Its very important for people here to remember that there are three ways to increase price: 1. I increase the nominal price 2. I decrease the amount I give you

Its very important for people here to remember that there are three ways to increase price: 1. I increase the nominal price 2. I decrease the amount I give you 3. I lower the quality of what I give you. So all the comments that state: "There's no observed increase in price by [insert monopolist]" have to also assert that points 2 and 3 didn't occur. If I sell you a chocolate bar and I start using food grade wax in increasing quantities I'm effectively increasing the price of chocolate (and recreating Hershey's ;). So, if I can't reliably buy genuine batteries (or much of anything really) with Amazon and I have to choose between them and Costco, then Amazon's are effectively more expensive. Not saying amazon is or isn't awesome... but they have been jacking their prices!