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Just change the SKU of the product so they are "different". Big box stores do it all the time to reduce the probability of price matching.
by ct0 3y ago
Just change the SKU of the product so they are "different". Big box stores do it all the time to reduce the probability of price matching.
- jprete 3y agoAmazon is not a court of law and need not be bound by this technicality.
- oblio 3y agoMore than that... there's probably no real recourse. For the same reason you mentioned.
- EGreg 3y agoThe real solution is an open source Amazon. What happened to Magento? Does it have any traction? Why sell on Amazon instead of your own site? Can’t competitors to FBA spring up that have great logistics? Are there any? Can anyone link me to them?
- endisneigh 3y agoSellers want Amazon’s audience
- throwaway14356 3y agowhich is easy to compete with for a government platform. in a lot of countries it would save a lot of money if the tax office had direct access to the product and purchase database. Thousands of people could move to more useful jobs.
- EGreg 3y agoThat's the same trap that TikTok influencers and others fall into. You are sold "the dream" by showing top sellers / influencers / etc. and told you can be like them. Kevin O'Leary became a meme for promoting this bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuqemytQ5QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuqemytQ5QA In fact, even the top influencers can be deplatformed in an instant, and their speech is controlled. And same with Amazon. But the thing is that the people you never hear about, the "middle class", are far more controlled and the "long tail" produces all that free content that basically gets almost new views / buys but all that free sharecropper content is then used to train AI models or provide proof of large available inventory / product / content BY THE PLATFORM that pits them all against each other in a zero-sum game. https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/117oh1m/the_upper_class_keeps_all_of_the_money_pays_none/ https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/117oh1m/the_upper_c...
- throw0101a 3y ago> Kevin O'Leary became a meme for promoting this bullshit: The women is Amanda Lang,[1] and the two were a 'duo' for many years with a business/finance reporting show. I'm not sure how she managed to put up with him for so long. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Lang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Lang
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 3y agoYou don’t just “spring” up to owning a nationwide network of distribution centers and 1M+ employees. It takes decades of work.
- EGreg 3y agoThat's the thing people don't get about making competitors to Facebook, Twitter, and other centralized platforms as well. You don't need to boil the ocean in order to serve a single community. For example, Facebook started in Harvard and its value to everyone in Harvard was based on how many people in Harvard used it, not how many people in the world used it. Similarly, if a single product vendor and their customers form a community, then a free market of fulfillment companies can spring up to stock that specific product, and then partner with the delivery companies (who have their own networks) to deliver the package. You might say that the delivery infrastructure is a cartel, but they're open to everyone and Amazon has been relying on them until finally spinning out their own. Same goes for CPU chips that Apple relies on etc. Look at IPFS for example, competing with AWS for storage. It is growing every year and now powers 1% of all storage worldwide! And there is a free market. Whereas these platforms are all centrally controlled by some billionaire (Zuck, Musk, Bezos) and his crew. You don't need to have their scale because you don't need to serve ALL COMMUNITIES IN THE WORLD on day one. If you have an open source software like Wordpress or Magento, you can serve your customers with web hosting instead of Shopify or Amazon. Now the only question is, who would do fulfilment.
- iudqnolq 3y agoWhen Facebook was founded there was no Facebook. Now there is a Facebook. When there's a better alternative customers are less likely to try out your new, less good idea. Can you give an example of someone serious using IPFS instead of S3? I don't really get what "all storage worldwide" means.
- megaman821 3y agoExcept there was a Facebook and it was called MySpace. Facebook won because people enjoyed using it better.
- justinator 3y agoMagento was badly designed- infinite levels of directories. Good luck on upgrade. There’s plenty of self hosted online stores. That’s hardly the problem.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoI did a single contract for a Magento site and decided never again. It was like a group of Java developers decided to write PHP code and it was horrific. I would estimate 80% of the classes in that codebase didn't have any implementing code in them. Literally the only thing I liked about Magento was it's ability to outline everything that was being rendered to make it easier for you to identify the changes to templates you needed to make.
