8 ms·

An Amazon revolt could be brewing as tech giant exerts more control over brands

115 points by juokaz 8y ago

aj7 8y ago
Peak Amazon.
joeblau 8y ago
I worked at Amazon on a team that built a mobile point of sale application. We had one supplier for our card reader that was this family owned company. It was a super tight night company — They even had a wall of how long employees worked at the company and some were there over 40 years. That being said, we (Amazon) wanted to move to blue tooth card readers. What I heard is that we tried to strong arm them into doing what we wanted even though the company had so many other clients and we weren't a big enough priority for them to drop everything and focus on us. The relationship was so strained that when myself and a few engineers went down to debug something with the hardware team from the other company, we were told to walk on egg shells and be careful about what we said.
- voicedYoda 8y ago
  Kudos to the family owned business. Amazon is taking a page out of Walmarts playbook. Both are juggernauts and won't fail overall. My hope is they help create new markets in the areas where they do fail.
mkirklions 8y ago
I have cut back in my use of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. These companies are dangers to consumers and developers at their current scale. I'm not sure that is debatable either. As much as I like capitalism, these tech giants have power that worry me.
- asutekku 8y ago
  The others I get but what is the problem with Apple?
  - treis 8y ago
    Rent seeking behavior in the app and service marketplaces.
    - symfoniq 8y ago
      And increasingly user-hostile products.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    Apple exerts pressures and demands on it's ODMs similar to what Walmart did on vendors in the 90s. Google all of the troubles Foxconn has been having with it's workforce, this is primarily due to it's relationship with Apple.
    - tracker1 8y ago
      And don't forget their war with 3rd party repair options, which does not help them, since their own options are overpriced, and generally their genius techs are less knowledgeable.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
calebh 8y ago
What are the alternatives to Amazon? I'm sick of having to deal with fake reviews and potentially fake products. Nowadays I don't purchase anything critical on Amazon due to these sorts of problems. Amazon doesn't seem to be at all interested in tackling these issues - it's only a matter of time before it degrades completely into something like AliExpress.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Open your own brand store on eBay and ship stuff yourself. Lots of smaller e-commerce retailers do it. Many current Amazon sellers also sell on eBay. Unless you're relying on Amazon to hold your inventory it doesn't make sense not to sell on every platform you can.
- Deinos 8y ago
  I still find value in specific things, like subscriptions for common household items; however, I am inclined to agree with you on most tech items and other goods that are easy to counterfeit. Not worth the risk and hassle vs spending a little more to circumvent that grief.
- atomicfiredoll 8y ago
  I haven't ordered from Amazon in about a year, instead buying from a number of alternatives. It's a little more expensive and a little more of a pain sometimes, but I'm just that turned off by the Amazon. For electronics, I'm lucky enough to live in a decent size city with a MicroCenter. But, I've also resorted to ordering items like phones and laptops for family members at their local Best Buy, which gives them the opportunity to pick it up same day. (It's also nice to be able to talk to a person when making expensive purchases like these.) I ordered an InstaPot and some Hue bulbs directly from the respective sites. Wal-Mart's delivery and pick-up options aren't bad, but I try to avoid them and go with Target if buying from that sort of store. Honestly, it's the weird little things I have most trouble finding, like braille keyboard overlays or specific Halloween decorations.
- fipple 8y ago
  The alternative I use is a physical Target store. I’ve switched 75% of my Amazon spend to Target.
bovermyer 8y ago
I'm starting to shop more at other online retailers. Stories like this drive me further away from Amazon. I'd rather buy directly from a vendor.
- horchata97 8y ago
  What other retailers? The brand's store directly? I want other options but I don't know of any.
  - bovermyer 8y ago
    Depends on the brand. The larger ones sometimes have their own online storefronts. Other times, smaller retailers have online storefronts that work well enough. Shipping isn't as fast or as cheap when using anything other than Amazon, though, so that's worth considering.
  - scrooched_moose 8y ago
