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Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

atg.wa.gov

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Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#41
post #9

Former Amazonian here. When i was there, they made us take this antitrust training course that had things like "don't use terms like 'market share' in internal communications", but all along there were people doing this? I mean...

Why would they waste employee time on antitrust training if they were innocent?

Corporate ass-covering.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All big corps require you to take this kind of training.

> All big corps require you to take this kind of training. I've worked at a couple "big corps" as an internal developer. JPMC, BestBuy, Experian, etc. Never encountered it. I suspect it's only for those companies in danger (or with a history of being charged with) breeching anti-trust.

I've worked at one of the companies you've listed, definitely had to do anti-trust training.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All big corps require you to take this kind of training.

> All big corps require you to take this kind of training. I've worked at a couple "big corps" as an internal developer. JPMC, BestBuy, Experian, etc. Never encountered it. I suspect it's only for those companies in danger (or with a history of being charged with) breeching anti-trust.

s/all/many/

But the point of the argument is still valid -- it is present often enough and not only for nefarious purposes.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#44

I'm confused why this is anti-trust. Isn't this how all wholesale vendor deals work? Regular wholesale: "We'll buy 200 units from you at $20 each. I'll sell them for some other amount, you don't need to care about it". Amazon in this example: "We'll buy 1 units from you at $20 each. I'll sell them for some other amount, you don't need to care about it. Finally, don't worry about the wholesale rate for a single unit,…

It sounded to me like the problem part was where Amazon sold competing products, then used the agreement to price-fix between their own products and the third party's.

Example: Amazon sells a dongle for $20, the competitors sell them for $20. Amazon makes a deal with each competitor, then raises all the prices to $25.

(edit) I think this kind of example also: The competitor's dongle is priced at $24 on Best Buy. Amazon raises competitor's the price to $24, but keeps its own dongle priced at $20.

> The “Sold by Amazon” program resulted in prices for some products increasing when Amazon programmed its pricing algorithm to match the prices that certain external retailers offer to online consumers.

> As a result, when prices increased, some sellers experienced a marked decline in the sales and resulting profits from products enrolled in the program. Faced with price increases, online customers sometimes opted to buy Amazon’s own branded products — particularly its private label products. This resulted in Amazon maximizing its own profits regardless of whether consumers paid a higher price for sales of products enrolled in the “Sold by Amazon” program or settled for buying the same or similar product offered through Amazon.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#45

In case others were as confused as i was about this "While they’re often confused, Sold by Amazon and Fulfilled by Amazon are two different things. With SBA, Amazon prices your products and owns any transactions that take place. When an item sells, they pass the proceeds on to you for allowing them to sell your product. With FBA, you price your products and own the transactions. It is a service where Amazon handles t…

I'm extra confused, as I'd interpreted "Ships from and sold by Amazon" as "Amazon supplied the goods and will vouch for their validity", whereas "Sold by ISL" would have meant that ISL was on the ultimate hook should the goods prove to be counterfeit.

Learn something new (and important) every day.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#46
post #32
post #9

Former Amazonian here. When i was there, they made us take this antitrust training course that had things like "don't use terms like 'market share' in internal communications", but all along there were people doing this? I mean...

That's actually surprisingly cunning. Run a very in depth training program on how "not" to do antitrust. Secretly, it's just a training course in antitrust. Gotta respect the level of commitment to evil.

It sounds like pretty ordinary corporate training. The idea is that you don’t want ordinary workers saying things that sound bad in discoverable messages, which is very likely if there is the ordinary amount of speculation about things they don’t really know about.

Whether any particular thing actually is an antitrust violation is for the lawyers to decide. I guess they decided wrong?

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#47

It was pretty obvious what Amazon wanted from its business partners if you look at abebooks, a site owned by amazon, but not visibly if you just look at abebooks.com. 'Independent' booksellers sell used books through abebooks, but never for less than amazon sells the same books.

[deleted]

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#48
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that the count includes the huge amount of people who sell cheap, unbranded Chinese products under a random all-caps name. So, not that surprising.

Why the all-caps brands for these? Is there some belief that it stands out more or something? Because it does, and not in a good way. I skip all those when I'm browsing search results.

I’ve bought some of these all-caps items and some (probably over half) have been surprisingly good products. I’m not deciding between them and Apple usually, but between those brands on Amazon and the same products on Ali. Now that Ali shipping has been nerfed, I often buy from Amazon.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#49
post #22

How much revenue did that program generate? That should be the fine, obviously. Alongside the criminal prosecution.

This definitely feels like class action lawsuit territory to me.

I shall eagerly await my cheque for $0.27 that I will never receive.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#50
post #44

I'm confused why this is anti-trust. Isn't this how all wholesale vendor deals work? Regular wholesale: "We'll buy 200 units from you at $20 each. I'll sell them for some other amount, you don't need to care about it". Amazon in this example: "We'll buy 1 units from you at $20 each. I'll sell them for some other amount, you don't need to care about it. Finally, don't worry about the wholesale rate for a single unit,…

It sounded to me like the problem part was where Amazon sold competing products, then used the agreement to price-fix between their own products and the third party's. Example: Amazon sells a dongle for $20, the competitors sell them for $20. Amazon makes a deal with each competitor, then raises all the prices to $25. (edit) I think this kind of example also: The competitor's dongle is priced at $24 on Best Buy. Amaz…

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