25 ms·

Amazon Prime inflates prices, using the false promise of ‘free shipping’

• axaxs 5y ago
  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.
  • mrkurt 5y ago
    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.
    • sweezyjeezy 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
        > 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 5y ago
          > 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.
          • WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
            > 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 5y ago
            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.
            • kortex 5y ago
              I've started adding to my reviews "I purchased the N-pack of color frobbing widget with feature ..." for exactly this reason. It's gotten really bad. Recently saw one which was a water filter assembly that was formerly a totally different kind of plumbing fitting (single part, nothing to screw up).
          • Stratoscope 5y ago
            > 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.
      • fooker 5y ago
        Books printed on demand are essentially garbage. Amazon basics items are the worst of the crop.
        • chrisseaton 5y ago
          What’s wrong with books printed on demand?
          • formerly_proven 5y ago
            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 5y ago
            I think it’s that they’re often of lower quality and less durable.
          • shagie 5y ago
            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 5y ago
              If you’re buying the book for the content not as an art item or for archiving I’m sure it’s fine.
              • handrous 5y ago
                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.
      • drzaiusapelord 5y ago
        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.
      • cm2187 5y ago
        Zero trust in their supply chain, counterfeits have become the norm.
      • shados 5y ago
        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 5y ago
        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 5y ago
          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.)
      • dv_dt 5y ago
        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.
      • agumonkey 5y ago
        Ultra small anecdote, but funny to see how stupid it can go. Bought some windex, didn't pay much attention to price, 10$, because it was amazon, I assumed the price was for a concentrated solution. Turns out it was the normal kind (3$) but the seller put this price and it landed in the search results quite high. The benefits of lower prices online can also mean you spending more time checking things.
      • deleted 5y ago
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    • cpuguy83 5y ago
      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?
      • te_chris 5y ago
        And they can absorb the higher cost of this customer service via monopoly behaviour, where their competitors can’t.
        • katbyte 5y ago
          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 5y ago
            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 5y ago
              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.
    • jelling 5y ago
      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.
    • meh99 5y ago
      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!
  • lenkite 5y ago
    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.
    • SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        The evidence is in the linked NY Times article, in the section titled "Price Control." They also cite a paywalled Bloomberg article.
    • axaxs 5y ago
      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.
    • slownews45 5y ago
      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.
  • thathndude 5y ago
    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).
    • caturopath 5y ago
      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.
      • reedjosh 5y ago
        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 5y ago
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      • xmprt 5y ago
        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 $10 shipping. It's not a huge deal but what's the recourse to false advertising like that? I still needed the bulk of that order so I wasn't about to cancel the order but it also wasn't nice spending more than I wanted. Is there a simple place to report violations like this?
  • manigandham 5y ago
    Amazon stopped having the best pricing long ago, but their real advantage is convenience. Everything is fast, easy, and straightforward - and that's worth the premium (if any).
    • katbyte 5y ago
      not to mention free and easy returns for anything which is trash or doesn't work out
      • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Would be better if they weren't selling trash though
        • katbyte 5y ago
          so true, i hate how it takes so much effort these days to find quality anything and how much low quality trash ends up well in the trash
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • goodpoint 5y ago
    It's still misleading: the cost of shipping is not linear per-item. > Versus some indy site This is a false dichotomy. Nothing prevents showing both the item price and the shipping-included price next to each item.
    • FalconSensei 5y ago
      > Nothing prevents showing both the item price and the shipping-included price next to each item. Nothing prevents the sites from doing that, but most sites don't do give you an option to see total price on the product page.
      • ehsankia 5y ago
        I don't know why we're even comparing to other sites though, this issue is about Amazon without Prime vs with Prime. The same item, if you look at it logged out, will show 15$ + 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 5y ago
          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 5y ago
            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.
  • miked85 5y ago
    I am not sure how this is really surprising to anyone. Consumers will pay for shipping one way or the other.
    • FabHK 5y ago
      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.
  • warmfuzzykitten 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
    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.
    • Google234 5y ago
      Lots of Chinese sellers lie about their location on eBay.
  • randyrand 5y ago
    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 .
  • thn-gap 5y ago
    > 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.
  • cerved 5y ago
    That's great, for you. The suit isn't alleging that raising the price to pay for free shipping is illegal. The suit is about controlling the market and hiking up the price to pay for your free shipping across the market. Ie, it's fine that a retailer charges $15 + free shipping, instead of $10 + $5 shipping. It's not fine to them force the price on all other retailers to sell at a minimum of $15. Especially not since they probably have to charge shipping. The argument that this violates anti trust is because it raises the prices for everyone, not just the people who are fine with hasslefree free shipping
    • Google234 5y ago
      I don’t want to be tricked by some sellers setting the price at 99 cents + 15$ shipping
      • Dylan16807 5y ago
        That is reasonable but an entirely different problem.
  • micheljansen 5y ago
    Wondering what the overlap is between people who share this opinion that having shipping price included is convenient, but do not want sales tax included in the price.
