[394549]

> Amazon offers the exact same product for the exact same cost, I don't see the problem.

It's not much of a problem, but not much of an advantage either.

So, the question I'm confronted with is: why pay the same for a worse experience? The Amazon route forces me to pay more (Prime) to get it within 2-5 days, or even more to get it faster. Then there are the AMZL_US delivery hassles on top of that. The Home Depot route costs me 25 cents of gas and a 20-40 min of time to get it now-now.

> Do you have any examples where Amazon is selling a product for "outrageously higher"?

Not offhand, but I specifically recall seeing outrageously higher prices for some grocery/drugstore type items. Stuff like a $2 item selling for $6.

[secabeen]

A lot of this is coming from the supreme court allowing companies to enforce Minimum Advertised Prices for items, and to require high prices. Amazon largely doesn't want to play the "see the price in your cart" game, and so, the price is what the manufacturer says, unless it's during a specifically authorized sale.

Before the MAP ruling, manufacturers could not ban resellers based on pricing, and you saw a lot more Internet discounting on products that the manufacturer saw as "premier" items, that they didn't want reputationally-impacted by low sale prices.

[robryan]

Yeah, in some of the branded Cosmetics you will be Amazon plus 4 or 5 other sellers all at the MAP. Brands where they have banned the grey market so it is all authorized sellers having the follow the MAP to keep their deal.

[user3359]

I've seen this happen too. And have some insight from the seller side:

6 companies might sell the same product at varying prices, some of them uploading 1000s of items they have dropshopping for, but no real inventory. 1 or 2 may legitimately sell the product at a manually entered price that's competitive - when those sellers sell out, the others who dropship at cost+100% show up as the default seller.

The big dropshippers make their profit off infrequent, high margin sales that can be auto fulfilled when legitimate sellers run out of inventory.