Whats the likely scenario if they lose? Stop offering free shipping? Doubling the price of Prime to factor in lower margins if they cant artifically push up prices? Bully sellers for more margins even more than before?
The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
471–480 of 653 posts
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#472Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do. Amazon just does it more overtly and with smaller businesses. In fact, various aspects of this where pioneered by WalMart and Costco. 1. WalMart determines the expected product and expected price and tells vendors to take it or leave it. The agreement often has a stipulation that the same product can never be cheaper elsewhere which is sometimes easy as Wal…
> Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do.
Walmart and Costco subsidize free shipping by raising prices on the third party businesses who sell through them?
Because that's what the article is about.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#473Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do. Amazon just does it more overtly and with smaller businesses. In fact, various aspects of this where pioneered by WalMart and Costco. 1. WalMart determines the expected product and expected price and tells vendors to take it or leave it. The agreement often has a stipulation that the same product can never be cheaper elsewhere which is sometimes easy as Wal…
> The agreement often has a stipulation that the same product can never be cheaper elsewhere which is sometimes easy as WalMart gets specific SKUs.
Are you sure this is done overtly by Walmart? As the article says Amazon had this policy but it was dropped because of EU and US gov pressure. I'd be surprised if Walmart got an exception.
Unless there's some distinction for retail stores not just online.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
i would pay more money to not have to put my credit card into or attach my identity to 100 different random websites all of which almost certainly have worse security practices than amazon and many of which absolutely will have that data stolen at some point. even for people who don't think about stuff like that, it's way easier for the average person to buy everything from a single place than to go to a bunch of dif…
Isn't this basically what Shopify is, nowadays? Or "buy with Amazon" or a few other options that I can't remember the names of.
It is. I've even found myself searching within the shop app to find products from smaller stores vs the larger stores. It's nice they have a shipment tracker built in and so far i've not had any issues. They're even running promotions / incentives with their Shop Cash, so they're trying for sure.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it’s a straw man that anyone can’t just set up a blog or do podcast and publish their ideas?
It’s a strawman because GP wasn’t commenting on whether or not there is a technical way of reaching the public, but rather that media consolidation hurts the public. Those are orthogonal issues.
It’s not orthogonal, consolidation of media is only important if it keeps people’s messages from getting distributed broadly. Is that really a problem in 2023?
The “media” - ie ways to reach people is less consolidated now than any time in history.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#476Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do. Amazon just does it more overtly and with smaller businesses. In fact, various aspects of this where pioneered by WalMart and Costco. 1. WalMart determines the expected product and expected price and tells vendors to take it or leave it. The agreement often has a stipulation that the same product can never be cheaper elsewhere which is sometimes easy as Wal…
Amazon's biggest advantage is that they can sell fakes and patent violating products to undercut other retailers.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#477Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do. Amazon just does it more overtly and with smaller businesses. In fact, various aspects of this where pioneered by WalMart and Costco. 1. WalMart determines the expected product and expected price and tells vendors to take it or leave it. The agreement often has a stipulation that the same product can never be cheaper elsewhere which is sometimes easy as Wal…
> Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do. Walmart and Costco subsidize free shipping by raising prices on the third party businesses who sell through them? Because that's what the article is about.
The mechanics might be different, but the "free shipping" is still subsidized by driving the price of the product itself up. Either way, all consumers pay a higher price, so that a subset of them don't have to pay for shipping.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#478If proven true in court, I don't see how breaking-up Amazon would be the right remedy because doing so would increase costs to consumers through unnecessary inefficiencies and losses of economies of scale. Just forbid anti-competitive behavior and levy a sizable fine accordingly.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#479An 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…
> A new filing in California's suit against Amazon reveals that sellers live "in constant fear" of retaliation from Amazon if they allow their goods to be sold more cheaply elsewhere.
Tangential, but out of context quotes used in your sentence makes me think you're lying no matter what you're saying. Or else you would have kept it in context and used the whole quote.
Not to defend Amazon in the slightest. Just tired of seeing Breitbert quality clickbait OOC quotes everywhere.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#480Earlier 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…
> Sounds to me like Amazon has found a loophole in the law.
No, not necessarily. This is just what companies always do. As long as it looks like they're "trying" to comply, they don't get in big trouble. In the meantime, they get to make microadjustments to their policy and find out exactly how far they have to comply until they're legally in the clear.