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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”

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't really sound like price setting power. They are saying you can set whatever price you want, but it has to be the same as other sales channels.

"Other sales channels" being Amazon's competitors - suppose you sell a... cup that costs $1 to produce, and you sell it on Amazon and Bmazon. Amazon charges $2 in fees, and Bmazon charges $0.50 in fees.

In this hypothetical example with demonstration numbers for effect, you could sell your cup for a minimum of $1.50 on Bmazon and $3 on Amazon - everything above that is pure profit. In such a scenario, you would obviously much prefer selling at $2.50 on Bmazon over selling for $3.50 on Amazon, since you make 2x the profit, and the average customer would much prefer to buy the device at a ~30% discount! Unless the customer legitimately derives an extra $1 worth of value from using Amazon instead of Bmazon, in which case Amazon gets the sale anyway.

But, if 90% of your sales are on Amazon, then you can't offer this deal that both you and the customer are legitimately incentivized to do, because you'd lose 80% of your revenue.

In such a scenario, Amazon has no competitive incentive to reduce their fees! It suppresses market signals towards lower-overhead sales platforms, i.e. you have no way to signal to your customers that a sale on Bmazon benefits you twice as much as on Amazon.

Basically, Amazon is trying to abuse a network-effect instead of actually competing with their competition. They're deplatforming anyone who doesn't voluntarily price-fix for them. It's insane.

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

#232

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.

Thanks for the list of alternatives! Have you experienced any unexpected pros and/or cons from using those vendors instead of Amazon?

>Thanks for the list of alternatives!

I'd love to hear a list of more, if anyone has them - I suspect most of them don't focus on Australia.

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

#233
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which is why searching "most favored nation clause" turns up legal advice on how to set that up in a good way. Note, there is still a valid question on whether or not companies with enough exposure should be held to higher standards. Consider, we hold pro players to tighter requirements than we do local leagues. They both have basically the same rules, of course, but not fully identical. And enforcement is, of c…

The US is strong on the doctrine that the law applies equally to people (legal entities) regardless of size / market cap. I don't think we'll ever see something like the EU's law that targets only large internet companies. It might even not fly on equal protection grounds. I think that in either Finland or Iceland people receive traffic fines that are a percentage of their income. They would never fly in the US.

That is why I didn't say it applies differently. I said it is enforced on a ranking that is based on ROI. And... it really has to be.

There are almost certainly low key levels of bad practices in small shops. But it would cost more and take more out of the economy to enforce them than it is to just not care.

Now, that bar is rising, of course. Things that used to not matter years ago are easily enforced today.

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

#234
post #117
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that... there's probably no real recourse. For the same reason you mentioned.

The real solution is an open source Amazon. What happened to Magento? Does it have any traction? Why sell on Amazon instead of your own site? Can’t competitors to FBA spring up that have great logistics? Are there any? Can anyone link me to them?

What does "open source Amazon" even mean?

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

#235
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.

What I've commonly seen is that the manufacturer offers a store-wide 20% or 30% off coupon, as a temporary promo and/or for email signup. So the item price matches Amazon's, but you pay less in the end, if you're even remotely paying attention. At least for the $200-300 items I've seen (like dehumidifiers, fancy computer accessories).

The weekly sales flyers that stores offer was/is another way around this as well. Some of them have coupons to specific items that are not allowed to have sales prices lower than the MSRP. Very few people are as draconian about their prices as Apple, but others sure wannabe.

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

#237
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sellers want Amazon’s audience

That's the same trap that TikTok influencers and others fall into. You are sold "the dream" by showing top sellers / influencers / etc. and told you can be like them. Kevin O'Leary became a meme for promoting this bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuqemytQ5QA In fact, even the top influencers can be deplatformed in an instant, and their speech is controlled. And same with Amazon. But the thing is that the peo…

> Kevin O'Leary became a meme for promoting this bullshit:

The women is Amanda Lang,[1] and the two were a 'duo' for many years with a business/finance reporting show. I'm not sure how she managed to put up with him for so long. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Lang

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

#238
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay these fees so the products aren't cheap. And Amazon (using its size) made it impossible for sellers to sell their products cheaper elsewhere. This is anticompetitive.

> You pay these fees so the products aren't cheap. Except they are, otherwise consumers wouldn't use Amazon. Whenever I want to buy anything, I check Amazon first. 9 times out of 10 it's the same price as every other retailer with the added benefit of free shipping and free returns. If that wasn't the case, I would have no reason to use Amazon.

And that is why this case is being brought. Amazon are requiring that the price on Amazon is the cheapest price, even if the retailer would like to sell it on their own store (or eBay, Walmart, etc) for cheaper. If it’s sold on Amazon you won’t see it cheaper elsewhere.

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

#239
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.

I consider that stuff part of the content and weigh it appropriately. Creators who get too obnoxious with sponsored content are dropped from my subscriptions.

The creators I tend to watch the most these days either don’t have sponsorships or they only run their ad at the end of the video in which case I just stop watching or click to the next video.

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

#240

What magic does apple work behind the scenes to avoid scrutiny? If we're talking about hidden taxes, surely the only app store allowed on 50% of smart phones taking 30% is a hidden tax? And if not that, surely visa/mastercard's fee is it's own hidden tax?

Yes, the FTC should look at Apple.

But Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook would all be higher on my "FTC TECH TODO" list than Apple so I'm not sure why you focused on Apple in this "whatabout"?

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