Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 930 posts

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#391

Post by hippich »

anigbrowl wrote: post #369
brianstorms wrote: post #287

I signed up as a Seller on Amazon a while back, with one primary goal: sell extra copies of my book, published by Pantheon Books in 2017. The publisher offered me boxes of them at dirt-cheap prices and I took them up on their offer. So I started selling on Amazon, and I set my price as the lowest possible for "New" condition hardcover. For a while my price got listed on the main book product page. Only briefly though…

Sue them in small claims court. It's perfect for this, you just bring in your documentation and write up a timeline for the judge.

Afaik, small claims courts are for specific monetary damages only. I feel like it would be hard to prove specific cash amount lost due to Amazon actions. It is also very likely one or more of documents one have to accept in order to open seller Central account requires signing away the right of settling dispute in courts, and instead use arbitration process.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#392

Post by kypro »

Amazon should just change their business model. Instead of requiring sellers sell their products for a competitive price on Amazon they should do the same thing Apple does and just charge sellers a large margin on sells on their platform. Obviously this would mean higher prices for consumers but if the problem here is that Amazon is forcing sellers to price products lower than they'd like then that would fix the issue.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#393

Post by musicale »

blibble wrote: post #347
karaterobot wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look this up, so for other ignoramuses like me: FBA is Fulfillment by Amazon, where you sell things on Amazon and they handle payments and shipping to customers.

it's a genius business for a "retailer" normally they'd need to pay for storage, stock, liquidation of stock they didn't sell, returns etc and instead now you pay for all of that for them and what do you get in return? - a listing on page 17 of their ever increasingly shitty website behind legions of MINFARTO, PATRONICS and GIBRANKER aliexpress garbage - customer service staff with an inability to understand simple e…

I would believe those are actual brand names.

Has anyone created software or a web site to generate hilarious Amazon brand names automatically?

Edit: Looks like there are lots of AI-fueled Amazon/business name generators. Most of the names weren't as funny as your examples, though I got some good ones (electrofakes.com, etc.) from prompts like "low quality tech products" and "cheap knockoff technology products."

Another site gave me the more Amazon-appropriate LAMOFY, HOROLY, YORBAX, etc. (all with .com domains and premade logos.)

As the NYT noted, "Amazon is to fake products as Facebook is to fake news."

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#394

Post by ggreer »

CaffeinatedDev wrote: post #376
ihaveajob wrote: post #82

In my opinion, Amazon needs to be split into at least 4 independent entities: - Online marketplace - Consumer products - Internet infrastructure - Delivery logistics Similar to the three-tier distribution system for beer in most states (a brewer cannot be a wholesaler or a retailer). This makes it easier for smaller players can compete with the big ones on quality at least, if not price or recognition. (Edit: format)

Amazon has been cognizant of this[antitrust risk] for a while now I believe. The internal systems are all set up to run independently, most systems are modular and already run as separate entities with permissioned access. Proof: worked as an SDE for AWS and Amazon for 7 yrs.

Isn't that done because independent modular systems make it a lot easier to build stuff inside of such a large company? Bezos said as much in 2002 when he issued his API mandate.[1][2]

1. https://chrislaing.net/blog/the-memo/

2. https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#395

Post by nwiswell »

blibble wrote: post #388
nwiswell wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think that Amazon should be replaced with a non-profit or regulated public utility that provides a single unified online marketplace, part of internet infrastructure like ICANN. Sellers would select among competing fulfillment services (warehouse+shipping). Platform referral fees would go toward customer remediation, anti-counterfeiting, and review integrity. I don't merely say this as a "fuck Amazon…

> I can't help but think that Amazon should be replaced with a non-profit or regulated public utility that provides a single unified online marketplace, part of internet infrastructure like ICANN. if the market was working correctly Amazon's profits would be driven down to zero and you'd effectively have this > As a matter of fact I would suggest that Amazon as it exists is anti-capitalist. It is feudal. absolutely

> if the market was working correctly Amazon's profits would be driven down to zero and you'd effectively have this

Are you sure? Consumer behavior seems to be to simply go to their default marketplace rather than to search the whole internet (which is slow, painful, and low-trust), so it ends up being a winner-take-all system where alternative marketplaces like eBay are almost irrelevant and Amazon charges whatever they like and basically ignores counterfeiting and review fraud.