    Wal-Mart is really the only comparable one-stop shopping experience. Target is OK on some categories but has a much smaller selection overall. I've switched mostly to smaller single-category retailers: Electronics - Newegg and Monoprice Board & Table Top Games - Miniature Market Pet Food - Chewy (owned by PetSmart now) Clothing - Depends on your style, but I tend to stick to Eddie Bauer and Duluth Trading Company for good quality, affordable clothes Comic trade paperbacks - InStockTrades Books - Barnes & Noble (new) and eBay (used) Tools - Ace, Menards, Woodcraft
    - tracker1 8y ago
      One comment on Newegg... similar issue to Amazon marketplace, pretty much want to select newegg as the seller, or you may be waiting a month for products shipping from China.
  - LargeWu 8y ago
    Almost anything you can find on Amazon you can find at another online retailer with a quick search. And anything that has a brand name (that isn't a commodity, e.g. batteries, or store brand) can probably be found on the brand's own website. Here's an example: the other day I was buying some funny socks as christmas presents. They sell on Amazon as well as their own store. The price was the same on both, but I would get free shipping, and faster shipping, from Amazon. Nonetheless, I chose to buy directly from the company because I don't like the way Amazon does business sometimes, and because buying directly gives smaller retailers a bigger cut. As I've been running and growing a few very small online retail operations myself, I feel a lot better about supporting other small businesses directly.
bradfa 8y ago
Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now. I've had enough unexpected surprises when buying from 3rd parties that I'm fed up with it. I see Amazon's new restrictions on 3rd party selling as being a good thing, although it seems the change is first affecting manufacturers who sell on the Amazon platform who are probably the least bad of the 3rd party sellers. Overall, I see Amazon wanting to own more of the customer interaction as being a good thing for me as a customer. Buying and returning items from Amazon itself (not using 3rd party sellers) is a very good shopping experience for me and always has been.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now. You can't really avoid it. Amazon comingles its inventory with that of 3rd party sellers who sell as FBA. So even if you choose Amazon as the seller, the actual product you receive could be the one a 3rd party seller shipped to Amazon's warehouses.
  - ddebernardy 8y ago
    Are you sure about that? I vaguely recollect reading somewhere that the 3rd party vendors stocks were indeed shared as undifferentiated stock to optimize logistics, but that Amazon kept its own stocks separate over QA reasons.
    - BeetleB 8y ago
      It was up to a year ago when I stopped selling on Amazon. I should add a qualifier: What I say is true only for new products. For used products, they'll ship you the exact item the seller shipped to them.
    - _red 8y ago
      I am an Amazon seller, and yes if you ship inventory to them under FBA program, that inventory is co-mingled.
zebrafish 8y ago
This article is mostly alarmist nonsense. Vendors would welcome the addition of Seller tools to Vendor Central. Vendors do not have access to the Marketplace APIs, get watered down reporting, and are generally treated like suppliers where Sellers are treated like customers. In addition, this is not a new shift in policy for Amazon. They have never allowed a product sold by Retail to be sold by the same Vendor on Marketplace. They would have to compete on price with the Vendor for that item and would win absolutely zero buy-boxes. If anything, Amazon has softened on this stance recently. They now are open to "hybrid" sales models which allow the Vendor to sell & fulfill items that Amazon cannot profitably sell itself because of the always on price-matching in Amazon's pricing engine. One gripe that many have about Amazon is their hands-off approach to policing non-authorized listings of products. Many small time players will simply purchase products through a myriad of channels and sell them on Amazon, sometimes attaching them to the Vendor listing, and sometimes creating fake UPCs and listing the product as a separate item. This causes customer confusion and a bad customer experience because of duplicate listings or unknown sellers & fulfillers on a Vendor's listing. Of course, Amazon has no incentive to police these listings because they still collect the $99/yr fee from these sellers as well as 15% of any buy-boxes they do happen to win. Amazon makes money on these sellers for the cost of the hosting the minute traffic that ends up on these listings.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  This is very much a new policy. There was never a written requirement for brands not to sell both through VC and SC, until a few months ago. Also, the fee is $39/month, not $99/year.
  - zebrafish 8y ago
