4 ms·

> If they really wanted to be pro-consumer, they'd say "Available cheaper here: ..." Which company does that?

by ChoGGi 8mo ago

AlecSchueler 8mo ago
One claiming to be a pro-consumer search engine for products? But plenty of companies do things like "If you find a cheaper quote we'll match it."
- 5o1ecist 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - mcmcmc 8mo ago
    Are you serious? It increases brand recognition and customer loyalty precisely because it is good for the consumer
    - 5o1ecist 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - mcmcmc 8mo ago
        Which is a false dichotomy. Trade is supposed to be mutually beneficial.
  - jen20 8mo ago
    It's not done for either of those reasons. It's done to remove the decision point around believing you need to comparison shop on impulse purchases, by pretending that a price will be matched later should you find one. However, the terms are usually such that they will never be honoured.
    - BigGreenJorts 8mo ago
      Many groceries near me do price matching, but indeed they limit it to a select few competitors (the big 5's brands in the same price market)
- terminalshort 8mo ago
  When has Amazon ever claimed that? And a price match policy makes no sense for a 3rd party platform like Amazon. That's up to the first party sellers.
  - Tadpole9181 8mo ago
    Did you even bother to read the thread? The top-level comment, the Amazon employee defending the practice.
- dirtmerchant 8mo ago
  Amazon does not claim to be “pro-consumer “ Instead they claim to be “customer-obsessed “ Obsession is rarely a net-positive for the target of the obsesser.
terminalshort 8mo ago
And why would they want to be pro-consumer anyway? We want them to be pro-consumer because we are consumers. But they are Amazon. They are going to be pro-Amazon.
- delecti 8mo ago
  I mean, their very first Leadership Principle is "Customer Obsession", so they do at least ostensibly want to be pro-consumer. Though yes, obviously those "principles" are only in service to making money. https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...
  - terminalshort 8mo ago
    The interests of customers and the business are aligned the vast majority of the time, but in those cases the phrase "pro-consumer" is meaningless because no choice had to be made. In the more unusual cases where they do not align, then that's a different matter.
  - thepryz 8mo ago
    The assumption everyone seems to have is that the customer is the average consumer purchasing items and services on Amazon’s website. That hasn’t been true in more than a decade. The real customer are the third party sellers and those using Amazon platforms.
noirscape 8mo ago
Nobody, because no company is actually pro-customer. Which is fine, the customer and the company's goals don't align beyond "want product" and "supplies product". The problem is that Amazon abuses it's market position as being the search engine for customer products to unfairly prevent anyone from competing with them. Being "better than Amazon" as a seller in the margins is completely impossible, because Amazon demands sellers price match them. Let's say you're a seller who wants to make 7$ from each sale as revenue (your actual margins from making the product aren't relevant to this estimate). If you list this product on the Amazon store, Amazon is going to take your listed price and apply their own price cut on top of this (although it's usually framed the other way around, so you list the final sale price and Amazon then says how much they take). For simplicity's sake, we'll go with a 30% cut, so they list it for 10$. Now let's say there's a second storefront you want to sell to, we'll call it Bamazon. Bamazon has a lower cut than Amazon does, let's say it's 10%. So the final product would then be listed for 8$ (taking into account customer psychology on price listings), making Bamazon the better seller, right? The smart customer gets a better deal, Amazon is incentivized to improve their margins if they don't want to lose market share and everybody's happy. Wrong. What happens instead is that Bamazon will now also list the product for 10$ (because if it's listed lower, Amazon screws the seller by delisting them from Amazon, which is unacceptable for the seller because Amazon is the one with the monopoly position, so the seller then can sell absolutely nothing), making the product equally expensive for the customer and making Bamazon's deal only an improvement for the seller, who now gets higher profits from their sales, screwing the customer. Meanwhile Bamazon is rendered unable to compete with Amazon on their better margins since Amazon is the assumed default. Any benefit of a different store having better margins is fully masked by this approach, only benefiting Amazon. It's a Most Favored Nations clause and their use on online platforms is both ubiquitous, scummy and makes things more expensive for the customer while also entrenching Amazon's monopoly position. This crap is usually couched as pro-customer rethoric, but it really isn't. It mostly serves to entrench monopolies not on their quality, but through their existing market share. (Valve also famously does this by the way.)
- WarmWash 8mo ago
  Just a heads up, since no company is pro-consumer, and I assume you know what it is to be pro-consumer, if you started a truly pro-consumer business, you would put all the others out of business. Just think about that. Ironically, a large part of Amazon's rise was on the back of their very pro-consumer policies. Not many companies would tolerate large scale GPU return fraud (among other items) for those many years for example.
BigGreenJorts 8mo ago
Wise does (did?) that. I was doing large international money transfer a couple years ago and they advertized in app the rates of other companies in the space. At the amounts I was transferring it was cheaper for me to transfer with OFX so I did that. They are more expensive at small sums though, not to mention Wise card makes foreign payments much easier.