There are "natural monopolies", like with roads and power distribution networks, and I would argue that online marketplaces have turned out to be another one, and we should modify our public policy to reflect that.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#396

Post by thisgoesnowhere »

kypro wrote: post #392

Amazon should just change their business model. Instead of requiring sellers sell their products for a competitive price on Amazon they should do the same thing Apple does and just charge sellers a large margin on sells on their platform. Obviously this would mean higher prices for consumers but if the problem here is that Amazon is forcing sellers to price products lower than they'd like then that would fix the issu…

Well yeah but that's the whole point. They don't want to do that because they would make less money because you could always go to the seller directly to get the product for less.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#397

Post by no_wizard »

musicale wrote: post #377
anigbrowl wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sue them in small claims court. It's perfect for this, you just bring in your documentation and write up a timeline for the judge.

Interesting idea - has anyone tried this? Does Amazon retaliate and ban you permanently if you win?

If you're already banned, you might as well try to get what you can out of the situation.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#398

Post by seanmcdirmid »

thisgoesnowhere wrote: post #396
kypro wrote: post #392

Amazon should just change their business model. Instead of requiring sellers sell their products for a competitive price on Amazon they should do the same thing Apple does and just charge sellers a large margin on sells on their platform. Obviously this would mean higher prices for consumers but if the problem here is that Amazon is forcing sellers to price products lower than they'd like then that would fix the issu…

Well yeah but that's the whole point. They don't want to do that because they would make less money because you could always go to the seller directly to get the product for less.

You can always go and use Alibaba to buy more directly, although still not direct. Small scale producers in China learned the value of an e-commerce platform a long time ago, you can't usually find them direct anymore.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#399

Post by hotnfresh »

Buttons840 wrote: post #389
hotnfresh wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What especially rankles is how Amazon doesn’t give a fuck about counterfeits. So they’re allowing counterfeits (amplifying the mentioned effect) to discourage direct-sellers from attempting to compete on price. Meanwhile, I have to order from direct sellers to be sure I will get a genuine, new product. So I don’t even get Amazon’s lower-but-still-higher-than-optimal price, but a yet higher one. As far as I’m concerne…

How does Amazon avoid liability for selling scam products? Do they claim to be "just the middleman" and pass responsibility onto ghost-in-the-night companies selling the scam products? Or do they just abuse the legal system and make justice too expensive to be worth it? I don't know the law very well, but I would hope there's a legal doctrine that responsibility has to effectively land somewhere. If a company is pass…

I have no idea, but companies routinely do shit that I assume would at least get me a fine in a hurry if I tried it. I don’t know how it works either. Like I’d have assumed deliberately dumping e-waste all over city sidewalks would get you a steep fine and an order to come pick them up or face an even steeper one within a matter of days—plus an absolute liability nightmare if, god forbid, anyone tripped over them and got hurt—but e-scooter companies have done it for years and have faced almost no consequences. I doubt I could get away with it. I dunno how they do.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#400

Post by heleninboodler »

m463 wrote: post #316
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOWZAMGO makes quality products. I bought their portable usb battery and it only caught fire after the 20th charge cycle. PARTUE, on the other hand… don’t ask!

What's funny is that I couldn't tell if this was serious or sarcastic at first glance. (caught fire -> sarcastic) Thing is, these silly UPPER-CASE-NONSENSE-COMPANIES are winning against established brands with quality products. Except there is a trend now where a brand with products of known good quality like YETI can now charge outrageous amounts of money - like 10x or more.

The UPPERCASENONSENSENAMES are so obvious it makes me wonder if this is a target-selection technique in the same vein as the 419 scammers use -- make it so only the most clueless people would ever buy your garbage product, so you get a lower percentage of people who are going to report you.
Post reply on HN