    It may be a new written policy for certain categories, but I haven't been exposed to such a policy. A VM would have scoffed at the idea of allowing their vendor to sell the same product through Seller Central for years now. A vendor could discretely do this by setting up a 3P account and not telling their VM about it, but that's dishonest business and to be completely fair, you cannot honestly expect Amazon to allow that. In the case of CRaP items, it's actually become a new strategy for VMs to allow some hybrid selling to keep assortment on the site while still allowing the company to turn a profit on the sale. My mistake on the pricing of Seller Pro, but the point still stands.
stevespang 8y ago
Bezos is such a BOZO. From fake reviews to defective chinese merchandise. Who will be the first to create and post a widely distributed graphic emblem that millions of merchants can all start applying to their product packaging and their websites: NEVER TO BE SOLD ON THE EVIL AMAZON
walterbell 8y ago
Best Buy will price match Amazon and other online retailers, providing same day local pickup of authentic products. The entire process can be done online via chat, takes about 10 mins, once you have a URL to prove the price.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  OTOH, Best Buy has a shorter return window and has started blacklisting customers who return products too much, with no warning. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-your-returns-are-used-against-you-at-best-buy-other-retailers-1520933400 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-your-returns-are-used-again...
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Amazon, and every other business, does the same thing. If a customer is causing you to lose money, then you shouldn't be doing business with them.
    - canada_dry 8y ago
      Problem is, Amazon is becoming an online monopoly and this policy has a pretty fast slippery slope to - we don't want you as a customer for many, many reasons including: you post unfavorable reviews, you tend to only buy things on-sale...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - nightski 8y ago
    Is this really a problem for you? I think I have returned 1-2 items in my entire lifetime. But I am a pretty cautious shopper.
    - gnicholas 8y ago
      I've never run into this problem personally, but they've only started doing it recently. I would not feel comfortable shifting all of my purchasing to BB because of the 2-week return window and the possibility that they would blacklist me without notice. If they had some sort of warning system that would make me feel much better.
rchaud 8y ago
Amazon has used 3rd parties for a long time, but they weren't shoved in your face as "Sponsored Results" until maybe a year or so ago? Honestly, it makes shopping on Amazon feel more and more like a flea market. I especially don't like how Amazon now obscures the source of the product by emphasizing the "Prime Shipping Available". I find myself having to manually look to see if the product is sold by Amazon, or merely "Fulfilled by Amazon". It's honestly an ugly experience these days. Is it worth bringing down your UX to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth?
- 0xfeba 8y ago
  > Is it worth bringing down your UX to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth? That's exactly my thoughts on this. Ever since the marketplace opened up it's just become more and more like eBay/AliExpress, flooded with cheap knock-offs and dubious products. I still have Prime for regular purchases, but find myself buying special items from specialized sellers (car parts, gym equipment, etc.)
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  Sounds like this is a great opportunity for a small browser plugin/custom CSS to show a big red flag on products sold by third parties.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  That's not a fair assessment. Ebay doesn't bait & switch fast/free shipping or swap vendors when you add an item to your cart. I am frequently disappointed by ebay's lack of polish, but I have never gotten the impression that ebay was actively trying to defraud buyers or enable such behavior from third parties. Amazon, on the other hand, is 100% guilty on both counts.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    Fair point. My comment about Ebay had more to do with the weird split they had between "Bid Now" and "Buy it Now", and the confusion I faced when searching for a product and having to look at both the price AND shipping. This was because Ebay took their cut off the sale price, not the shipping cost. So sellers would reduce the sale price and jack up the shipping rate, which is where they made their margins. Haven't bought anything on Ebay in years, so I don't know if they cracked down on that practice.
Twirrim 8y ago
Maybe I'm misreading the article, but it seems like Amazon is trying to fix the atrocious third party and counterfeit seller problem that people have been complaining about for years?
- chopin 8y ago
  How does this work if they don't allow the goods producer to sell on their market place (or their affiliates) but any willing third party to sell the same good?
bedhead 8y ago
