| Well the third party sellers provide Amazon a lot of value.
They are able to have much larger inventories with much lower risk for one.
And I think maybe a bigger value is the data Amazon is collecting about these third party sellers products and businesses. Amazon has launched many brands that they own. (Private Label) and I can guarantee they are making the decisions on these new products from data they gather from third party sellers. You likely already know about the Amazon Basics brand, but it is not the only brand that is owned by Amazon. I don't know if they will ever remove third party sellers. Just due to the inventory benefits they get from them. And also due to competition from Alibaba (like the Aliexpress site). I think Bezos is more worried about Alibaba than Walmart at this point. Aliexpress is all third party sellers (I believe). I really think they have a good thing going in terms of allowing for new products to be sold on a large marketplace. It's really great for entrepreneurs and startups with physical products. But, the issue of knock offs is something that needs to be addressed. Many of the knockoffs are so good (or from the same factory) you can't tell the difference. I guess if enough people cancel their memberships because of this and stop using the site maybe they will do something. But, I think for now the benefits for them are outweighing the problems. Personally I don't buy name brand stuff on Amazon that is from third party sellers. If you look carefully you can tell if it is sold by Amazon or just being fulfilled by them (unless the third party is the brand owner). So far I haven't had any issues with items that are sold directly from Amazon. Sometimes you have to pay more for the item sold by Amazon vs a third party. Some what unrelated. My biggest rant about Amazon right now is they are doing their own deliveries and they are always late for me. I even had one package lost. I've been shopping on Amazon for a decade I think and never had anything lost before. If I see the tracking number as an Amazon one I'm thinking well who knows if I'll get it. |