[binarysolo]

Amazon seller/distributor/agency here; I've been in the space for over a decade.

The title is a little clickbait-y. As far as I understand it:

1. Think of Amazon as a search engine for products. 2. Amazon wants its site to be the lowest-price destination for products. 3. If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price).

This is where it gets a bit more complicated: 4. Amazon sells ~40% of its goods under its own purchasing arm, known to sellers as Vendor Central. (These are items shipped and sold by Amazon.com). This purchasing arm wants X% margins from *brands, based on whatever their internal targets. From what I've experienced personally -- their terms are generally better than their competitors (Walmart/Target/Costco/Sams), so it's generally a no-brainer to sell directly to them when I can instead of selling direct.

So when 4 has a conflict of interest with #1-3, you get the systemic effect that in order for the sellers to get their **sweet purchase orders from Amazon, they now need to raise prices elsewhere so the purchasing arm gets their cut. The sellers don't HAVE to sell to Amazon, but then they'd miss out on giant POs from Amazon at good terms.

Designing a system to incentivize sellers to have their lowest prices on Amazon... I'm not sure if calling it a "widespread scheme to inflate prices" is the fairest thing.

*edit: Historically, Amazon VC basically ran at near break-even under Jeff, "your margin is my opportunity" and all that. Since Andy took over there's been a reshuffling of chairs and the different business units have different margin requirements now.

**edit2: the price inflation mostly affects big brands that sell 8+ figs/yr on Amazon, because smaller sellers don't get POs from VC (too small to bother).

[gwd]

> 1. Think of Amazon as a search engine for products. 2. Amazon wants its site to be the lowest-price destination for products. 3. If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price).

Stockholm syndrome at its finest -- reinterpreting "punishing a seller if an item is cheaper anywhere else on the internet, even a site they don't directly control" as "pro-consumer".

If Amazon really were a search engine for their own products, they should just give an accurate answer for their own site. If they really wanted to be pro-consumer, they'd say "Available cheaper here: ..."

ETA: Showing competitor's prices could still be a strategic win for Amazon. It conditions users to always first check Amazon; and most of the time if it's cheaper, the ease of one-click ordering and/or batching deliveries should make it worth ordering from Amazon even if it's a few dollars cheaper elsewhere.

[ChoGGi]

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

Which company does that?

[AlecSchueler]

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."

[dirtmerchant]

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]

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]

Did you even bother to read the thread? The top-level comment, the Amazon employee defending the practice.

[BigGreenJorts]

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.

[noirscape]

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]

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.

[Timon3]

That's a very simplistic take because it assumes full transparency for all consumers - all while advertising, one of the biggest industries in our society, explicitly allows companies to turn the money they make from consumer-hostile behavior into additional reach, and even worse: all while large companies and VCs keep buying up pro-consumer businesses and enshittifying them.

[WarmWash]

Trust me, the simplistic take is "All company's are bad, and have ill intent"

[terminalshort]

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]

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-...

[terminalshort]

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]

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.

[libertine]

The elephant in the room is that Amazon keeps increasing their fees.

So if someone needs to adjust the price to accommodate Amazon fees, on Amazon, they're penalized.

Not to mention increasing ad costs, which at this point is another fee.

It's not for the benefit of the consumer, it's for the benefit of Amazon: Amazon wants people to buy on Amazon at the lowest cost for the consumer and at the highest margin for Amazon - they won't sacrifice their fees.

[RankingMember]

Hell, even something as simple as their sorting/filtering is so broken/clunky as to be anti-consumer. Try sorting lowest-to-highest and seeing how hard it is to actually understand the final price of everything that pops up (amidst all the sponsored trash).

[pnt12]

This reads like propaganda. Amazon has no business de-listing products because of their price elsewhere.

If it wanted to be pro-consumer, I don't know, it could warn the consumer the price is lower somewhere else, and point them there, like a good search engine of products! Sounds ridiculous? Yeah, because those claims are a bit ridiculous too.

[JKCalhoun]

"…[Amazon] could warn the consumer the price is lower somewhere else, and point them there…"

That would be a miracle.

