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Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

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Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#541
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I simply can't risk getting counterfeit safety-critical goods. That’s a good call. I usually buy direct from someone like Black Diamond when it comes to things like that. Also, like with most industries , it helps to have a friend with a pro deal, if you’re trying to save money on important stuff. I’ve found that AliExpress is good for cheap electronics that I don’t mind waiting for, but not much beyond that. I hav…

On my second order, AliExpress asked for a picture of my passport (or other id). Was a bit disconcerting. Did you encounter that? I found what I needed on newegg and ebay instead.

My first order from Ali (couple weeks ago) asked for a photo id, picture of credit card, and picture of credit card statement. I declined to provide them and the order was cancelled by their system after a week or so.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could almost come to the conclusion that Amazon running a global experiment on price elasticity on their complete customer base.

At any retailer that isn't running that experiment constantly, at least half of the executive team should be fired.

True that. For normal retailers there is still the competition part which kind of tends to pull prices down.

And Amazon has the legendary fly wheel which has lower prices in it. So it kind of seems that Amazon is moving away from the original strategy and becoming an "normal" retailer. Not that investors don't like that, obviously.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." -Warren Buffett

Except people do, because they know that reputation matters little and even the biggest fiasco is forgotten under a year. Catchy quotes are nice, but need to be checked against the real world. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17961703 .

While I appreciate your point, I'm not so sure your generalization is any more valid than mine. Chipotle is a good example of a company that got slammed due to a reputation problem, and is still recovering from it years later. The jury's still out on Intel after spectre.

Also I think the reason Equifax hasn't been hurt is largely because they do not depend directly on consumers for their business model. I think it is more than just my small circle of friends that would like nothing more than to see them die.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#544
post #100

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> they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases I've been loyal to Amazon, but am certainly willing to buy items elsewhere if the top to bottom price + experience is better. For example, camera equipment and many electronics, I've been finding prices better at B&H photo -- and you don't have to pay sales tax if shipping outside NY. Also, their customer service i…

Well, you may not be charged the tax but you probable still have a legal obligation to pay it. That you choose not to to fill out all the forms is on you. Each state and country is different in how they treat online sales re local taxes.

Constitutionally, states can't tax interstate commerce. That is a federal power.

A lot of states have created "use taxes" on goods purchased in another state and imported by the buyer. This is because requiring companies to withhold taxes for states in which they do not have a substantial business presence would be overly burdensome on interstate commerce. These use taxes are likely unconstitutional, but states ask their own residents to voluntarily report their cross-border sales, calculate their own tax amounts, and pay them anyway. I don't think the constitutionality has been tested from that direction, but it seems to rest upon an argument that use tax is valid, just because the goods were pulled across the border this time, rather than pushed, like all the other interstate commerce tax cases reviewed by SCotUS. As such, the only constitutionally valid use tax would be for goods purchased within your own state, for which the seller did not withhold and remit sales taxes. So cash-in-person flea market, swap meet, and classified-ad purchases, basically.

You only definitively have an obligation to pay tax on goods sold and consumed entirely within the same state. Traveling salesmen are insufficient to cause a company to qualify as having a substantial presence in a state--their sales are considered to be made in the state where their company is based, or in the state from which the actual goods were manufactured or shipped. I'd expect that e-commerce sites would be no different. If Amazon has an office, data center, or a fulfillment center in your state, you owe sales tax, and Amazon should collect it. If they do not, their site is just a traveling salesman, and your interstate purchase is subject only to federal taxes, rather than state taxes.

States bleat and squeal about loss of sales tax revenues to e-commerce sales by out-of-state companies, but they do not have a constitutional remedy for that, so too bad for them. Interstate commerce is explicitly federal jurisdiction. And Congress so far has not instituted any tariff/duty regime on goods crossing state borders. But it keeps coming up for votes, in Congress after Congress.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#545
post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ads work better for companies with a real product, and therefore you expect the % of good products among advertised products to be higher than among non-advertised ones. [citation needed]

Are you contesting that ads work better for good products, or that such would imply more good products across advertised products? The mechanism for the first is quite intuitive. An add can make someone buy something once. If that thing is good, there is a chance they will buy again, and so give you more money. If it is not good, they will at most buy it once. So the EV of an add on a good product is by definition hi…

> Are you contesting that ads work better for good products, or that such would imply more good products across advertised products?

