with other sellers and purchase direct from the seller while on the Amazon website is a pretty cool bonus, not Amazon trying to scam me. It's not a price comparison site searching for the best price and giving it to me (if I wanted that I would use a price comparison website) and it's not eBay or a marketplace, it's Amazon, a direct retailer with an added bonus of allowing you to search a separate marketplace but it's main business is selling directly! The marketplace is mainly clever marketing by Amazon, people use Amazon because they don't need to look else where because it has everything, since even direct order companies sell on there, hence once some people discover this they just use Amazon for everything (I know lots of people that do this)

adolph 10y ago
almost wholly unregulated Is the key bit. They aren't trying to be coherent, they are advocating for anti-democratic law, aka regulation.

ajju 10y ago

"The prices Amazon shows are ranked correctly for those who pay $99 per year for Amazon’s Prime shipping service " This may not refute the main point of the article, but if you are a prime customer it seems Amazon is still doing the right thing for you. (Unless I missed something).

bogomipz 10y ago

Price discrimination in eCommerce has been known for some time now. This is an interesting read on the subject: http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/price_discrimination.pdf http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/price_discriminati...

Hydraulix989 10y ago

This doesn't even bother me, but the fake reviews are driving me nuts. You have the influx of Chinese sellers that "bribe" top reviewers into writing "unbiased" reviews (lol!). I am a Top Reviewer, and I get about 3-5 emails a day asking for reviews in exchange for free items. Not only that, sorting by Best Rating no longer sorts by a weighting of the number of reviews and the average rating, so items with 3 reviews all 5-stars beat items with 1000 reviews average 4.9 in the search results. No wonder people play this game now.

i4i 10y ago

I think the article helped me realize that Ebay is a better match for me philosophically. Ebay is incentivized to provide a fair and transparent marketplace that empowers anyone. Their product is really the marketplace.

agumonkey 10y ago
It's too wild for my tastes. I'm always worried about the seller, genuine brand, shipping .. Amazon built a reputation of good enough customer service I believe.
- i4i 10y ago
  The reputation engine built into Ebay seems to be taken very seriously. OTOH as someone who has avoided joining Prime, typically waiting until I have enough purchases to qualify for free shipping, I've experienced constant nudge (the increase in free shipping sale amount moving from 35-50, the obvious skew towards Prime in search results) shopping at Amazon in the last two years. I'm just suggesting that for me, having a philosophical reason to support Ebay over Amazon (democratic, bottom up, vs. top down) will help assuage the nuisance factor.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    I understand and agree with all your points. Just saying that amazon tames the psychological risk factor better than ebay, at least to my eyes.

skookum 10y ago

This article seems to be much ado about nothing. Amazon's buy box algorithm is weighted towards sold or fulfilled by Amazon because Amazon's metrics show that Amazon's customers prefer sold or fulfilled by Amazon. Many Amazon customers prefer sold or fulfilled by Amazon even if the final price paid is higher than the best price. Sometimes the best deal is not the best price - one has to factor in the hassle of deciding whether a given 3rd party is worth dealing with. Lastly, I'm also not sure how many customers use Amazon in a way where this supposed hiding of the best prices would be detrimental to them. Speaking as a non-Prime customer of over 15 years, I have never once paid for shipping for an Amazon.com/FBA item. I tend to accumulate items that I'll order eventually in my cart's "Saved for later" and use them to pad out orders I want shipped now up to the free shipping threshold.