(On 34th Street.)

[amirhirsch]

Beat me to it. Now I have to delete my reply.

[terminalshort]

Rules around pricing like that are standard retail practice since well before the internet even existed.

[TheCoelacanth]

Many standard practices become illegal when you have the amount of market power that Amazon does.

[terminalshort]

I'm not convinced Amazon has any market power here. Online and physical retail competitors are alive and well, so Amazon has very little room to actually push up prices. It's margins in this area are under 5%. AWS has market power and has a 25% margin, and yet the complaints almost always focus on the retail side.

[eesmith]

Here is the Complaint of the People of the State of California about Amazon - https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/2022-...

Section V is on Amazon's market power.

Section VII is on the anti-competitive effects of Amazon's conduct.

You argue the market space includes physical retail competitors, which the complaint rejects. They describe their reasoning, point out how Jeff Bezos also doesn't see them as interchangeable, hence "physical stores and online stores are not reasonably interchangeable substitutes for one another from the standpoint of consumers".

Indeed,"most merchants—even those that sell through both channels—do not consider physical brick-and-mortar stores to be in the same market as online stores".

It also describes the effect on third-party sellers, like how Chewy.com, Wayfair.com, and Newegg.com charge lower fees, so the seller would like to set a lower price there, but Amazon's policies and market power inhibit the seller "because doing so would result in the suppression of the Buy Box for their Amazon listing."

There's a dozen or so examples of sellers raising their prices elsewhere in order to no lose the buy box, affecting also Amazon competitors:

> A major competing online marketplace to Amazon itself confirmed that it has heard from merchants that they would need to raise their prices on its marketplace or decline to participate in a discount/sale event because a lower price on its marketplace had disqualified or could disqualify their offers from the Amazon Buy Box. This rival marketplace operator reported that during a sales event, certain merchants contacted it to pull their items from the event or indicated that they would need to raise their prices because they reported that they had lost the Buy Box on Amazon, believed they would lose the Buy Box on Amazon, or believed that they would be delisted on Amazon because their item prices were lower on this competing website for the event. ...

> one Walmart manager reported to Bloomberg that “Walmart routinely fields requests from merchants to raise prices on its marketplace because they worry a lower price on Walmart will jeopardize their sales on Amazon.”

> Amazon’s coerced price parity agreements with Marketplace sellers constitute unlawful contracts and/or combinations in restraint of trade in violation of the Cartwright Act.

(The Cartwright Act is California's main antitrust law.)

Are you still not convinced, and if not, why not?

[cebert]

I don’t like it, but it is Amazon’s web property and they can do whatever they want. They could put up political banners on the top of their website, but I wouldn’t recommend it with how divided the country is.

[malfist]

They can't do whatever they want, we live in a regulated economy for precisely this reason. Otherwise you get exactly what is happening here, a company using it's near monopoly power to raise prices on everyone to enrich a few

[twoodfin]

In what sense does Amazon have “near monopoly power”?

Elsewhere in this thread we find shock that American households spend a few thousand dollars on average between Whole Foods and Amazon.com.

I assure you that’s a small fraction of household spending on the goods Amazon sells.

[eesmith]

In the sense described in the lawsuit. See https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/2022-... for details, starting with:

> The policy and spirit of the California antitrust laws are to promote the free play of competitive market forces and the lower prices to consumers that result. Amazon, the dominant online retail store in the United States, has violated the policy, spirit, and letter of those laws by imposing agreements at the retail and wholesale level that have prevented effective price competition across a wide swath of online marketplaces and stores.

The linked-to article concerns a possible preliminary injunction related to that antitrust case.

[twoodfin]

You don’t need to be a monopoly for anti-trust law to come into play. Airlines can’t collude on pricing, for example, even though no single airline is a monopoly.

[eesmith]

Companies are required to follow the law.

These laws do not prohibit putting up political banners, but Amazon certainly cannot do whatever they want.

There are laws regarding price fixing, abuse of monopoly powers, discrimination on a protected class, product labeling, and making false and misleading statements about drugs.

