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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”

#81

Post by proamdev123 »

abirch wrote: post #22
endisneigh wrote: post #12

It seems the government's main issue is that they have problems with companies being large. If that's the issue they should lobby congress to simply enforce some maximum size/impact a company has. My opinion on this is that e-commerce is extremely competitive and consumers are already highly motivated to pay the least amount of money. If it were cheaper for consumers to go elsewhere they would, and sellers would foll…

I agree with you. I quit using Amazon late last year and it's pretty easy to change to different vendors. Hopefully more consumers do this so that vendors don't have to use the Amazon price everywhere else on the internet.

Where do you shop online now for things that you used to buy on Amazon? Have you found any unexpected pros or cons from going to alternative online stores?

I’m not planning to leave Amazon, but I’d love to find good alternatives.

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

#82

Post by endisneigh »

wallaBBB wrote: post #78
endisneigh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can repeat that comment here as many times as you want but it will not make it a valid one. Amazon is practically a monopoly, and they have reached that position by often selling goods below COG prices, incurring losses but outliving the competition. Now without a competitive marketplace for quite a lot of stuff they can dictate the prices at a loss for everyone except them. If somebody was to challenge them with…

Amazon isn't a monopoly by any definition. There are plenty of places to buy things. Repeating it over and over again won't change reality. Feel free to bookmark this and come back to it 10 years from now. Amazon won't be broken up, either.

Customers are so lazy they want the government do everything for them. If you don't like Amazon, close the tab and go to eBay.com or Walmart.com. It's very easy, and can be done in seconds. This isn't like telecom monopolies where you can't actually switch.

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

#83

Post by mjsweet »

endisneigh wrote: post #72
mjsweet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a product search engine and should be treated as such. Vendors must have the freedom to set pricing on any platform as they see fit. If all product search engines and ecommerce platforms behaved in this anticompetitive behaviour then what would we have? A weird commercial landscape that lacks flexibility… in the end the consumer looses because free market forces are not in play.

Amazon is not a product search engine, so the rest of your post is irrelevant. They are a store and describe themselves as such. You cannot find products on Amazon that are not for sale by them or sellers who agree to their rules, an actual product search engine would allow this.

Good luck with that! Amazon is the most powerful product search engine available. I love it and use it almost every day. Amazon will spend a lot of money trying to convince the feds they are otherwise… no amount of lobbying, PR pieces, paid ops and persistent commenting on boards like this one will stop valid questions being asked in hearings. It’s only a matter of time sorry.

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

#84

Post by endisneigh »

smoldesu wrote: post #80
endisneigh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because there are not literally thousands of e-commerce stores out there. Amazon is the only one. UPS, USPS and FedEx don't exist either. You must use Prime to transport your stuff.

Look, with this reasoning there is literally no world in which Amazon can be implicated for monopoly abuse of power. Apparently, having any other option (even if it is damaged by monopoly abuse) is good enough for you. Clearly the FTC disagrees with your logic, and I'm glad they do. FedEx, UPS and USPS should be sued too if they did what Amazon is doing.

The FTC disagrees, but they will lose, as they've lost before.

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

#85

Post by jprete »

ct0 wrote: post #42
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.

Amazon is not a court of law and need not be bound by this technicality.

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

#86

Post by endisneigh »

woooooo wrote: post #77
endisneigh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. The rules at the place you're trying to sell. Dictating how you sell elsewhere is a clear step beyond that.

They are not dictating how they sell elsewhere. They are saying they need to offer the best price on their site. It is easy to detect whether or not they actually are, and sellers are simply being called out.

There is no obligation to sell on Amazon, nor a requirement for them to raise prices on other platforms. They could simply offer the lowest price everywhere. The result? Lower prices for Amazon customers. If they raise the price, then that's the seller's fault, not Amazon.

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

#87

Post by proamdev123 »

globalnode wrote: post #15
hnuser847 wrote: post #11

The TL;DR is that the “hidden tax” is onerous advertising fees paid by third-party retailers to have their products appear high in search results. I don’t really see the issue here, since this appears to be a win-win for both consumers and sellers. Consumers get the cheap stuff they want with free shipping, and sellers get access to hundreds of millions of customers and the volume of sales needed to survive in a low-…

did you read it all? it claims the prices are higher due to the hidden tax and that amazon is price fixing by threatening to block 3rd party sellers if they sell at a more reasonable price elsewhere. this doesnt necessarily mean that consumers will get a better deal elsewhere but it is probably unhealthy to put all that price setting behaviour in the hands of one company.

This is an excellent point.

I’m extremely curious to see if the evidence shows that Amazon’s practices actually drive up prices in the market or whether there’s not much impact.

I suspect the answer may vary drastically depending on the product category.

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

#88

Post by fzeroracer »

Realistically, this rot runs so deep I'm not sure how you can stop it. The US economy is built upon a bunch of these hidden taxes. Healthcare, the way insurance works and hundreds of middle-men between. Google baking in advertising search terms into things you search for. Amazon subsidizing delivery by baking it in as a hidden cost which causes in-store goods to rise in prices to match. Large real estate firms like Greystar using algorithmic models to raise prices uniformly across the US rather than based on local availability.

It's a good step, but our economy is dominated by rentseeking behaviors from large corporations buying their way into monopoly and then warping the rest of the market. And unfortunately I feel like this case will end like many others, with a handshake and a promise to 'properly show consumers how much our stuff on Amazon costs'.

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

#89

Post by Ylpertnodi »

ct0 wrote: post #42
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.

And also increase the shrinkflation.

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

#90

Post by ARussell »

endisneigh wrote: post #65
ARussell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Amazon needs to follow the rules and laws of the place that IT'S trying to sell at.

And which law dictates a company must allow people or sellers on its platform?

I'm not GP. I didn't make that argument. I agree that Amazon is not obliged to allow just anyone on their platform. Sellers must abide by the rules that Amazon sets in place. At the same time, Amazon must abide by the laws of the locations at which it wants to sell. So if a state says that they cannot force a seller to keep their lowest price on Amazon, then that's the way it is.
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