Hacker News posters are the most hyperbolically negative folks on Amazon that it's almost funny. I always groan when clicking on Amazon-related comments because I know it's just going to be people complaining about god-knows-what. And yet, the company thrives.
- GVIrish 8y ago
  HN may be down on Amazon but whether or not a company is 'thriving' is not always tied to whether the company is doing the right thing, or even heading for disaster. Amazon is probably not going to fall apart over night, but it doesn't mean all of their actions are taking them in the right direction.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
taprun 8y ago
I've argued [0] that what people see as a bug (obvious counterfeit products) is actually a feature that will lead to increased profits for Amazon. I can't understand why people think Amazon would be so quick to stop it... [0] https://taprun.com/articles/amazon-pricing-power-conspiracy https://taprun.com/articles/amazon-pricing-power-conspiracy
post_break 8y ago
What I don't understand is the fake products. Been buying tons of stuff on amazon, never got a fake product. What are you guys buying that you're getting fakes of? Things like Apple chargers, SD cards, those things I can see being fakes, but what else? And if you get a fake you literally just call amazon and say hey, this is counterfeit, refund me.
- sigstoat 8y ago
  what process do you use for identifying fake apple chargers non-destructively?
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Gravimetrically. IE: weigh it. At least the bad counterfeits won’t have a small concrete weight. When that doesn’t work, weigh each corner in each orientation and compare to the original.
- dahdum 8y ago
  I've gotten fake or counterfeit razer blades, usb hubs, cables, batteries, and other small electronics. I switched to using Aliexpress for hobby stuff, at least I'm not paying a premium for generics there. Some fakes are hard to discern because they are easy to clone, like small bottles of anti-fog spray or generic kitchen supplies. I imagine more slipped through than I know of as a result. Each time you have to chat into Amazon, then send the item back (taking your time, refund held until it arrives), and then find an alternate to purchase since they can't guarantee a reshipment will be legitimate either.
- freehunter 8y ago
  I used to have the same take, I couldn't understand people complaining about fakes because I never got any. I just assumed people were careless with their shopping. But then I started getting fakes on things I buy all the time. Fake AA batteries, not Duracell but Duracell knockoffs. They last half the time and you can peel the Duracell label off to see another label beneath. Bought a steel water bottle and it was not the right brand at all. Bought a Swissgear backpack and not the right brand at all. Bought a white artificial Christmas tree, same brand as I had seen in stores and when I got it, it was a normal artificial Christmas tree wrapped in white electrical tape. Not the same brand I had purchased. You can refund, sure, but that's a huge hassle. I ordered something, paid for it, waited for it to get here, then can't use it until I get refunded and order another one? Why would I do that more than once or twice? If it keeps happening, anyone would switch to not buying from that place again.
mark-r 8y ago
This sounds like a repeat of the process Walmart went through. As they become the reseller that's too big to ignore, they can start dictating the terms of the relationship. So how'd that Walmart revolt turn out?
- tracker1 8y ago
  Can't speak for anyone else, but personally I only buy a limited range of products from Walmart. Their quality tends to be so low, and service as well that I just don't shop there. I know they've become an online competitor to Amazon, but I don't even think to look most of the time because I've tuned them out. I don't think I'm the only one. I am certain that Amazon is starting to lose customers because of bad returns experiences via the marketplace alone. They keep raising the price of Prime to fund other products that I don't use. There's a limit to what people will continue to pay for. Although Amazon is really good at knowing where that line is.
ilamont 8y ago
If you want to see what a wholesale relationship with Amazon looks like, check out Amazon Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.html?topic=200329780 https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.htm...) which media publishers use to sell physical product through Amazon. 55% discount off MSRP, demands to ship single units to warehouses scattered across the country, no shipping discounts, no payment until goods sold, and badly designed algorithms that usually order far too much. Some media publishers are leaving Amazon Advantage because they can't make money (see http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-amazon/ http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-ama...), pricing higher so they can make a decent margin, or simply telling Amazon that there is no more inventory.