If they sell Cuban-made cigars made with conventionally grown tobacco, then while they technically can put up a banner claiming "these organic, made in the USA cigars, if smoked twice daily, will cure epilepsy in children - buy now!", they'll have broken several laws.

[robtherobber]

That's not legally correct in the US, EU, or the UK. Private ownership gives Amazon a lot of discretion over its own site design, messaging and whatnot, but not unlimited freedom to do or say whatever they please.

In the US major firms do not get a free pass simply because they own the platform and the idea that a website constitute "private property" doesn't work as a defence to anticompetitive conduct or to display a political banner expressing support for a political party of candidate without triggering additional rules / limits.

In the EU this is even less the case, as it effectively treats some platform conduct as capable of creating societal/systemic risks and thus needs to be kept in check. Whether is happens like that all the time in reality is subject of another discussion, I think; the point is that the mechanisms exist.

Political spending/advertising is a regulated activity that goes beyond rules that apply to private property. In the UK, for example, spending, donation, reporting etc. if the activity is intended to influence voters, falls under specific regulations: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-guidance/campaign...

[dns_snek]

> it is Amazon’s web property and they can do whatever they want

Maybe in a different world, one without antitrust law.

But in a sense you're right, they have de facto right to do whatever they want because of the lack of enforcement.

[robotpepi]

for sure they can do whatever they want, but that doesn't make it "pro consumer" as said above

[mattlondon]

When Google did it with their search results on their site that included links to their own products everyone lost their shit about it.

And those were just links to sites, not things to buy...

[mitthrowaway2]

This doesn't make sense; these days it seems like the majority of products on Amazon can also be found on AliExpress for a third of the price, both of them sold by FWHZHW. From what you're saying, these things should disappear from Amazon's search listings, but in my experience they're the ones promoted straight to the top, and anything else gets buried under that mountain.

[binarysolo]

So consider the alternative (because this happened to us): 5-6 years back, one of our brand stores sold a thing (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DKG3NX7) that created an entire niche of products, and 6 months after our success, a buncha clones came out of the woodwork.

On Amazon, they created listings that imitated our copy and images. On AliExpress/Taobao/etc., they ripped off our images and pretended to be us. Deciding which product/listing is the original product is super nontrivial especially when there's international trademarking and IP law (or lack thereof) involved.

[ethbr1]

The amount of product images on Amazon these days with incorrect shadows or perspective lines... wow.

If Amazon detected and banned any seller whose product images were gen AI or which didn't match user photos, it'd go a long way towards regaining trust.

[kalleboo]

Getting 6 months, you were lucky! I've heard of kickstarters that were ripped off on AliExpress before they even finished their own product...

[account42]

Doesn't that just mean that they brought little more to the table than an idea?

[_DeadFred_]

That is the whole point of copyright/patent law. Society benefits by having interesting ideas brought to market, and society misses/looses out when people who bring ideas to market are punished by copycats, stopping new ideas/innovation.

You wouldn't have had an industrial revolution without copyright/patent laws.

In the modern world where we have done most of the low hanging fruit a new novel idea could be even more valuable for society to protect.

[ChoGGi]

I think we should severely limit copyrights and patents, but not get rid of them entirely.

Or they're just ideas.

[kalleboo]

It's an interesting debate. One more thing they did was prove there was a market for the idea.

[alistairSH]

Yep. That happens. But delisting some items that cost less but not others doesn’t fix your problem. So…?

[rjh29]

Agreed. The only explanation is that people don't want to use aliexpress so it's not counted as a direct competitor. If you're prepared to wait even a week, you can get less than 1/3 the price and this has been true for over a decade!

[flanked-evergl]

This is just not true. Sure if you want trash you can get it on Aliexpress and Amazon, but lots of good quality stuff is not available on Aliexpress at all.

Even some Chinese manufacturers have a broader range on Amazon than Aliexpress.

[noncoml]

> can also be found on AliExpress for a third of the price, both of them sold by FWHZHW

Am I a conspiracy theorist to believe that Amazon is behind Trump’s decision to end the de minimis?