• quadrangle 5y ago
  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).
• defaultname 5y ago
  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.
  • creddit 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      Isn't Matt Stoller just repeating the Attorney General's argument? Or are you saying he's embellishing it?
      • lttlrck 5y ago
        "Prime, in other words, is basically a money laundering scheme." Did the DA say that?
  • coredog64 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  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.
• stickfigure 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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?
    • axaxs 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        you just described a loss leader
        • axaxs 5y ago
          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.
    • tzs 5y ago
      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.
• WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  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.
  • BurningFrog 5y ago
    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.
    • WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      > 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.
      • jeromegv 5y ago
        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 5y ago
          > Withholding shipping info after payment is processed? I said submit - as in to the site.
        • butt__hugger 5y ago
          > sites will show it to you after entering your address and before payment. It’s hardly a reason to not shop at small business. This is more complicated than you suggest. It's done to create consent for marketing emails. You can't see shipping costs without signing up for marketing email.
• gmiller123456 5y ago
  >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.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    Sounds like you agree, not disagree then? This single simplified price is the point.
    • Retric 5y ago
      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.
      • chrisseaton 5y ago
        > His point is all online stores can do the same thing as soon as they have your address. Right… so agreeing then?
        • Retric 5y ago
          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.
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
    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.
• gentleman11 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Isn’t the point of Prime next-day? Normal shipping was already around two days.
    • Klinky 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        > 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 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
• modeless 5y ago
  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-Deodorant-Essentials/dp/B01HTJTPZA/ https://www.amazon.com/Dove-Advanced-Antiperspirant-Deodoran... Fresh: https://www.amazon.com/Dove-Antiperspirant-Deodorant-Fresh-2-6/dp/B0014CZ292/ https://www.amazon.com/Dove-Antiperspirant-Deodorant-Fresh-2...
• docdeek 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    And Amazon just make you pay 0.01€ for shipping when you buy only books, so the law is moderately effective.
    • canada_dry 5y ago
      > make you pay 0.01€ 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.
• skybrian 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Can you please explain this or provide a link for those of us who aren’t read into Costco hearing aids?
    • skybrian 5y ago
      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/ https://clark.com/save-money/costco-hearing-aids/
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• kazinator 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
• vmception 5y ago
  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
• tamaharbor 5y ago
  Amazon is another one of those things that used to be good, but now it is not.
  • MarkLowenstein 5y ago
    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.
• aimor 5y ago
  "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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      > 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.
      • cptskippy 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• tpg-3 5y ago
  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.
• rubyfan 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    It's pretty clear that you didn't read the article because Stoller outlines why it's a monopoly very explicitly.
    • eshaan7 5y ago
      This entire HN thread is "it doesn't affect me/ I like one day shipping, so it's not a monopoly".
      • rubyfan 5y ago
        My thread didn’t say that at all. I’m not saying I like Prime or not. I’m saying the article fails to make the case for monopoly to me the reader.
    • rubyfan 5y ago
      I did read the article and I don’t see it. Just because the author says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. The fact that he calls this money laundering is totally suspect. Creating a market by attracting customers with something they want and charging rent in the market is no more a monopoly in the digital world than it is in the real world. It’s like saying the mall can’t put free rollercoaster rides inside because then the stores that rent retail space would have to pay more and then pass that cost onto the customer and that inflates the price of goods. Would those stores spread the costs of that operation into the rest of their business, absolutely. Is there something wrong with that, nope.
  • SixDouble5321 5y ago
    If you don't yet recognize Amazon's monopolistic tactics, it's likely you are incapable.
• imagica 5y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4V_yAPfSr8
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• LightG 5y ago
  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.
• Animats 5y ago
  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.)
• londons_explore 5y ago
  > 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.
• orlovs 5y ago
  drake meme about free shipping
• gigatexal 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 https://www.britannica.com/topic/fair-trade-law
  • neop1x 5y ago
    Lots of people from Czechia use alza.cz for purchasing electronics and computer stuff. Surprisingly it also ships to many Europe countries and have English site at https://www.alzashop.com/ https://www.alzashop.com/ . It doesn't list as huge variety of items but offers quite nice filtering, categorization, reviews, etc. I personally use it more often than Amazon. What forces people to use Amazon? Laziness? There are also price comparison websites which people can use to compare sellers... I never really understood why so many people buy through Amazon.
• jb775 5y ago
  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.
• brianstorms 5y ago
  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.
• gojofika 5y ago
  You might check the link to get unlimited Google Voice Number https://bit.ly/34tc4BI https://bit.ly/34tc4BI (100% trusted & quality service guaranteed)
• Cilvic 5y ago
  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.
• willseth 5y ago
  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 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 5y ago
    (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.)
• k__ 5y ago
  Free shipping is nice. But what's nicer is that I usually get my stuff in 1-2 days.
• adam0c 5y ago
  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...
