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Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

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Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#91

Post by epr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #73
epr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one said anything about only "rich people" "deserving" anything. If you draw the conclusion that only "rich people" will have access to something if the price is higher (notice they didn't specify how much) that's fine, but don't go putting words in other people's mouths.

It's the literal and direct point of rising the price. If an item is sought after by everyone, then rising the price primarily cuts off the least wealthy part.

Raising the price does not "primarily" cut off the least wealthy potential buyers, that is just one of the effects. Much more important is that it prevents people from hoarding, which is by far the most common result of prices being drastically lower than they ought to be. Leaving the prices low predictably causes shortages, which shut out virtually everyone from purchasing the masks, including the microscopic percentage that wouldn't be able to afford the price increase on an item that usually costs pennies.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#92

Post by epr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #74
epr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is truly painful to see how little people seem to understand or appreciate the living organism that is human action in the aggregate. Large surges in demand which are inevitably met with price increases are signals to other parts of the organism to send goods where they are needed. Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to th…

That works only if there's a reasonable way to meet the increased demand. The prices go up, which increases more manufacturing and more entrepreneurs moving inventory from different areas to ones with need. In emergencies like this, there isn't enough supply available anywhere to meet demand. The manufacturers can't scale fast enough - and even if they could, they're often unwilling; scaling up has large up-front cos…

> In emergencies like this, there isn't enough supply available anywhere to meet demand

In the presence of price gouging laws perhaps, but not in general. I of course acknowledge the overhead cost of retrofitting existing manufacturing setups to produce masks, but that doesn't mean they can't still turn a profit, especially if they are not prevented from selling internationally by well intended but misguided laws.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#93

Post by epr »

viraptor wrote: post #87
CoryAlexMartin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. When supplies can't meet demand, raising prices serves to discourage people from buying more than they need or buying just to resell.

That works fine for non-essential goods. New mobile phone - sure. But once we're in a "rich asshole can buy out the supply of life-saving equipment by outbidding hospitals" territory, any talk of market efficiency should go out of the window. If we don't do that, we may just as well start analysing market efficiency of slave ownership - market numbers more important than people.

> But once we're in a "rich asshole can buy out the supply of life-saving equipment by outbidding hospitals" territory, ...

Price increases also discourage the wealthy from buying more than they need. There is no doubt that the effect of higher prices matters less to them, but it still will encourage them to buy less on average. There is also a very small chance that a "rich asshole" purchases much more than they need, but this is the exception, not the rule.

> ... any talk of market efficiency should go out of the window

Quite the contrary actually. Emergencies are at least one of and potentially the most important case where the (on average) efficiencies of the market are needed.

> we may just as well start analysing market efficiency of slave ownership

Slave ownership is by definition extremely inefficient. That's obviously not to say that someone couldn't treat humans like cattle and turn their investments into a profit (as we are all unfortunately aware of), but if you consider the system as a whole including the alternatives (and their impacts across the economy) that could be pursued by the slaves the entire thing is a big net negative for society to the benefit of the few (slave owners). Slavery is not only evil by virtually everyone's definition of morality, it is also just plain stupid.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#94

Post by oat_bravo_nap »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #74
epr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is truly painful to see how little people seem to understand or appreciate the living organism that is human action in the aggregate. Large surges in demand which are inevitably met with price increases are signals to other parts of the organism to send goods where they are needed. Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to th…

That works only if there's a reasonable way to meet the increased demand. The prices go up, which increases more manufacturing and more entrepreneurs moving inventory from different areas to ones with need. In emergencies like this, there isn't enough supply available anywhere to meet demand. The manufacturers can't scale fast enough - and even if they could, they're often unwilling; scaling up has large up-front cos…

Even if it can't increase supply it will decrease demand (hoarding). If the prices is higher people will only buy what they need rather than buying all of it out.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#95

Post by celticninja »

ecommerceguy wrote: post #70

I've got a decent amount of n95 (both 3M and HDX HD Brand) masks that we lucked into more than a significant amount of time ago. We are afraid to list them, at any price, because I'm afraid ebay/amazon will kill our listings at any price. I'm ready to ship them for free, of all costs, I just don't want my amazon "privileges" revoked. who do i give n95 masks too? edit: they are 2024 exp dates

any hospital will gladly take them from you, if they won't try old people care homes

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#96

Post by toasterlovin »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #53
gentleman11 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be that a single intern whose only job was to search for prohibited items and unlist them could do better Really, just use Mechanical Turk. Their inability to handle this is obviously showing they intend to not fix it

You can create hundreds of thousands of listings almost instantly through the API or by uploading a spreadsheet to Amazon. It's not possible for manual review for all of them because of this. That is why they lean so heavily on both automation and armies of cheap contractors.

It's possible to do manual review. We've been scraping these product categories and search result pages for the last few days. I was personally able to categorize all of the products we scraped (about 10 thousand) in a half of a day.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#97

Post by toasterlovin »

FireBeyond wrote: post #33
gentleman11 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be that a single intern whose only job was to search for prohibited items and unlist them could do better Really, just use Mechanical Turk. Their inability to handle this is obviously showing they intend to not fix it

For exactly the same reason as you can't report an item as counterfeit on return. They have no intention of fixing.

FWIW, the real reason is that sellers abusing mechanisms like this to create issues for their competitors is a huge problem on Amazon's platform.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#98

Post by wtallis »

epr wrote: post #92
TeMPOraL wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works only if there's a reasonable way to meet the increased demand. The prices go up, which increases more manufacturing and more entrepreneurs moving inventory from different areas to ones with need. In emergencies like this, there isn't enough supply available anywhere to meet demand. The manufacturers can't scale fast enough - and even if they could, they're often unwilling; scaling up has large up-front cos…

> In emergencies like this, there isn't enough supply available anywhere to meet demand In the presence of price gouging laws perhaps, but not in general. I of course acknowledge the overhead cost of retrofitting existing manufacturing setups to produce masks, but that doesn't mean they can't still turn a profit, especially if they are not prevented from selling internationally by well intended but misguided laws.

> In the presence of price gouging laws perhaps, but not in general. I of course acknowledge the overhead cost of retrofitting existing manufacturing setups to produce masks,

Price gouging laws do not change the underlying facts of how long it takes to spin up new production lines. In an emergency, suppliers cannot respond quickly enough, by definition. The problem to be solved is how best to allocate existing stocks and production output, not how to incentivize new producers.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#99

Post by masonhensley »

ecommerceguy wrote: post #70

I've got a decent amount of n95 (both 3M and HDX HD Brand) masks that we lucked into more than a significant amount of time ago. We are afraid to list them, at any price, because I'm afraid ebay/amazon will kill our listings at any price. I'm ready to ship them for free, of all costs, I just don't want my amazon "privileges" revoked. who do i give n95 masks too? edit: they are 2024 exp dates

Please donate them to a hospital or senior living facility.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#100

Post by triceratops »

epr wrote: post #49
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So only rich people deserve items demanded in a panic? The proper control is limit purchase per person per day. Raising prices on things like masks in a viral contagion like this is unconscionable

No one said anything about only "rich people" "deserving" anything. If you draw the conclusion that only "rich people" will have access to something if the price is higher (notice they didn't specify how much) that's fine, but don't go putting words in other people's mouths.

You didn't answer why imposing limits on how many each individual may purchase isn't a reasonable solution. It prevents hoarding and keeps prices normal. Sure, the manufacturer or retailer doesn't profit, but if they were happy to get price $X pre-panic, why are they not happy to get the same price now? Their costs haven't changed (yet).
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