[Ekaros]

Not just Amazon. Every retailer and seller wants to keep their 80% margins(manufacturing price wise).

[RobotToaster]

That's been my theory since it was announced.

[pas]

yeah, that seems like the easiest pitch of all times. Trump wanted to do tariffs, especially on China anyway, Amazon likely just nodded trying to hide their grin.

of course it's hard to know what went through the heads at Amazon, the initial tariff news were crazy and Amazon doesn't want a recession, as it's bad for business

[NavinF]

AliExpress obviously isn't comparable and the price is irrelevant when it takes 2-3 weeks vs same-day/1day

[motbus3]

Depends much on what you are buying. There are many cases of totally not urgent things that costs 75% less. So waiting makes totally sense.

[account42]

How often do you actually need something the same day?

[NavinF]

Almost always, considering the price is only $5 more

[wolpoli]

> 3. If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price).

Most favored nation clauses are often considered anti-competitive.

[Paracompact]

Indeed, I don't know in what world you would call that pro-consumer behavior. In fact I thought I recall Amazon already got sued for this kind of agreement in their contracts, but maybe it's now merely a non-contractual agreement for doing business with Amazon?

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...

> Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.

[terminalshort]

It's an entirely different issue when it is retailers buying from suppliers and setting prices vs first party sellers selling through platforms and setting the price themselves.

[acrump]

> If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon, you'll get the lowest price).

This is a funny idea of pro-consumer, as we all know that the result of this is increased prices.

The seller can not afford to reduce the Amazon price to match other channels and still pay Amazon's margin, or afford to have the product hidden and lose the channel - and so is forced to increase the price elsewhere.

The net result is prices increase across the board, and Amazon gets to tell customers they are getting the 'lowest price', but they did it by increasing the price across the whole market.

This is pro-Amazon both in terms of margin and market share. In many ways, it is also pro-competitor/seller/distributor/agency... but it is very much anti-consumer.

And, as I hope we will soon see proven, illegal.

[Retric]

Here’s an example where Amazon strait up increases prices.

There’s a great deal of self published fiction posted online for free. Amazon is happy for people to sell bundle that into a book and sell that.

Kindle Unlimited specifically requires authors to remove earlier copies of their own works to become part of kindle unlimited. Thus increasing the minimum price for everyone above what it would otherwise be.

Some authors make the transition and win, but many destroy their audience and thus current and future revenue sources like donations and patron subscribers. It’s a tempting infusion of cash, but the long term consequences can be devastating making the whole thing really predatory.

[ChoGGi]

One might say Amazon is a dire strait for hopeful authors?

[fhennig]

Like other commentators I'd argue that the intentions don't matter much, the outcome does.

"The purpose of a system is what it does" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...)

[ralfd]

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...

[fhennig]

Thanks for replying that. I think after reading this, I'd go with what was said at the end: “There is no such thing as an unintended consequence” - Amazon claiming that what they're doing is to the benefit of consumers is bullshit. Obviously Amazon knows about all of what's going on (i.e. they cause prize inflation elsewhere) and they willfully tolerate these consequences of their policy.

[oblio]

Brilliant. Like how Google websites constantly deprioritized Firefox (and promoted Chrome) and slowly killed it.

[mihaaly]

"Designing a system to incentivize sellers to have their lowest prices on Amazon..." so that vendors like the above person getting "the systemic effect that in order for the sellers to get their *sweet purchase orders from Amazon, they now need to raise prices elsewhere" IS intentional!

'Designing a sytem' to 'raise prices elsewhere'!

Probably the person's intent was to protect Amazon, but in my eye this is just providing a very strong real evidence against them now.

[philipwhiuk]

> If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price).

Calling this pro-consumer is insane.

[nielsbot]

> this is meant to be pro-consumer

it's pro-Amazon and anti-competition, surely. (Amazon doesn't care about consumers except as profit sources)

> The sellers don't HAVE to sell to Amazon, but then they'd miss out on giant POs from Amazon at good terms.

