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Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

politico.eu

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Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#61

Post by LatteLazy »

I keep seeing stories like this that prey on readers' ignorance to push an unfair agenda.

Retailers using their data as an advantage to improve sales of own brand products, at the cost of suppliers, is totally standard. It's happening right now in every supermarket (and plenty of other places). Pretending otherwise is silly.

Amazon having a policy of not doing that is exemplary. Amazon failing to meet that in one case is amazon meeting it in 99.9999% of cases.

But people are very quick to see the devil in amazon while others (Walmart for instance) are much worse and get a free pass...

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#62

Post by smhost »

nerbert wrote: post #52
LightG wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a catch-22 ... would Amazon be this innovative had it been nationalised? At what point do you nationalise? Is there a next technology which will be stifled if it was nationalise? Does nationalisation sttifle innovation? I've been wrestling with these questions as I actually don't like Amazon for all the reasons that have been well publicised ... but their customer service is excellent. Which sets me against a st…

Amazon the marketplace isn’t terribly innovative. It’s a marketplace supported by fantastic logistics, and most of it is backed by USPS anyways. There’s only so much you can do to remove the pains from buyers, sounds like we’re there.

"Innovation" refers to practices like staying in the red for a decade and bypassing antitrust laws by owning (rather than monopolizing) markets.

It has little to do with technological innovation.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#63

Post by LatteLazy »

fnord77 wrote: post #9

"we have a policy against this, but we violate it all the time"

2nd sentence in the article:

>“I can’t guarantee you that that policy has never been violated,”

4th sentence in the article:

>identifying one case in which an employee used the access to improve sales.

So only violated once...

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#64

Post by ceejayoz »

ekianjo wrote: post #58
anotha1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a USPS job compare to the job of an Amazon delivery driver?

How often are USPS on time for deliveries vs Amazons drivers?

That varies substantially by region.

In my area, Amazon's logistics is the least likely to be on time. I've gotten many free months of Prime from delayed packages.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#65

Post by rualca »

alfonsodev wrote: post #38
rualca wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market. If a company was already at said 10% limit and you wanted to buy something out of them because to you their offer is by far so much better than any of the alternatives, in your opinion what should happen?

The price would regulate itself by offer/demand balance and you would still be able to buy it if you can afford it. With no limits, they can actually create artificial lower prices that competition can’t match, and they become exponentially more powerful and dominating. And sometimes you end up as a customer having less options and lower quality.

> The price would regulate itself by offer/demand balance and you would still be able to buy it if you can afford it.

No, not really. I shopped around. I picked the best for me. I want to buy from that company but it is already at your 10% limit.

What then? Can I actually buy what I want?

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#66

Post by fighterpilot »

ceejayoz wrote: post #27
jpxw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, large government software projects are almost always disastrous, even in developed countries. Secondly, that isn’t what sellers want. Many sellers use Amazon to fulfill their orders. Amazon is far more than just a “market stall”.

> For one, large government software projects are almost always disastrous, even in developed countries. The same tends to be true for large corporate software projects. As a fairly recent example: https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsu...

Right, but there's a self-correction here, which is that Accenture gets fired if they do a bad job. The govt has a monopoly and so there's little self-correction - too many layers of indirection between the everyday voter and Amazon's outcome.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#67

Post by anotha1 »

ekianjo wrote: post #58
anotha1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a USPS job compare to the job of an Amazon delivery driver?

How often are USPS on time for deliveries vs Amazons drivers?

As far as I can tell, just as often. No, I don't have the same expectations, but that is more than reasonable considering Amazon has an easier job (every seller already has there product in an Amazon warehouse, as is the USPS has an additional processing step).

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#68

Post by Kalium »

girvo wrote: post #48
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interop requirements may serve better than direct government control. At the very least, it’s worth being clear eyed with respect to the quality of government run services. What would be necessary for the government to run a service like Amazon successfully? Is our government today capable of doing such a thing? I think the answer is clearly no.

Government run services can be absolutely excellent though. It’s not a pure truth that government run = subpar.

You're absolutely right. They can be.

With that critical truth that you've touched on said... American civilian resident-facing government services tend to be organized and run with all the strong incentives being to make it good for everyone but the residents. Usually the workforce has a strong union and management has their goals, but us users have no strong force to exert except distant oversight in the form of Congress.

Some organizations escape this. Others do so partially at best. Most do not. State DMVs are notorious pits of utter misery, and this is generally an honest reflection of experience.

You can report a passport lost online, but you have to file a DS-11 in black ink at a post office to request a new one. This process can be easy or hard unpredictably, depending mainly on how nice the postal worker feels that day. There are few to no organizational incentives towards better customer service.

Why black ink? Because the State Department says so. And they don't have to care what you think.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#69

Post by anotha1 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #64
ekianjo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often are USPS on time for deliveries vs Amazons drivers?

That varies substantially by region. In my area, Amazon's logistics is the least likely to be on time. I've gotten many free months of Prime from delayed packages.

Good point. In my last apartment, Amazon threatened to stop delivering to the entire (large) complex because their delivery people failed so hard at delivering. Packages were left just about everywhere and the Facebook group became more like a lost-and-found package site. Something that didn't happen at all with USPS.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#70

Post by anotha1 »

mk89 wrote: post #21

Well, it's something that is slowly backfiring. It's under the eyes of everyone, and not enforcing such policy will only make it even worse for Amazon itself that eventually will end up selling only non-branded products. Finally it will be only another e-commerce like "ebay" used to be, and something else will replace it. Just enjoy the ride until you can. PS: speaking out of experience, I had one time a talk to a di…

Upvoted, but I disagree that it's backfiring.

Backfiring would imply things are changing or getting worse for them. And I'm certain that we're not at "peak Amazon."

Worse, Americans especially are becoming numb to top down abuses. Not only am I worrying that this is not backfiring, but I'm also worried about the precedent we're setting by being so tolerant to it.

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