> If they really wanted to be pro-consumer, they'd say "Available cheaper here: ..." Which company does that?

by ChoGGi 8mo ago

> If they really wanted to be pro-consumer, they'd say "Available cheaper here: ..." Which company does that?

One claiming to be a pro-consumer search engine for products? But plenty of companies do things like "If you find a cheaper quote we'll match it."

5o1ecist 8mo ago
[flagged]
- mcmcmc 8mo ago
  Are you serious? It increases brand recognition and customer loyalty precisely because it is good for the consumer
  - 5o1ecist 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - mcmcmc 8mo ago
      Which is a false dichotomy. Trade is supposed to be mutually beneficial.
- jen20 8mo ago
  It's not done for either of those reasons. It's done to remove the decision point around believing you need to comparison shop on impulse purchases, by pretending that a price will be matched later should you find one. However, the terms are usually such that they will never be honoured.
  - BigGreenJorts 8mo ago
    Many groceries near me do price matching, but indeed they limit it to a select few competitors (the big 5's brands in the same price market)
terminalshort 8mo ago
When has Amazon ever claimed that? And a price match policy makes no sense for a 3rd party platform like Amazon. That's up to the first party sellers.
- Tadpole9181 8mo ago
  Did you even bother to read the thread? The top-level comment, the Amazon employee defending the practice.
dirtmerchant 8mo ago
Amazon does not claim to be “pro-consumer “ Instead they claim to be “customer-obsessed “ Obsession is rarely a net-positive for the target of the obsesser.

terminalshort 8mo ago

And why would they want to be pro-consumer anyway? We want them to be pro-consumer because we are consumers. But they are Amazon. They are going to be pro-Amazon.

delecti 8mo ago
I mean, their very first Leadership Principle is "Customer Obsession", so they do at least ostensibly want to be pro-consumer. Though yes, obviously those "principles" are only in service to making money. https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-...
- terminalshort 8mo ago
  The interests of customers and the business are aligned the vast majority of the time, but in those cases the phrase "pro-consumer" is meaningless because no choice had to be made. In the more unusual cases where they do not align, then that's a different matter.
- thepryz 8mo ago
  The assumption everyone seems to have is that the customer is the average consumer purchasing items and services on Amazon’s website. That hasn’t been true in more than a decade. The real customer are the third party sellers and those using Amazon platforms.

noirscape 8mo ago

Nobody, because no company is actually pro-customer. Which is fine, the customer and the company's goals don't align beyond "want product" and "supplies product". The problem is that Amazon abuses it's market position as being the search engine for customer products to unfairly prevent anyone from competing with them. Being "better than Amazon" as a seller in the margins is completely impossible, because Amazon demands sellers price match them. Let's say you're a seller who wants to make 7$ from each sale as revenue (your actual margins from making the product aren't relevant to this estimate). If you list this product on the Amazon store, Amazon is going to take your listed price and apply their own price cut on top of this (although it's usually framed the other way around, so you list the final sale price and Amazon then says how much they take). For simplicity's sake, we'll go with a 30% cut, so they list it for 10$. Now let's say there's a second storefront you want to sell to, we'll call it Bamazon. Bamazon has a lower cut than Amazon does, let's say it's 10%. So the final product would then be listed for 8$ (taking into account customer psychology on price listings), making Bamazon the better seller, right? The smart customer gets a better deal, Amazon is incentivized to improve their margins if they don't want to lose market share and everybody's happy. Wrong. What happens instead is that Bamazon will now also list the product for 10$ (because if it's listed lower, Amazon screws the seller by delisting them from Amazon, which is unacceptable for the seller because Amazon is the one with the monopoly position, so the seller then can sell absolutely nothing), making the product equally expensive for the customer and making Bamazon's deal only an improvement for the seller, who now gets higher profits from their sales, screwing the customer. Meanwhile Bamazon is rendered unable to compete with Amazon on their better margins since Amazon is the assumed default. Any benefit of a different store having better margins is fully masked by this approach, only benefiting Amazon. It's a Most Favored Nations clause and their use on online platforms is both ubiquitous, scummy and makes things more expensive for the customer while also entrenching Amazon's monopoly position. This crap is usually couched as pro-customer rethoric, but it really isn't. It mostly serves to entrench monopolies not on their quality, but through their existing market share. (Valve also famously does this by the way.)

WarmWash 8mo ago
Just a heads up, since no company is pro-consumer, and I assume you know what it is to be pro-consumer, if you started a truly pro-consumer business, you would put all the others out of business. Just think about that. Ironically, a large part of Amazon's rise was on the back of their very pro-consumer policies. Not many companies would tolerate large scale GPU return fraud (among other items) for those many years for example.

BigGreenJorts 8mo ago

Wise does (did?) that. I was doing large international money transfer a couple years ago and they advertized in app the rates of other companies in the space. At the amounts I was transferring it was cheaper for me to transfer with OFX so I did that. They are more expensive at small sums though, not to mention Wise card makes foreign payments much easier.