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FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

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Re: FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious that a competitor has not sprung up to address this problem head-on...

Probably hard with a behemoth like Amazon having so much influence on the market.

Yes, that is my point.

Re: FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

#112
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behavior. Ffs. Antitrust isn't necessarily about monopolies. How is that so hard to understand?

The OP of the thread you are replying in claimed “so obviously monopolistic”…

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Re: FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

#113
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behavior. Ffs. Antitrust isn't necessarily about monopolies. How is that so hard to understand?

The OP of the thread you are replying in claimed “so obviously monopolistic”…

I really don't give a shit, tbh.

You can't argue that the FTC is unjustified by saying that the OP is wrong in saying it's monopolistic, when FTC isn't saying they're a monopoly.

Like, what even is this discussion?

Re: FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, I'm sure most customers PREFER sellers that use Amazon's logistics. I sure do. It's more trustworthy, you know the product exists at an amazon warehouse, faster shipping, etc.

I'm the total opposite. How can I trust Amazon if they aren't the ones selling me the merchandise? 3rd party sellers killed that website entirely for me. I needed to buy creatine and the last place I would buy it would be Amazon because there are too many chinese counterfeits, and worse Amazon seems to wash their hands of any responsibility. I ultimately bought creatine from nootropicsdepot. I buy things directly fro…

Yep and their mixing sku-s has created a whole sub industry where everything that fails quality control ends up here too. They should be required to track what came from who, so if counterfeits are discovered the rest of the stock can be pulled. I don't see how much effort it would take to add a sticker barcode.

Re: FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

#115

A less well known area of concern with Amazon is the way it is now purchasing for its own business. It is actively cutting out local distributors in favour of direct deals with manufacturers. This is really squeezing those businesses. Edit: this seems particularly monopolistic because it is using its own global logistics to undermine the supply chain to other retailers.

In terms of direct evidence of what the FTC thinks, I don't know. But it's interesting that India had some anti-trust action against companies that both owned online meta-marketplaces and had shops selling in the same marketplace. The theory applies here in that Amazon operates logistics and online presence for a shops, but operates it's own shop with potential information from all the other sellers. Self preference, or selected partner preference may be an issue:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/08/26/indian-...

Re: FTC reportedly plans major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

#116
post #7

A lot of the beef with Amazon seems to be "welcome to retail". I don't think Walmart even has third-party logistics for its stores -- or if it does it's of the "hire contractors and squeeze them hard" variety. Personally I've found the customer experience of non-FBA merchants on amazon is often pretty bad: long shipping times and weird return policies. This gets at a sort of core problem with this: where is the line…

Walmart acquired JET a long time ago. That created their own logistics and ecommerce efforts.
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