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Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

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Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#111

Post by mcbits »

microcolonel wrote: post #89
darpa_escapee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get free shipping from Walmart.com and AliExpress, the latter of which 90% of electronics on Amazon are sourced from. Walmart offers free 2 day shipping and in-store pickup. AliExpress offers the same items on Amazon without having to give middleman their expensive cut. I don't trust Amazon not to send me fake items or cheap Chinese knockoffs. There is absolutely no quality control on Amazon's end. Amazon has the r…

> Amazon has the resources to fight fake reviews, yet fake reviews are still rampant. As a result, I cannot trust Amazon's rating system at all. While this is true, at least the part about fake reviews being pervasive, the fact is that I don't trust any reviews on a retailer's website anymore, especially those that aren't verified purchases, and the only retail site where I trust verified purchase reviews at all (and…

For things like electronics components, I used to see a lot more sellers located in China who were presumably effectively drop shipping from AliExpress. Now it's almost all pre-imported goods with fulfillment by Amazon. The difference is paying an extra $2-3 bucks (basically doubling the price for something like an Arduino Nano clone) for a much faster shipping time. Sometimes that's worth it and sometimes not.

Unfortunately as a non-Prime customer, Amazon's shipping has been getting so slow that the gap is closing and it's getting harder to see their value.

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#112

Post by omeid2 »

haimez wrote: post #29
omeid2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss leaders are to bring customers in with the hope of selling them some higher margin products, predatory pricing is selling products below the price to push competition out of business.

So yes, it’s not externally distinguishable and basically boils down to intent.

I am not sure what you mean by externally distinguishable but pattern-behavior is hard to hide.

    1. undercut product x and y that Z Corp sales
    2. wait for Z Corp to go out of business
    3. Increase price of x and y
VS

    1. sale product x cheap
    2. sale other products to people who buy x
    3. continue to step 1 or terminate selling below market

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

dearrifling wrote: post #103
Declanomous wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if the actual reason was they are capturing extra sales from people who bought something, liked it a lot, and then bought another to give to their kids or for their second home. My mom buys me random chotchkies all the time after she bought them and liked them, and if my parents were well off I could easily see her buying me a vacuum or a new mattress after she got herself one. For 99% of peop…

So they are misattributing the additional sale to their suggestions instead of the product being an advertisement for itself.

I suspect adtech industry would shrink down half its size if it could accurately attribute sales to ads. It sometimes smells as if it was standard practice to convince the client (intentionally, or unintentionally by also convincing yourself) that correlation is causation and therefore their success is attributed to ad spending.

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#114

Post by raxxorrax »

tyingq wrote: post #64
nanoscopic wrote: post #20

Amazon has a team called "Amazon Profitability Group". I used to work for said team, albeit only briefly. The purpose of the team is to calculate the proper price to sell items for, the "discount" to vendors, and the items to put in the "buy box" in order to make the most profit for Amazon. I think the what is described here in the article is only the tip of the iceberg. Amazon isn't doing something as simplistic as…

I do believe these sorts of "Amazon is amazingly smart" posts. But they are hard to reconcile with why Amazon keeps showing me a rice cooker ad, after I buy a rice cooker from them.

Or they know something about that rice cooker that you don't know yet.

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#115

Post by TeMPOraL »

hakfoo wrote: post #105
munk-a wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that loss leading leads to device or producer lock in (as it's intended to) and limited the utility of devices for frivolous reasons - if your nuclear reactor specifically requires rods with little notches at the end feel free to warn and protect against incompatible notches, but if that notch requirement was to lock the consumer into your Atomizer Brand Rods(R) then you may force a consumer into making fisca…

I feel like that's more the Gilette/HP "expensive propriatery consumables" model, not the classic loss leader. When I think of "loss leader" I think of the Thrifty pharmacies that used to have an ice-cream counter. People went in for a 35-cent cone and ended up buying $10 of other merchandise that more than made up for the 15 cents Thrifty lost on the cone.

That Gilette/HP model is something I consider unethical as well. It's manipulative (instead of a honest deal, it tries to mess up people's calculus), anticompetitive (undercuts honest dealers) and generates ridiculous amounts of waste - doubly so, when you end up in situations like people buying new printers every time their old ones run dry, because even with reduced-capacity starter cartridges, it's still a better deal than just buying ink cartridges.

