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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”

#611

Post by vineyardmike »

gymbeaux wrote: post #606
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…

It’s the same as Airbnb and Uber and Netflix and literally everything else… they throw in hidden fees and play psychology (eg foot in the door technique) to get us to pay more and more without us realizing it. They preach convenience, but unfortunately use that to their advantage to get our guard down. You pay $X to not have to worry about something/get a service, but when you’re not paying attention they jack up pri…

I hate to tell ya, but Spotify will eternally be stuck between unprofitability and price raises.

Spotify has to negotiate with record labels who mostly act as a unified block, and they have leverage because Spotify needs all major labels or else customers can’t find all their music. No one is a “interscope” loyalist - they’re loyal to artists. This gives them power to basically demand >100% of the profit margin. That’s why they’re trying to get into other markets like podcasts. Record labels get ~50% of revenue, then Apple/Google app stores get 30% from some customers - that doesn’t leave a lot of room for Spotify.

That’s also why YouTube music and Apple Music will be the only long term players - but they need Spotify. They can take a loss to keep customers in the ecosystem BUT they need Spotify to always be the first to break to keep rates tolerable.

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

#612

Post by joshstrange »

slibhb wrote: post #423

Legality aside, I'm not sure that Amazon is winning in the long run with this strategy. I mostly buy products direct from the manufacturer these days and virtually all manufacturers have high quality websites with solid ordering experiences. As long as they have the name recognition, they can either sell for higher on Amazon and take the advertising hit or just ignore Amazon altogether. I continue to buy some stuff o…

> I mostly buy products direct from the manufacturer these days and virtually all manufacturers have high quality websites with solid ordering experiences.

I can’t say I agree. I’m not defending Amazon here but shipping is a nightmare with literally every other business. You aren’t going to get 2-day and you’re lucky if it ships within a week of ordering. In most cases there aren’t even options for faster processing/shipping for an increased cost.

I was recently at my parents at they have Bartesian (think Keurig for alcoholic drinks). I wanted to try some drinks they didn’t have so I went to the official site and started adding some stuff to my cart. IIRC the free shipping minimum was higher than Amazon (without prime) and there was _zero_ information on when I could expect the stuff to ship or the shipping time. I did some googling and found people complaining about how long it took to ship and I was only going to be at my parents for a little under a week. I went to Amazon and while there was a significant markup (20-30% IIRC) I was able to get it next day or 2 day depending on what I got. I bit the bullet and ordered from Amazon.

Not everything has to come in 2 days or less but some things absolutely do and I rarely see fast shipping from even big names like Apple that that rival Amazon (I just bought a mouse and keyboard from them and it took 4 days vs same day with Amazon, same price). In a number of cases you have literally no information on processing or shipping time to make an informed decision.

Again, not defending Amazon, I wish there were better alternatives, but it’s not as easy as “just order from the manufacturer”. I’ve been burned so many times doing that.

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

#613

Post by vGPU »

buffington wrote: post #534
londons_explore wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> what they recommend is in the consumers immediate best interests. How? Amazon routinely recommends products to me that are objectively inferior compared to other products. For example, I just searched for "peak design travel tripod" and the number one result, which is also marked with "Overall Pick", is a tripod made by a company with the name of KINGJUEEQUESTER that looks like it's made out of cardboard tubes, but…

The Amazon experience in a nutshell. I have yet to see a comment that captured it so comprehensively.

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

#614

Post by multicast »

mjx0 wrote: post #593
multicast wrote: post #579

This is getting silly on the same level like the EU demanding Netflix to pay a certain percentage to local movie funds or enforcing certain rules to platforms owned by Meta to protect "user interests" about which no user really cares about. Amazon is not a self-evident service run submissive on behalf of the citizens. It's a private company. Nobody forces to do business with amazon nor is one forced to buy anything f…

The unlimited “freedom of contract” is an idea that the US Supreme Court reversed position on in the 1930s – merely 30 years after it was invented – and for good reason. For those wondering, “freedom of contract” as a term of art is essentially the idea that a government cannot regulate the behavior of parties to a contract, because the involved parties have some unlimited power of contract. The US Supreme Court foun…

Yes, almost every country in the world has restrictions on this. For example in the case of employment, with a contract stating that you have to work for life for a company, you can easily challenge it in court since it is more than obvious unconscionability. But the limitations on 'freedom of contract' by the us government never made or make the contracts businesses went into with amazon illegal or contestable.

There is no such thing as 'operate at the expense of others' in this case. Again, nobody forces you to buy at amazon. There is nothing illegal with setting requirements for a seller, e.g. not selling at a discount elsewhere. If you do not wish to sell on amazon you can freely choose to sell at any other store. If one is whining about not having the same reach: Nobody has the right to challenge amazon for just being good and demand anything from them. There is no law that gives you the right to be able to do business 'in the land of amazon' at conditions that please you.