115 points by juokaz 8y ago

aj7 8y ago

Peak Amazon.

I worked at Amazon on a team that built a mobile point of sale application. We had one supplier for our card reader that was this family owned company. It was a super tight night company — They even had a wall of how long employees worked at the company and some were there over 40 years. That being said, we (Amazon) wanted to move to blue tooth card readers. What I heard is that we tried to strong arm them into doing what we wanted even though the company had so many other clients and we weren't a big enough priority for them to drop everything and focus on us. The relationship was so strained that when myself and a few engineers went down to debug something with the hardware team from the other company, we were told to walk on egg shells and be careful about what we said.

voicedYoda 8y ago
Kudos to the family owned business. Amazon is taking a page out of Walmarts playbook. Both are juggernauts and won't fail overall. My hope is they help create new markets in the areas where they do fail.

mkirklions 8y ago

I have cut back in my use of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. These companies are dangers to consumers and developers at their current scale. I'm not sure that is debatable either. As much as I like capitalism, these tech giants have power that worry me.

asutekku 8y ago
The others I get but what is the problem with Apple?
- treis 8y ago
  Rent seeking behavior in the app and service marketplaces.
  - symfoniq 8y ago
    And increasingly user-hostile products.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Apple exerts pressures and demands on it's ODMs similar to what Walmart did on vendors in the 90s. Google all of the troubles Foxconn has been having with it's workforce, this is primarily due to it's relationship with Apple.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    And don't forget their war with 3rd party repair options, which does not help them, since their own options are overpriced, and generally their genius techs are less knowledgeable.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

calebh 8y ago

What are the alternatives to Amazon? I'm sick of having to deal with fake reviews and potentially fake products. Nowadays I don't purchase anything critical on Amazon due to these sorts of problems. Amazon doesn't seem to be at all interested in tackling these issues - it's only a matter of time before it degrades completely into something like AliExpress.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Open your own brand store on eBay and ship stuff yourself. Lots of smaller e-commerce retailers do it. Many current Amazon sellers also sell on eBay. Unless you're relying on Amazon to hold your inventory it doesn't make sense not to sell on every platform you can.
Deinos 8y ago
I still find value in specific things, like subscriptions for common household items; however, I am inclined to agree with you on most tech items and other goods that are easy to counterfeit. Not worth the risk and hassle vs spending a little more to circumvent that grief.
atomicfiredoll 8y ago
I haven't ordered from Amazon in about a year, instead buying from a number of alternatives. It's a little more expensive and a little more of a pain sometimes, but I'm just that turned off by the Amazon. For electronics, I'm lucky enough to live in a decent size city with a MicroCenter. But, I've also resorted to ordering items like phones and laptops for family members at their local Best Buy, which gives them the opportunity to pick it up same day. (It's also nice to be able to talk to a person when making expensive purchases like these.) I ordered an InstaPot and some Hue bulbs directly from the respective sites. Wal-Mart's delivery and pick-up options aren't bad, but I try to avoid them and go with Target if buying from that sort of store. Honestly, it's the weird little things I have most trouble finding, like braille keyboard overlays or specific Halloween decorations.
fipple 8y ago
The alternative I use is a physical Target store. I’ve switched 75% of my Amazon spend to Target.

bovermyer 8y ago

I'm starting to shop more at other online retailers. Stories like this drive me further away from Amazon. I'd rather buy directly from a vendor.

