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The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

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Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#41

Post by seatac76 »

xgl5k wrote: post #35

FTC should go after other industries that are far more harmful to customers than tech. ISPs, healthcare/insurance, etc. Tech should be no where near the top of concerns for the FTC. This is a political stunt. If Lena Khan and the FTC were actually interested in consumer protection, they would go after other industries first.

Tech is omnipresent, is flush with cash that it frequently uses to disrupt (drive existing businesses out and then monopolize) and has an outsize influence on people. It absolutely should be first on the list for anti trust action. and it’s Lina Khan.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#42

Post by ct0 »

thelastgallon wrote: post #17

An excerpt from: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/ Amazon binds its sellers over to something called Most Favored Nation status. That means that sellers can't offer their goods more cheaply than they do on Amazon – even if it costs them (lots) less to sell in Target or direct from their websites. This means that every time a seller adds a dollar to their Amazon sale price, they have to add a dollar to…

Just change the SKU of the product so they are "different". Big box stores do it all the time to reduce the probability of price matching.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#43

Post by endisneigh »

mjsweet wrote: post #37
endisneigh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. These sellers should and can just leave Amazon if they have a problem with it.

No, they should be able to set their own pricing as they see fit.

They are able to do so, but Amazon is not obligated to have them on their platform if they aren't providing the best price to their customers.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#45

Post by woooooo »

endisneigh wrote: post #27
mjsweet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, it’s not that simple. Sellers need the sheer volume of Amazon to compete. There is also the risk of Amazon duplicating their product and continuing to sell it on their platform… or their competitors filling the void.

So what? That's how e-commerce works. Why should Amazon be obligated to fill their store with higher priced items compared to their competitors? No one is going to visit a store where every item could be purchased cheaper somewhere else. This is exactly why price match is a thing, because they don't want their costumers soliciting different stores to begin with. The move that Amazon's price be no higher than offered…

Some would say that the way commerce works is sellers can sell anywhere at any price that a buyer wants to pay.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#46

Post by pierat »

temporallobe wrote: post #30
elashri wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people. Which will start having ads unless you pay a fee for the ad-free experience starting next year [1] [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201028854/amazon-prime-video...

Tangentially related, even in YouTube Premium you can still see ads if the content creator embeds ads as part of their content. This seems like double-dipping to me and I am seeing more and more of this.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ is your friend :)

crowdsourced auto-skip for in-video adverts.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#47

Post by endisneigh »

woooooo wrote: post #45
endisneigh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? That's how e-commerce works. Why should Amazon be obligated to fill their store with higher priced items compared to their competitors? No one is going to visit a store where every item could be purchased cheaper somewhere else. This is exactly why price match is a thing, because they don't want their costumers soliciting different stores to begin with. The move that Amazon's price be no higher than offered…

Some would say that the way commerce works is sellers can sell anywhere at any price that a buyer wants to pay.

That's not how commerce works. Commerce works by following the rules of places that you are trying to sell at. You can't sell anything anywhere.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#48

Post by kibwen »

fortran77 wrote: post #7

Good! Though, to be fair, the switching cost for a consumer to start using Target.com (for example) isn't that high. I go to vendors like Target.Com, HomeDepot.Com, BestBuy.com and AliExpress.com for most of the things I used to use Amazon for.

The issue here is that Amazon's behavior makes the switching cost higher than it would otherwise be. You are penalized for the existence of Amazon even if you don't use Amazon.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#49

Post by tartuffe78 »

endisneigh wrote: post #34
Jensson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is none of Amazons business what prices they put when they list their wares on other services, the only reason they care is that they want to crush the competition. Dictating how retailers can interact with your competitors is anti-competitive. Dictating what prices they can offer when they put up listings is a part of that, it is anti-competitive.

[flagged]

Amazon is abusing it's monopoly power to hurt competition, when Amazon is the only place to certain things, consumer cost will go up.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#50

Post by Jensson »

endisneigh wrote: post #34
Jensson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is none of Amazons business what prices they put when they list their wares on other services, the only reason they care is that they want to crush the competition. Dictating how retailers can interact with your competitors is anti-competitive. Dictating what prices they can offer when they put up listings is a part of that, it is anti-competitive.

[flagged]

How is Amazon forcing them to raise prices on other platforms pro consumer? The only one who benefits from this arrangement is Amazon, everyone else including the consumer just loses out.
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