The latter. Basically, it boils down to the intuition that a company with an inferior product is likely to spend more on advertising to make up for its products deficiencies. The best products often don't need paid advertising at all because they can be successful with only word of mouth advertising from happy customers.

I've recently had some personal experience with this from an expensive home improvement product. One company advertises heavily, has a high-touch sales force, and engages in extensive SEO online. However, once I dug in deeper I came to believe the whole category of products probably doesn't work effectively over the long haul (their advertising and guarantees use some tricky wording), and is certainly not worth the expense. Their advertising was a poor proxy for quality.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's B&H?

B&H or Adorama are really the only two places on the internet worth buying camera gear on. Any other place I have used I have gotten fake gear or gear that is not what was advertised (like the cheaper version of a lens for example).

Thank you so much for the shout-out, And for ongoing business.

Helen Oster Adorama Camera helen@adorama.com

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, private ownership is one condition, but not the only one. I'd add capital intensive production (building plants and machinery for automation), the existance of a labor market and the existance of a big class of people lacking ownership of the means of production, thereby being forced to sell their labor on the market. And you have a class of people living off of the profits generated by the means of production (…

throwing in all these requirements leaves you with a definition of capitalism that pretty tightly matches the system we have right now. This is my main issue with criticisms of capitalism - they (rightly) criticise the system we live with right now but instead of looking into individual rules, entities and interactions that cause the problems, we declare that (to quote the comment I objected to) "it's not clear [...]…

> throwing in all these requirements leaves you with a definition of capitalism that pretty tightly matches the system we have right now.

Because it's important to differentiate markets from capitalism! Otherwise feudalism would have been capitalism, too.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you may not be charged the tax but you probable still have a legal obligation to pay it. That you choose not to to fill out all the forms is on you. Each state and country is different in how they treat online sales re local taxes.

Constitutionally, states can't tax interstate commerce. That is a federal power. A lot of states have created "use taxes" on goods purchased in another state and imported by the buyer. This is because requiring companies to withhold taxes for states in which they do not have a substantial business presence would be overly burdensome on interstate commerce. These use taxes are likely unconstitutional, but states ask t…

This isn't taxing interstate commerce. This is applying the applicable sales tax. There is always point of sale, in one state or the other. Some states choose to interpret that point of sale as being where the buyer is standing when making the purchase (ie the delivery address). Other states would say that it is wherever the server is (Nevada, ie gambling). A state demanding that online purchasers pay a sales tax is not taxing interstate commerce, it is enforcing a tax against sales occurring within its boarders. States do have that power.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#549
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterfeit problem? Stop co-mingling inventory - then you can track what inventory went to which customer and easily peg down which sources are selling counterfeits by looking at the reviews.

Amazon co-mingles different retailer's inventory when amazon handle fulfillment for them?!?!? Are you sure? That's insane.

Yes, they do. It's one of the reasons you can buy a "new" hard drive that already has several years use on it.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#550
post #221

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https://nccih.nih.gov/health/euroelder >Although some preliminary research indicates that elderberry may relieve flu symptoms, the evidence is not strong enough to support its use for this purpose. You may want to find a new doctor.

...which matches my experience. Don't ever tell a patient to disregard personal experience. Someone who has suffered a chronic condition, and learned enough about it and her body to find an effective non-pharmacological treatment for it, knows more than a room full of physicians about how that condition is best treated in her body. Besides, don't we know by now that most studies (especially non-replicated ones on unp…

> Someone who has suffered a chronic condition, and learned enough about it and her body to find an effective non-pharmacological treatment for it, knows more than a room full of physicians about how that condition is best treated in her body.

I'm sorry but this is terrible advice, and is precisely how people like Steve Jobs die for no reason.

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