horchata97 8y ago
What other retailers? The brand's store directly? I want other options but I don't know of any.
- bovermyer 8y ago
  Depends on the brand. The larger ones sometimes have their own online storefronts. Other times, smaller retailers have online storefronts that work well enough. Shipping isn't as fast or as cheap when using anything other than Amazon, though, so that's worth considering.
- scrooched_moose 8y ago
  Wal-Mart is really the only comparable one-stop shopping experience. Target is OK on some categories but has a much smaller selection overall. I've switched mostly to smaller single-category retailers: Electronics - Newegg and Monoprice Board & Table Top Games - Miniature Market Pet Food - Chewy (owned by PetSmart now) Clothing - Depends on your style, but I tend to stick to Eddie Bauer and Duluth Trading Company for good quality, affordable clothes Comic trade paperbacks - InStockTrades Books - Barnes & Noble (new) and eBay (used) Tools - Ace, Menards, Woodcraft
  - tracker1 8y ago
    One comment on Newegg... similar issue to Amazon marketplace, pretty much want to select newegg as the seller, or you may be waiting a month for products shipping from China.
- LargeWu 8y ago
  Almost anything you can find on Amazon you can find at another online retailer with a quick search. And anything that has a brand name (that isn't a commodity, e.g. batteries, or store brand) can probably be found on the brand's own website. Here's an example: the other day I was buying some funny socks as christmas presents. They sell on Amazon as well as their own store. The price was the same on both, but I would get free shipping, and faster shipping, from Amazon. Nonetheless, I chose to buy directly from the company because I don't like the way Amazon does business sometimes, and because buying directly gives smaller retailers a bigger cut. As I've been running and growing a few very small online retail operations myself, I feel a lot better about supporting other small businesses directly.

bradfa 8y ago

Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now. I've had enough unexpected surprises when buying from 3rd parties that I'm fed up with it. I see Amazon's new restrictions on 3rd party selling as being a good thing, although it seems the change is first affecting manufacturers who sell on the Amazon platform who are probably the least bad of the 3rd party sellers. Overall, I see Amazon wanting to own more of the customer interaction as being a good thing for me as a customer. Buying and returning items from Amazon itself (not using 3rd party sellers) is a very good shopping experience for me and always has been.

BeetleB 8y ago
>Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now. You can't really avoid it. Amazon comingles its inventory with that of 3rd party sellers who sell as FBA. So even if you choose Amazon as the seller, the actual product you receive could be the one a 3rd party seller shipped to Amazon's warehouses.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Are you sure about that? I vaguely recollect reading somewhere that the 3rd party vendors stocks were indeed shared as undifferentiated stock to optimize logistics, but that Amazon kept its own stocks separate over QA reasons.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    It was up to a year ago when I stopped selling on Amazon. I should add a qualifier: What I say is true only for new products. For used products, they'll ship you the exact item the seller shipped to them.
  - _red 8y ago
    I am an Amazon seller, and yes if you ship inventory to them under FBA program, that inventory is co-mingled.

zebrafish 8y ago

This article is mostly alarmist nonsense. Vendors would welcome the addition of Seller tools to Vendor Central. Vendors do not have access to the Marketplace APIs, get watered down reporting, and are generally treated like suppliers where Sellers are treated like customers. In addition, this is not a new shift in policy for Amazon. They have never allowed a product sold by Retail to be sold by the same Vendor on Marketplace. They would have to compete on price with the Vendor for that item and would win absolutely zero buy-boxes. If anything, Amazon has softened on this stance recently. They now are open to "hybrid" sales models which allow the Vendor to sell & fulfill items that Amazon cannot profitably sell itself because of the always on price-matching in Amazon's pricing engine. One gripe that many have about Amazon is their hands-off approach to policing non-authorized listings of products. Many small time players will simply purchase products through a myriad of channels and sell them on Amazon, sometimes attaching them to the Vendor listing, and sometimes creating fake UPCs and listing the product as a separate item. This causes customer confusion and a bad customer experience because of duplicate listings or unknown sellers & fulfillers on a Vendor's listing. Of course, Amazon has no incentive to police these listings because they still collect the $99/yr fee from these sellers as well as 15% of any buy-boxes they do happen to win. Amazon makes money on these sellers for the cost of the hosting the minute traffic that ends up on these listings.