- satvikpendem 3y agoThis is a classic programmer response. The problem is not Amazon's software, it's their marketing, distribution network, huge audience that searches for products exclusively via Amazon, "free" and very fast Prime deliveries, etc. That doesn't all happen via simply open sourcing some code.
- EGreg 3y ago[flagged]
- kimbernator 3y agoIt's trivial to create a website (frontend and backend) that offers similar functionality to Amazon. There's nothing special about their software platform. You can't open-source marketing and the insane delivery network Amazon has. Those, among other things, are the reason they are successful. They could release all of their software completely open source and literally nothing would change.
- boredpeter 3y agoYou can’t open source it but the government could nationalize it and make it a benefit to small businesses everywhere without the anti competitive profit seeking motives of a private business controlling it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slowmovintarget 3y agoExpropriation is the first step to destroying the thing. There no reason for unbelievably good customer service if you get paid by taxpayers regardless of outcome.
- lapphi 3y ago
- jen20 3y agoWhat does "open source Amazon" even mean?
- belter 3y agoEvery Prime member gets commit access...
- lazide 3y agoCourts also are not bound by technicalities like this typically!
- Zigurd 3y agoWhile it may not be as simple as changing a SKU, Amazon is chock full of products made in the same factory, many with identical product images, sold under different brands at different prices, and many of the "brands" are the output of name-generators. That actually adds to the problem: If you put effort and money into brand recognition you need to provide best prices on amazon, but Amazon is easier to game if your brand is xyxxy12345.
- pjc50 3y agoOught to be bound by an actual court, though.
- Ylpertnodi 3y agoAnd also increase the shrinkflation.
- crazygringo 3y agoWhat I've commonly seen is that the manufacturer offers a store-wide 20% or 30% off coupon, as a temporary promo and/or for email signup. So the item price matches Amazon's, but you pay less in the end, if you're even remotely paying attention. At least for the $200-300 items I've seen (like dehumidifiers, fancy computer accessories).
- dylan604 3y agoThe weekly sales flyers that stores offer was/is another way around this as well. Some of them have coupons to specific items that are not allowed to have sales prices lower than the MSRP. Very few people are as draconian about their prices as Apple, but others sure wannabe.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago> Some of them have coupons to specific items that are not allowed to have sales prices lower than the MSRP. That's actually kinda disappointing. I'd always assumed those flyers were pieces of trash (at best, something I'd need to put in a recycling bin) which I don't want but now I'll be more tempted to take them when offered on the chance that I otherwise accidentally avoid the sales price. It's still good to know that such coupons are likely just attempts by the retailer to circumvent the manufacturer's... ahem suggested price.
- lozenge 3y agoCoupons are a longstanding price discrimination technique. If somebody doesn't want to pay full price, you might still get their custom with a voucher. You don't want to make the discount too easy to find though, as you will miss out on revenue from people who were willing to pay full price.
- dylan604 3y agoProTip: at some stores, employees are allowed to give discounts as well. i have 2 anecdotes from HomeDepot: Since none of their lumber should ever be in the same building as the word "straight", I made a joke to a nearby employee that we should get a discount at how warped the wood was. He very seriously told me to separate the warped wood on my cart, and he'd mark them down. Got to the register, and they were marked down 40%. Second instance was after spending time chatting with an employee in the appliances department, he pulled out a pre-printed, handcut piece of paper from his apron pocket, wrote 10% on it with his sharpie, and i got 10% off at the register. Oh, and of course the Guitar Center stories of "you're a cool dude, and since I like you, let me knock of X%" are infamous
- ceejayoz 3y agoBig box stores have a lot more leverage than a small seller on Amazon, who'll just get the "that violates our policies, we're nuking your business, no appeals" treatment.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoAmazon are notorious among writers for nuking the accounts of Kindle Unlimited authors who have had their book pirated. Apparently this violates the content monopoly KU is supposed to have.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]