  • Spivak 5y ago
    But this doesn’t make sense. Sure in some vague sense I’m paying for the shipping but in my area the total price, everything included, on Amazon is cheaper then other online retailers before shipping and about 10-20% cheaper then brick-and-mortar stores. I’ve stopped buying anything other than food at my local grocery store because it’s cheaper to have Amazon ship it to my door then to pick it up off the shelf.
• kbrisso 5y ago
  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.
• atum47 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
  • Spivak 5y ago
    The $12 dollar item is better though because if you do a return you get the item price back. Also you the problem with the meme is that consumers have been trained to mentally adjust prices higher than $2 for shipping. The cheapest non-envelope mail is like $6.99.
• soheil 5y ago
  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.
• mdoms 5y ago
  Stop giving Amazon money. Just stop.
• ryanmarsh 5y ago
  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.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Antheidan 5y ago
  This is absolutely insane and something should be done about it. Amazon is getting out of hand.
• sodomite 5y ago
  фыв
• malwarebytess 5y ago
  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.
• drc37 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• novaleaf 5y ago
  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 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
  • haram_masala 5y ago
    A carabiner? I can’t imagine trusting my life with something bought through the Amazon marketplace.
    • system2 5y ago
      I don't think he purchases climbing carabiners. No one in right mind searches for those on amazon.
      • novaleaf 5y ago
        Yeah, just cheap clips for attaching bags and keychains and the sort. for things I need to work I generally buy from walmart if posible.
• daniel-cussen 5y ago
  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.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ummonk 5y ago
  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.
• 867-5309 5y ago
  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?
• Johnwbh 5y ago
  I feel like amazon has gotten much less user friendly in the past few years. Although I can filter by "prime" that doesn't seem to actually tell me anything in particular about the delivery date. And I can't narrow it any further. They clearly have the data on what things are one day, two day etc but presumably it's not profitable to let people filter on it. You also can't search for exact terms anymore, the way literally every basic search engine lets you. So you have to read through a bunch of vaguely related items even if you know exactly what you want
• elzbardico 5y ago
  Well, it is not like adults should believe in such things as free shipping. There's no free shipping. period.
  • erik_seaberg 5y ago
    There is no free shipping, or handling, or warehouse space, or tax compliance, or network backhaul, or HVAC. But I expect a retailer to amortize all that stuff and give me a single number they're willing to stand behind.
• vector_spaces 5y ago
  I noticed that years ago (2009-2011) you used to be able to buy used textbooks for dirt cheap on Amazon. Like, if new the book fetched $120 or so, there'd be a handful of used copies for $15-25. But nowadays, the best case scenario is to find a used copy for $65-80. I mean, I can imagine this situation is driven by Amazon's largest resellers more than anything -- if they spot a cheap copy of, say, Stewart's calculus, they just buy it and resell for triple the cost. It's a bummer though -- Amazon used to be excellent for finding deals like that. Now I have to scour several different sites to find them.
• reader_mode 5y ago
  They have to pass a law preventing marketplaces from mandating prices on other marketplaces - this is straight out consumer hurting uncompetitive behaviour 101% when coupled with large market makers - governments are supposed to deal with this shit in the interest of consumers.
  • dannyw 5y ago
    Unfortunately, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of American Express, saying businesses are not allowed to pass higher charges of accepting AmEx to consumers with a surcharge. (AmEx's agreement forbids merchants from charging a surcharge). While not directly analogous, the Supreme Court believes that agreements by duo/tri-poly players mandating businesses charging specific prices (or the lack thereof), don't cause consumer harm.
• jdkee 5y ago
  Amazon needs to be broken-up or heavily regulated under US anti-trust laws.
• known 5y ago
  Toyota does the same
• bennysomething 5y ago
  I have up reading the article when the author compared fees for selling on eBay to FBA. It's a ridiculous comparison. A close family member sells using FBA and I nearly followed them into this as a side hustle. The fees are are high because you get to leverage Amazon's warehouse storage and delivery infrastructure. It's really astonishing what that gives you if you have a good product idea. It's worked out great for my family member.
• sairaghav 5y ago
  You can see this play out in India where most large brick and mortar retailers offer to match the online prices that amazon charges (for most products). Amazon has the same bully-ish behavior in India through its own sellers. I dealt with one of these - cloudtail - to list our products online. (There are at least two such "preferred" entities). As a pre-requisite for listing, they force you into selling your products to cloudtail at a much deeper discount than any of our other offline sellers get. And if you are "caught" selling the product cheaper than amazon anywhere they will ship all unsold inventory back and charge you a penalty. We eventually chose not to sell on amazon and set up our own online storefront, fulfilled by our existing offline sellers.
• prirun 5y ago
  I have been a Prime member for many years. I've noticed that while I used to get everything in 2 days or less, now, even after the virus thing is waning, a lot of stuff is taking 4-5 days, though it still says it is Amazon Prime shipping. I think this is also due to cementing their monopoly power. Now that everyone is addicted to Amazon, myself included, they can use lower-cost shipping whenever they want and don't have to ship everything in 2 days, thus increase their margins.