So they have to sell to Amazon?

> I'm not sure if calling it a "widespread scheme to inflate prices" is the fairest thing.

It's fair if it's true, effectively or otherwise.

[ToValueFunfetti]

The word 'scheme' means that it isn't true if it's only true effectively. If you concede that Amazon didn't deliberately work towards this outcome, you concede that it's unfair to call it a scheme.

[Guvante]

That isn't lowering prices at all, it is raising prices.

[dataflow]

> Think of Amazon is a search engine for products.

> [Amazon's] own purchasing arm

...so we can't think of Amazon as just "a search engine", right?

You might as well hand someone a toy and say "Think of this as a toy gun. But this is where it gets a bit more complicated: 40% of these have a trigger that shoots bullets." Whom are you kidding?

Clearly with the scheme you described, these are morally two separate entities colluding with each other to use each others' huge powers in the market to raise prices and pocket more profit for themselves.

[binarysolo]

That is probably part of the court case: does Amazon.com searches favor VC purchasing in any way, shape, or form. This would require disclosure of their algorithm weights and what not, which they would then need to redact so people can't reverse engineer their algos to SEO Amazon's search.

My understanding is they got caught with this in the mid 2010s and as a result had to come very clean on some of this inter-departmental stuff. Most people who've worked at/with Amazon know its fief-like bureaucracy and clean delineation of business units (as both a strength and a weakness), so I'd be curious if there was more to it.

Then the other question would be: if you run a system that has certain emergent behaviors coming from it, without direct collusion -- how much would you be on the hook for various things that do end up happening? It makes sense that Amazon search wants lowest prices on Amazon, and it makes sense that Amazon VC wants margin, so when the two effects result in price inflation is that Amazon's problem.

IANAL

[ang_cire]

You don't actually have to directly communicate with someone in order to collude, you just have to both be knowingly working towards that same end (tacit collusion).

https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/competition-co...

But that's aside from the ridiculousness of suggesting that BUs are so independent that their actions aren't being viewed in total by the shared management they both report to.

ELT at Amazon is responsible for the outcomes of their BUs, negative ones included, whether the individual BU leaders 'knew' what those outcomes would be or not. In fact, that's literally how it's supposed to work; ELT directs strategic outcomes from the top.

[friendzis]

IANAL.

In cases like this I like to suggest to remember Microsoft's case with IE bundling. The mere act of using monopolistic power of one arm of the business is enough to trigger anti-monopoly laws.

Hiding listings that are found cheaper elsewhere would be very much suspect under these laws.

[MrDarcy]

I re-read your post three times and cannot see how your first hand account of this practice does not square perfectly and ring true with the assertion Amazon has put in place a “widespread scheme to inflate prices.”

Edit: including how they protect their margin!

[NewJazz]

If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price)

Yeah, no, this is meant to be pro-Amazon, not pro-consumer.

[binarysolo]

"Aligned interest"

[oblio]

LOLNO

Fellow traveller that gets dark patterned to death once a corporate position of power is established (we are here).

[behringer]

I wish ebay would hide listings that are more expensive than amazon. It's extremely frustrating getting amazon packages from ebay purchases. I make sure to 1 star all of them.

[ipaddr]

Why wouldn't you reuse Amazon packaging when sending an item on ebay?

[ljf]

Some peoolle have automated ebay/amazon leveraging set ups - for eg the cheapest I could find a brand name snorkel set on ebay was £19.99 - and since i often find ebay the cheapest, I bought without futher searching.

3 days later the package arrived from amazon, complete with packing slip, where I found it cost £16.

Searching the sellers account they had thousands of random listings - where I assume they can leverage a small profit. Items came and went quickly from their inventory, I assume as amazon prices fluctated.

[aembleton]

It is good if you don't have prime though as you save on postage.

[carlosjobim]

What exactly is the problem here? Sounds like you're just irrationally petty.

[ljf]

Where have had said I had an issue? I was just commenting on the amazon/ebay leveraging as someone about spoke about it...

