Live data from Hacker News

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

thebignewsletter.com

181–190 of 653 posts

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

#181
post #6

This has been pretty obvious for a while. Whenever I do product searches on Amazon the prime eligible results are more expensive by exactly the shipping costs of the non prime vendors. The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people.

Fast delivery of things i want is good too

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

#182
post #6

This has been pretty obvious for a while. Whenever I do product searches on Amazon the prime eligible results are more expensive by exactly the shipping costs of the non prime vendors. The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people.

Which products do you observe this for specifically? I buy from Amazon US all the time and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed that discrepancy, so I can only assume we’re looking at different products or from a different region.

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

#183
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.

Overstock & Wayfair scan + compare identical & similar listings at Amazon and other sites, and will message sellers if their price is not the better price. It's annoyingly a pretty standard practice. And they will see through the "different SKU" trick simply by comparing the product images.

Isn’t the solution to just ban all of the companies from doing it? More companies than just Amazon can be anti-competitive.

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

#184
post #131

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-…

Nope, the core issue is Amazon has monopoly on advertisement and distribution. And Amazon is abusing it to suppress competitors. Consider the scenario: Amazon executive want more bonus, so they decide to increase retailer prices by 10x. Now, retailers cost have increased for Amazon by 10x. But other distribution channels remain the same. So, retailers should increase prices on Amazon only. But Amazon forces them to i…

If Amazon did that, sales would drop to zero and retailers would leave Amazon. eCommerce is a low-margin business. Sellers will only stay on Amazon as long it's profitable for them.

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

#185
post #85
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While it may not be as simple as changing a SKU, Amazon is chock full of products made in the same factory, many with identical product images, sold under different brands at different prices, and many of the "brands" are the output of name-generators.

That actually adds to the problem: If you put effort and money into brand recognition you need to provide best prices on amazon, but Amazon is easier to game if your brand is xyxxy12345.

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

#186
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re just wrong, Amazon controls around 35% of all US e-commerce. Not being able to sell on Amazon instantly removes most of your available customers. The second largest is Walmart and it’s closer to 7%. Walmart, target, whatever, don’t add up to Amazons market.

And if lots of items became available on other sites, but not Amazon (as per the theory being propounded), then Amazon would no longer control 35% of all US e-commerce.

This is a classic coordination problem: you need all the sellers to leave together so that individual merchants don't take a loss. And coordination problems like this are one of the main areas government action can help!

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

#188

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…

I don't see the problem with this. They don't have to sell on Amazon to begin with. Amazon obviously wants their customers to have the best price available. Sellers can just go off Amazon if they don't like it. If sellers end up raising the price on other platforms as a result of this rule, then that says more about them than Amazon. Demanding the lowest price does not harm consumers. Overstock, Wayfair, Walmart and…

> Demanding the lowest price does not harm consumers.

Amazon demands that sellers increase their prices on selling platforms with lower overhead. A demand to increase prices does harm consumers.

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

#189
I don't understand why you would "Break-Up" Amazon? Why can't we just have common rules that says "Hey, we will fine you $50M a day you continue to do X,Y,Z?". Then we have precedence and law to back up doing monopolistic things.

How does breaking a company work? I mean... we broke up Microsoft and that only slowed them down for a few years.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes, but at the end of the day Amazon to remove the seller for any reason, so even if the FTC succeeds here, Amazon will simply purge those sellers who are not offering the best price, even if not explicitly stated. There is no reality where Amazon allows their site to be inundated with higher priced…

it would be sensible to require a reason for refusing to do business with someone. Normally it wouldn't be but if you are a repeat offender it seems a sensible requirement

Unless it's a protected class you can refuse to do business with anyone for any reason. Plenty of supreme court cases on this.
Post reply on HN