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#116

Post by TeMPOraL »

omeid2 wrote: post #25
mehrdadn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss leaders are legal, right? What's the effective difference between those and predatory pricing? Is it just the intention rather than the actual effect?

Loss leaders are to bring customers in with the hope of selling them some higher margin products, predatory pricing is selling products below the price to push competition out of business.

Beyond being indistinguishable but by intent, loss leaders deployed at scale effectively are predatory pricing.

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#117

Post by sgift »

haimez wrote: post #29
omeid2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss leaders are to bring customers in with the hope of selling them some higher margin products, predatory pricing is selling products below the price to push competition out of business.

So yes, it’s not externally distinguishable and basically boils down to intent.

I thought the difference is that in one case you sell below market price (loss leader) and in the other below production cost.

So: 1$ production cost 5$ market price

Your price: 3$ -> Loss leader .50ct -> Predatory pricing

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

omeid2 wrote: post #112
haimez wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So yes, it’s not externally distinguishable and basically boils down to intent.

I am not sure what you mean by externally distinguishable but pattern-behavior is hard to hide. 1. undercut product x and y that Z Corp sales 2. wait for Z Corp to go out of business 3. Increase price of x and y VS 1. sale product x cheap 2. sale other products to people who buy x 3. continue to step 1 or terminate selling below market

How about:

  1. Sell products x cheap and y at higher margin.
     (x happens to be what Z Corp also sells)
  2. At some point in time, coincidentally after Z Corp
     folds, decide to stop selling x cheap.
Was x the case of predatory pricing? Or was it just a loss leader to get people to buy y, and it's just a coincidence that the company abandoned it around the same time Z Corp gave up?

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#119

Post by lvs »

dang wrote: post #54
lvs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. You're clearly engineering on how to evade antitrust law. But the better argument is simply that if antitrust law doesn't sufficiently cover Amazon's business, then it needs to be changed to ensure that it does.

This comment crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed on Hacker News. Please make your points without stooping to that. In this case, the nasty bits at the beginning of the comment could be replaced with a factual explanation about the issue at hand. Since you say it's clear, that ought to be easy to do, and it would make your comment into a good one rather than a bad one for HN. https://news.ycombinator.co…

No, a personal attack would be to suggest the moderators at HN are defending Amazon employees from criticism using intellectually dishonest tactics. That would be a personal attack.

Nothing I said was about the poster as a person, but rather the poster represented him/herself as a representative of a company at issue. If you're on here representing your company for good press, expect criticism. If you're moderating that away, look in a mirror and ask yourself why. Does one of the largest companies on earth really need to be defended in the public square by HN moderators?

Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?

#120

Post by darpa_escapee »

microcolonel wrote: post #89
darpa_escapee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get free shipping from Walmart.com and AliExpress, the latter of which 90% of electronics on Amazon are sourced from. Walmart offers free 2 day shipping and in-store pickup. AliExpress offers the same items on Amazon without having to give middleman their expensive cut. I don't trust Amazon not to send me fake items or cheap Chinese knockoffs. There is absolutely no quality control on Amazon's end. Amazon has the r…

> Amazon has the resources to fight fake reviews, yet fake reviews are still rampant. As a result, I cannot trust Amazon's rating system at all. While this is true, at least the part about fake reviews being pervasive, the fact is that I don't trust any reviews on a retailer's website anymore, especially those that aren't verified purchases, and the only retail site where I trust verified purchase reviews at all (and…

> While this is true, at least the part about fake reviews being pervasive, the fact is that I don't trust any reviews on a retailer's website anymore, especially those that aren't verified purchases, and the only retail site where I trust verified purchase reviews at all (and not all of those either) is Amazon.

Only on Amazon do you find listings for headphones with 400 positive reviews for some BluRay version of Harry Potter, where those 400 positive reviews are displayed as if they're for the headphones themselves.

> I don't trust AliExpress not to send me fake items or cheap knockoffs either, but that doesn't stop me from trying sometimes. At least with Amazon you have recourse in my experience.

AliExpress has never given me a reason to distrust them, while Amazon has. I once received a defective item from a seller on AliExpress and I was refunded my money without having to ship the item back. I'm okay with that recourse.

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