[carlosjobim]

My bad, I was meaning to answer the other poster who said it was "extremely frustrating".

[behringer]

If I wanted to order from Amazon I would have.

[carlosjobim]

You didn't order from Amazon. Somebody else did, for your convenience.

[mv4]

They probably mean receiving the package directly from Amazon?

[pavel_lishin]

It sure sounds like Amazon is fucking you as both a buyer, and a seller - and yet, your comment comes off as very defensive of Amazon, as if they're a blameless party with no agency here, subject wholly to the whims of some invisible hand that they themselves have built and are operating.

[mihaaly]

| Designing a system to incentivize sellers to have their lowest prices on Amazon...

Is not what you conlude, not at all, and is contradicting yourself just two lines up:

| they now need to raise prices elsewhere

Bingo! The claim exactly! And you really say, that this is not a widespread, also as you described intentionally designed systematic effort to infalte prices?! Come on!! : /

[hypercube33]

The thing I noticed and is not talked about is used books on Amazon. There was a golden time when they were effectively a buck each due to companies processing so many systematically and now you can't find a used book there that isn't a few dollars off new at best.

Does anyone know what happened here?

[terminalshort]

The market realized that a used book in good condition is practically the same as a new one. The rest is just supply / demand.

[rationalist]

I buy my used (and sometimes new) books off of eBay.

eBay is a better bookstore than Amazon now.

[yndoendo]

I will never financially support Amazon ever in my life time. Any product or service that is exclusive to Amazon is not worth it.

I have stopped going to movies that are made and published by MGM. I have no intent to watch thew new James Bond movies.

[Nekorosu]

How did you manage to turn "increase their lowest price to appear on Amazon" into "incentivise sellers to have their lowest prices on Amazon"?

[akst]

> If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price).

It’s not pro-consumer, take two seconds to consider second order effects here. If a producer can sell for lower elsewhere they can’t compete on price with Amazon unless they want to lose amazon sales.

[dingaling]

> 1. Think of Amazon as a search engine for products.

That's difficult to do when their search is so atrociously bad. It ignores keywords and places matches well down the page, if it displays them at all.

Plus the classic 'choose a department to enable sorting' prompt. 30 years and their programmers can't work out how to order items from different 'departments'. Why should a customer have to know about their internal taxonomy?

It's probably better to think of Amazon as a product promotion engine. What the customer thinks they want is less important than what Amazon wants to sell.

[themafia]

> when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price

> there's been a reshuffling of chairs

Hmm.. I think those two things are in conflict.

> The title is a little clickbait-y.

The attourney general of California disagrees with you.

[ahofmann]

Thank you for your insight and sharing of your perspective. This system leads to some interesting conclusions and observations. One is, that it explains why big brand products made a significant dive in quality. My decades old bose QC25 where of superb quality at 250 € while my somewhat new Bose quiet comfort ultras priced at 350 € are of comparatively very poor quality.

It also opens the market for cheap knockoffs. If some chi-fi headphones for 60 bucks are almost as good as the big brands and the big US brands are forced for high prices despite the bad build quality by Amazon, another big seller website should emerge. Oh wait, this already happened with AliExpress and temu.

[_zagj]

> Amazon wants its site to be the lowest-price destination for products

Have you not used target.com or walmart.com recently?

[motbus3]

What you mean it is not fair? Imagine you are huge company that will not fail, you can enter any market, dump the prices, gather market share, make that the main stream of revenue, and suddenly you can click to kill someone whole business. This is a vendor lock-in based on a dumping model.

On the other hand, don't tell that prices are not personalised anywhere. 4 is destroying the economy with gray area tactics Anyone working there should be ashamed of being part of that

[novia]

> Think of Amazon as a search engine for products

Hahahahaha you lost me

[IronyMan100]

So If Amazon wante to be the lowest price Destination, but Takes fees for Listings, FBA etc, then the product price needs to include that fees. That will make the product more expensive and since amazon wanted to be the cheapest Destination, the price does need to gonup everywhere? It's maybe the Fairest Thing, but is it good for the Overall Economy?