ikeboy 8y ago
This is very much a new policy. There was never a written requirement for brands not to sell both through VC and SC, until a few months ago. Also, the fee is $39/month, not $99/year.
- zebrafish 8y ago
  It may be a new written policy for certain categories, but I haven't been exposed to such a policy. A VM would have scoffed at the idea of allowing their vendor to sell the same product through Seller Central for years now. A vendor could discretely do this by setting up a 3P account and not telling their VM about it, but that's dishonest business and to be completely fair, you cannot honestly expect Amazon to allow that. In the case of CRaP items, it's actually become a new strategy for VMs to allow some hybrid selling to keep assortment on the site while still allowing the company to turn a profit on the sale. My mistake on the pricing of Seller Pro, but the point still stands.

stevespang 8y ago

Bezos is such a BOZO. From fake reviews to defective chinese merchandise. Who will be the first to create and post a widely distributed graphic emblem that millions of merchants can all start applying to their product packaging and their websites: NEVER TO BE SOLD ON THE EVIL AMAZON

walterbell 8y ago

Best Buy will price match Amazon and other online retailers, providing same day local pickup of authentic products. The entire process can be done online via chat, takes about 10 mins, once you have a URL to prove the price.

gnicholas 8y ago
OTOH, Best Buy has a shorter return window and has started blacklisting customers who return products too much, with no warning. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-your-returns-are-used-against-you-at-best-buy-other-retailers-1520933400 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-your-returns-are-used-again...
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Amazon, and every other business, does the same thing. If a customer is causing you to lose money, then you shouldn't be doing business with them.
  - canada_dry 8y ago
    Problem is, Amazon is becoming an online monopoly and this policy has a pretty fast slippery slope to - we don't want you as a customer for many, many reasons including: you post unfavorable reviews, you tend to only buy things on-sale...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- nightski 8y ago
  Is this really a problem for you? I think I have returned 1-2 items in my entire lifetime. But I am a pretty cautious shopper.
  - gnicholas 8y ago
    I've never run into this problem personally, but they've only started doing it recently. I would not feel comfortable shifting all of my purchasing to BB because of the 2-week return window and the possibility that they would blacklist me without notice. If they had some sort of warning system that would make me feel much better.

rchaud 8y ago

Amazon has used 3rd parties for a long time, but they weren't shoved in your face as "Sponsored Results" until maybe a year or so ago? Honestly, it makes shopping on Amazon feel more and more like a flea market. I especially don't like how Amazon now obscures the source of the product by emphasizing the "Prime Shipping Available". I find myself having to manually look to see if the product is sold by Amazon, or merely "Fulfilled by Amazon". It's honestly an ugly experience these days. Is it worth bringing down your UX to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth?

0xfeba 8y ago
> Is it worth bringing down your UX to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth? That's exactly my thoughts on this. Ever since the marketplace opened up it's just become more and more like eBay/AliExpress, flooded with cheap knock-offs and dubious products. I still have Prime for regular purchases, but find myself buying special items from specialized sellers (car parts, gym equipment, etc.)
Consultant32452 8y ago
Sounds like this is a great opportunity for a small browser plugin/custom CSS to show a big red flag on products sold by third parties.
jjoonathan 8y ago
That's not a fair assessment. Ebay doesn't bait & switch fast/free shipping or swap vendors when you add an item to your cart. I am frequently disappointed by ebay's lack of polish, but I have never gotten the impression that ebay was actively trying to defraud buyers or enable such behavior from third parties. Amazon, on the other hand, is 100% guilty on both counts.
- rchaud 8y ago
  Fair point. My comment about Ebay had more to do with the weird split they had between "Bid Now" and "Buy it Now", and the confusion I faced when searching for a product and having to look at both the price AND shipping. This was because Ebay took their cut off the sale price, not the shipping cost. So sellers would reduce the sale price and jack up the shipping rate, which is where they made their margins. Haven't bought anything on Ebay in years, so I don't know if they cracked down on that practice.

Twirrim 8y ago

Maybe I'm misreading the article, but it seems like Amazon is trying to fix the atrocious third party and counterfeit seller problem that people have been complaining about for years?

chopin 8y ago
How does this work if they don't allow the goods producer to sell on their market place (or their affiliates) but any willing third party to sell the same good?

bedhead 8y ago

Hacker News posters are the most hyperbolically negative folks on Amazon that it's almost funny. I always groan when clicking on Amazon-related comments because I know it's just going to be people complaining about god-knows-what. And yet, the company thrives.