Amazon is a private company. The FTC is treating amazon exactly how many people wrongly see it, as a sort of common good - quote:

'Amazon is a monopolist. It exploits its monopolies in ways that enrich Amazon but harm its customers: both the tens of millions of American households who regularly shop on Amazon's online superstore and the hundreds of thousands of businesses who rely on Amazon to reach them.'

(https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23991590/read-the-ftc...)

Bureaucrats.....Good luck proofing 'conspiration to monopolize'???. A thing which is not even possible in a free market society. The practices of amazon are in fact competitive - doing everything to kill the competition - a thing every capitalistic incentivized company who wants to become or stay at the top does. Those practices of the FTC are anti-competitive and a huge intervention, their policies is what hurting customers.

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

#615

Post by yterdy »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #609
defrost wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's an official representitive of the comapny he is the authorisation - we're not talking about the janitor here, we're talking about people with fiduciary responsibility between themselves and the company. A lone wolf acting alone and falsifying documents is entirely different to a direct representative who is authorised to act on behalf of a company acting in bad faith. Otherwise company officials are free to d…

So your answer is that the guy in the mansion whose cook gets into a fight should be punished for personally breaking the other guy's leg?

A cook is a bad analogy for the rank held by the people involved. It's more like "son of the estate owner" or "head guard", except it's both of them because it was multiple execs. So, yes, the estate owner should be held accountable. And in most civilized societies, he or she would be.

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

#616

Post by yterdy »

unmole wrote: post #608
araes wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious astroturfing. The top two posts with the most upvotes are "Ebay is just as bad" for the startoff line, and "Everybody's just as bad as Amazon. Why are you being so mean and cruel to Amazon?" Obvious astroturfing, just like the entire Amazon review ecosystem. Surprise? No. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Bezos' wealth relative to "normal" shown as 1-pixel comparisons. Be careful once you get…

> It's obvious astroturfing. Are you really suggesting that Amazon is paying people to post comments on HN of all places? That sounds utterly deranged.

Found one.

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

#617

Post by Ensorceled »

dylan604 wrote: post #349
Ensorceled wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can say "thanks to all my supporters". it's just fallacy to think the creator actually cares. How deeply cynical and also, besides the point; even if you believe all creators don't give a shit (I believe many do), people still like being thanked. I mean, clearly you don't ...

what you call cynical, I call naive on your part. We clearly have different opinions on creators and their level of sincerity towards supporters. i hold them just this side of influencers. i understand that they may depend on the support, but it's not like adding someone's name on a screen for .5 seconds means "they care about me". it just means they're fulfilling some obligation they used to entice people to donate.…

I think we follow different "creators" ...

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

#618

Post by justinclift »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #424
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…

> Please somebody make a site with no payola Aliexpress?

Aliexpress has famously shitty search capability. Perhaps worse than Amazon's, and that's saying something.

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

#619

Post by wh0knows »

granzymes wrote: post #495
wh0knows wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon isn’t recommending “more expensive” items to consumers, it’s offering different products. It should be recommending the best product for the user at the price it can offer the product at. The fact that the product exists $1 cheaper on another site does not make it not the best recommendation for the customer’s need. If I search “tablet” are you saying I should be recommended a cheap off brand tablet promoted t…

>The fact that the product exists $1 cheaper on another site does not make it not the best recommendation for the customer’s need. If I search “tablet” are you saying I should be recommended a cheap off brand tablet promoted to me because Amazon has the cheapest price or an iPad even though I can buy an iPad on apple.com for $10 cheaper? I think you are misunderstanding the issue. Amazon is selectively determining to…

I was referencing the article which seems to indicate it’s more than just a buy box issue.

> Today, Amazon tells sellers that if it detects a lower price for their products on any other online store, they will be punished, which is to say, their ability to get their products onto a place on the Amazon website where customers click will go away. The net effect, as Amazon itself wrote, is that "prices will go up."

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

#620

Post by cwoolfe »

windexh8er wrote: post #595
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…

I used to sell items on eBay but I'm back to Craigslist and, for phones and other electronics, I've found Swappa to be a decent marketplace. On the latter products are moderated lightly for validity and, just like eBay, it was easy to build up a very positive reputation by selling items that are clean and have been taken care of well. I do go to eBay as a shopper for random items. But generally if it's on eBay I can…

Thanks for the swappa.com recommendation! I see that I could have made $100 more on my MacBook there than on eBay. Also it was WAY easier to find the exact specs. Thanks again!
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