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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”

#381

Post by stale2002 »

fallingknife wrote: post #123
globalnode wrote: post #15

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.

The rule means that a seller cannot pass the savings onto the consumer, by giving the consumer the fee that they would otherwise pay amazon.

Thats the issue.

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

#383

Post by pierat »

cwoolfe wrote: post #244

This strategy has been adopted by eBay as well and artificially drives up prices. Let me elaborate. Recently, eBay has made it so that only the products with paid ads are shown in places where customers click. This drives up the cost of everything by more than 10% which is eBay's ad fee. I refused to buy a paid ad to sell my MacBook. It sat on the site for a month, which is highly unusual for an in-demand and rightly…

Thats not the only thing I caught, at least with Ebay.

During the pandemic, I decided to sell a bunch of a component I had stockpiled. (Im not a scalper. I got the parts when my dad died.).

I put them for sale with $100 minimum, auction. They ended up selling for $300. I was definitely happy.... until Ebay refused to send me my money, and instead demanded access to a bank account, after the sale was complete. Fuck that.

I found the user who bought it, traced to a business. Cool. I contacted him, explaining what happened. Turns out they did the same to him since he too was a seller. I told him that I'd honor the same price Ebay told me....

Ebay told me (seller) $300. Ebay told the buyer $350......!! Mind you, the fees are taken out of my $300, yet that $50 difference is Ebays scrape off the top.

Obviously, I sold it to them for $300, and provided screenshots of what I was being told, and they did the same. We arranged the sale over Paypal and worked like a charm.

And sure, Ebay's scamming as far as I can tell, everyone. But it's also reminded me to check on websites with a private mode browser and logged in, to see if there's funny games.

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

#384

Post by freetime2 »

jhbadger wrote: post #360
scarface_74 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your product doesn’t have any value that can be protected by copyright, patent and you haven’t built any type of affinity with customers, isn’t it by definition just another commoditized product?

Well, here's a real example. About a decade ago there was a simple video conferencing system called Nautilus. A simple LCD screen that let you call other people with the device and talk to them, not having to bother with computers or smartphones. The sort of thing that is good for talking with elderly relatives who may not be very computer or phone savvy. I bought one (from Amazon) for myself and my elderly parents.…

“A simple LCD screen that let you call other people with the device and talk to them” sounds like a commoditized product to me.

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

#385

Post by granzymes »

AlanYx wrote: post #368
granzymes wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one possibility! But Amazon also hides the buy box when the only offers are not what Amazon considers "competitive" because it hurts their brand if consumers see shitty deals. In this example, the pens with the buy box are 50% cheaper and have much faster shipping.

They're not the same pens though (extra fine v. ultra fine). I can understand why the FTC is concerned. This has the potential to be worse for competition than MFN agreements, because it forces any supplier whose products might end up on Amazon to police its entire distribution network for minimum pricing.* It also forces suppliers to crack down on (legal, authentic) grey market imports, even if those are never sold…

I was offering the comparison because those two pens should be priced within a few cents of eachother (the difference is the tip width and ironically "extra fine" is more expensive). If the products were the same then there would only be one product page and the $9.99 offer would be the highlighted deal.

The fact that one product has the buy box at $9.99 and 1-day shipping and the other product does not have the buy box at $14.28 and 8-day shipping lets us infer that $14.28 is not a competitive price for these pens and there may be a cheaper price elsewhere (likely closer to $9.99).

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

#386

Post by rafaelmn »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #372
trinsic2 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft should be the first one to be split up. Their dominant position is more pervasive than any other market because the operating system people use in their computers is the gateway to get too these other services. The second should be Apple for the same reasons. Then Amazon.

I fail to see why apple should be split. Nobody forces people to buy macs, very few do, and as for iPhones, there are alternatives and apple doesn’t have a monopoly over the phone industry. You can very well use icloud on other OSes too.

Apple doesn't even hide the tax.

The shit they get to pull with safari is beyond IE level - they straight up don't allow alternative browsers (beyond WebKit) on 50% of mobile market.

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

#387

Post by OkayPhysicist »

scarface_74 wrote: post #335
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, maybe you've never heard about antitrust law, but using one's dominant market position to maintain dominance in the market to the injury of consumers is pretty much the exact definition of an antitrust violation in the US. So write your local congressman complaining that antitrust law is restricting your ability to lick Jeff Bezo's boots, or run away to the Rockies somewhere and start a radically laissez fair…

Just maybe some people don’t think that the government having more power and control is a good thing? 37% is not a monopoly. If you have a differentiate product, you can set up your own website through Shopify or any number of places. And if you haven’t been paying attention, the FTC has been laughed out of court for the last five years every time it has gone after BigTech

What possible complaint could you have about government overreach that doesn't equally apply to corporations? Antitrust law is the only thing standing between us and a corpohellscape "America, an Alphabet Company".

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

#388

Post by mcguire »

londons_explore wrote: post #367
granzymes wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the FTC's lawsuit, Amazon no longer binds its sellers with a Most Favored Nation clause. Instead, Amazon now will refuse to promote an offer in its "buy box" space if it detects a lower price for that good on another website. The FTC alleges that this simply reconstitutes the MFA since most sales on Amazon take place from the buy box. Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetit…

> Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetitive offers Sounds to me like Amazon has found a loophole in the law. It agrees to list anything for sale, with no anti competitive conditions, but then only recommends customers buy things that it believes are in the customers best interests. The FTC will struggle to argue that is illegal. Amazon can't be compelled to recommend stuff. (free speec…

Could you explain how this is in the customers' interests?

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

#389

Post by granzymes »

londons_explore wrote: post #367
granzymes wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the FTC's lawsuit, Amazon no longer binds its sellers with a Most Favored Nation clause. Instead, Amazon now will refuse to promote an offer in its "buy box" space if it detects a lower price for that good on another website. The FTC alleges that this simply reconstitutes the MFA since most sales on Amazon take place from the buy box. Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetit…

> Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetitive offers Sounds to me like Amazon has found a loophole in the law. It agrees to list anything for sale, with no anti competitive conditions, but then only recommends customers buy things that it believes are in the customers best interests. The FTC will struggle to argue that is illegal. Amazon can't be compelled to recommend stuff. (free speec…

>It will be hard for the court to argue that amazon should start recommending more expensive items to consumers, just to push consumers into looking for a cheaper platform.

Yes, 100% this. That's why I said that this lawsuit has a major remedy problem. Even if the court agrees this is anticompetitive, how do you fix it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767994

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

#390

Post by seydor »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #357

The FTC is going to lose this case like they have lost others. They are suing someone with the power of a government. Whether it is "right" or not, the legal case needs to be incredibly strong and airtight to make it through court, and a loss looks really bad. It signals that other companies can be even more anticompetitive because they know the FTC will lose against the biggest fish in court.

> a loss looks really bad

To whom? it's not like they will lose customers. It's better to try than not to try

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