GVIrish 8y ago
HN may be down on Amazon but whether or not a company is 'thriving' is not always tied to whether the company is doing the right thing, or even heading for disaster. Amazon is probably not going to fall apart over night, but it doesn't mean all of their actions are taking them in the right direction.
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taprun 8y ago

I've argued [0] that what people see as a bug (obvious counterfeit products) is actually a feature that will lead to increased profits for Amazon. I can't understand why people think Amazon would be so quick to stop it... [0] https://taprun.com/articles/amazon-pricing-power-conspiracy https://taprun.com/articles/amazon-pricing-power-conspiracy

post_break 8y ago

What I don't understand is the fake products. Been buying tons of stuff on amazon, never got a fake product. What are you guys buying that you're getting fakes of? Things like Apple chargers, SD cards, those things I can see being fakes, but what else? And if you get a fake you literally just call amazon and say hey, this is counterfeit, refund me.

sigstoat 8y ago
what process do you use for identifying fake apple chargers non-destructively?
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Gravimetrically. IE: weigh it. At least the bad counterfeits won’t have a small concrete weight. When that doesn’t work, weigh each corner in each orientation and compare to the original.
dahdum 8y ago
I've gotten fake or counterfeit razer blades, usb hubs, cables, batteries, and other small electronics. I switched to using Aliexpress for hobby stuff, at least I'm not paying a premium for generics there. Some fakes are hard to discern because they are easy to clone, like small bottles of anti-fog spray or generic kitchen supplies. I imagine more slipped through than I know of as a result. Each time you have to chat into Amazon, then send the item back (taking your time, refund held until it arrives), and then find an alternate to purchase since they can't guarantee a reshipment will be legitimate either.
freehunter 8y ago
I used to have the same take, I couldn't understand people complaining about fakes because I never got any. I just assumed people were careless with their shopping. But then I started getting fakes on things I buy all the time. Fake AA batteries, not Duracell but Duracell knockoffs. They last half the time and you can peel the Duracell label off to see another label beneath. Bought a steel water bottle and it was not the right brand at all. Bought a Swissgear backpack and not the right brand at all. Bought a white artificial Christmas tree, same brand as I had seen in stores and when I got it, it was a normal artificial Christmas tree wrapped in white electrical tape. Not the same brand I had purchased. You can refund, sure, but that's a huge hassle. I ordered something, paid for it, waited for it to get here, then can't use it until I get refunded and order another one? Why would I do that more than once or twice? If it keeps happening, anyone would switch to not buying from that place again.

mark-r 8y ago

This sounds like a repeat of the process Walmart went through. As they become the reseller that's too big to ignore, they can start dictating the terms of the relationship. So how'd that Walmart revolt turn out?

tracker1 8y ago
Can't speak for anyone else, but personally I only buy a limited range of products from Walmart. Their quality tends to be so low, and service as well that I just don't shop there. I know they've become an online competitor to Amazon, but I don't even think to look most of the time because I've tuned them out. I don't think I'm the only one. I am certain that Amazon is starting to lose customers because of bad returns experiences via the marketplace alone. They keep raising the price of Prime to fund other products that I don't use. There's a limit to what people will continue to pay for. Although Amazon is really good at knowing where that line is.

ilamont 8y ago

If you want to see what a wholesale relationship with Amazon looks like, check out Amazon Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.html?topic=200329780 https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.htm...) which media publishers use to sell physical product through Amazon. 55% discount off MSRP, demands to ship single units to warehouses scattered across the country, no shipping discounts, no payment until goods sold, and badly designed algorithms that usually order far too much. Some media publishers are leaving Amazon Advantage because they can't make money (see http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-amazon/ http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-ama...), pricing higher so they can make a decent margin, or simply telling Amazon that there is no more inventory.