Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 184 posts

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#61

Post by cookingrobot »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

Some of that seems right, but I don’t agree with the Uber example. Ride sharing has been a much more convenient and reliable service than taxis, and with less fraud (broken meters or credit card machines) and less discrimination (actually willing to drive me to the neighborhood I want). And with Uber I have a record of who drove me where. This seems pretty different from being picked up by a random person on the street. I haven’t used Upwork etc, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a similar experience.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#62

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54
roymurdock wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game, and first world regulations are costs SV can ignore. sometimes the quasi employees suffer the burden (but get increased flexibility), sometimes the consumer suffers (lower price but increased variance in quality of goods/service)

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#63

Post by Wowfunhappy »

secabeen wrote: post #59
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect out of print stuff to fetch a high price, I'm more talking about standard grocery items. I've seen ridiculous markups on penne pasta, diet soda, certain brands of hand-soap, etc etc. Some of these items, like the pasta, are things I'd previously ordered from Amazon for a fraction of the current price. Which, again, has caused me to be much more cautious—every time I reorder something nowadays, I have to chec…

The reality is is that shipping an amazon item costs between $3-7. For expensive items, they can cover that cost out of the wholesale/retail markup, so you don't really have to pay it. For cheaper items, or items without that much of a markup, it starts showing up in the price. Now, sometimes a manufacturer will want to buy some market share, so they'll sell an item to Amazon cheaper to reduce that impact, and then i…

It's the products that suddenly shoot up to 2-3x normal retail that throw me, not the ones that change by a few dollars.

But the products that double in price have made more sensitive to the ones that change by a few dollars, because I'm now on high alert for price changes in general.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#65

Post by binarysolo »

strictnein wrote: post #15
rootusrootus wrote: post #13

As proof that I am clearly not qualified to run a nearly trillion-dollar company, I offer this advice to Amazon -- ditch the marketplace. No more third party sellers. I have been a reliable Amazon Prime consumer for years, but I have begun making purchases elsewhere because I can not even trust "Ships from and sold by Amazon" any more. At the very least, quite intermingling stock. And at this point you're going to ha…

And the prices on some of the stuff is just weird, with a lot of the Amazon provided stuff now stuck behind Amazon Prime Pantry. I used to order a lot of our daily household stuff from Amazon: cleaners, dish soap, detergent, etc. So much of that stuff now is priced just horribly. $4 for a bottle from Amazon, but it's just from Prime Pantry so you have to order a bunch of stuff or be stuck with a high shipping cost. I…

Amazon manufacturer/distributor of home and kitchen goods here - the rule of thumb is that if it's Basically we pay Amazon $1 or 15% of sale (whichever is higher + ~$2.50 for shipping before anything else, so after margins and what not that's a minimum of $4 going to Amazon for marketing and logistics. That's why low dollar 1-pack items feel like price gouging -- there's been years of A/B testing on the marketplace that shows a $4.99+free ship item is way more attractive than $1.99+$3 shipping.

Amazon itself sells stuff direct from manufacturer at a loss or breakeven-ish cost for items under $3 because they can, but even those prices aren't hugely sustainable and they play around with algorithmic pricing themselves over time.

Retail logistics for low dollar items is a Hard problem. :|

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#66

Post by SaltyBackendGuy »

decebalus1 wrote: post #58
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains" Never seen this formulated as such but I really like it. I was reading a book which tangentially dealt with that [0]. It changed my perspective on how new businesses are increasingly externalizing their costs to the consumers. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Work-Unpaid-Unseen-Jobs/dp/161...

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains"

I also have never head it put quite this way, and realize how true it is. One example is American Football stadiums. Get the people to pay for it and charge them to go there.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#67

Post by pasbesoin »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

Let me cough up this chestnut from the '90's:

"Race to the bottom."

Fortunately, that bottom is rising, on average. But "first world" systems have taken a lot of abuse, along the way.

In my opinion, abuse that was unnecessary. But we let the shysters in to arbitrage against the disparities, instead of helping other countries to grow for themselves into more well-rounded and autonomous entities. Maybe I'm a fool, but that's how I see it.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#68

Post by Yver »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

I had the same feeling a few years ago when the sharing economy was the next big thing and people were prompted to subrent their flat, guest room, tools or car. Depending on who you'd ask, it was touted as the best (or the worst) of capitalism and communism combined.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#69

Post by gizmo686 »

decebalus1 wrote: post #58
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains" Never seen this formulated as such but I really like it. I was reading a book which tangentially dealt with that [0]. It changed my perspective on how new businesses are increasingly externalizing their costs to the consumers. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Work-Unpaid-Unseen-Jobs/dp/161...

I don't think "externalizing their costs to the consumers" really makes sense.

In an idealized market, costs should be passed onto the consumer. From what I can tell, the book you reference is just complaining that this cost changed from money to labor.

It is also worth noting that, in many cases, this results in a net win for the consumer. Eg, whwn I buy from a full service gas station, I am paying someone to pump my gas, and paying the to sit idle waiting for customers, and paying (in time) to wait for them to finish.

In contrast, in self service, the only cost from above I have is 1 person pumping gas (which switched from being paid with money, to being paid with labor)

Post reply on HN