Electronics components vendors have recently implemented this. There is a notice next to some parts that they will be subject to tariff charges. When you go to checkout there is an additional cost line with those charges. I recently had to buy some transformers, and had no other choice but to get bent over. The price more than doubled at checkout.
Sounds like they're using the excuse of the tariffs to overcharge. They would pay the tariffs on their wholesale costs when they import. If they're then passing the same tariff % to the customer at their retail price then they're ripping you off.
Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
331–340 of 443 posts
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#332On a "price awareness vein" - I've thought that a killer app would be a phone app that runs in a grocery store, it detects costs, brands, and sizes, and overlays two things 1) the option that is cheaper per mass and 2) whether there are cheaper options in other stores. Bonus for "this no-name is the same as that brand-name". Imagine waving your phone, or having on your VR glasses and getting this feedback "instantly"…
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
> aside from sales tax not being included, but that's been universally true in the US forever so everyone is used to it. Why are you putting this under the rug so easily? It's never too late to changes those ludicrous behaviors, even if everyone is accustomed to it.
It's not about being used to it. There's good reason sales tax isn't included in the price, which is that sales tax varies locally. It isn't even the same per ZIP code. You couldn't advertise a statewide or nationwide price if you had to include sales tax. You couldn't display prices online at all until you entered your full address, which seems antithetical to privacy. This is different from most other countries, wh…
The regional supermarket chain in new england that is owned by kroger ALREADY localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE despite every store in the state having the exact same tax rates.
They STILL don't include the tax in the price listed because fuck you, this is america
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grocery stores have famously low margins. Everyone thinks they’re cash cows, but they have some of the thinnest profit margins of common consumer businesses. Stores often sell common staples like bananas, generic milk, and other basics at close to cost. They’re the things that get people in the door. They make their profit on things like cereal, deli meats, packaged goods, and other non-staple items that people also…
I thought they made a lot of their money selling the desirable shelf space. "Many grocers earn more profit from agreeing to carry a manufacturer's product than they do from actually selling the product to retail consumers." * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee
Of course, I didn't know this, which was very weird when I saw someone those stocking shelves, only to be met with a 'sorry, I don't work here' response when asking them a question.
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s kind of petty to list tariffs as a separate line item and not all the other costs that contribute to the final price. Why just the tariffs, unless Amazon is trying to make a political point? It strikes me as just as petty as when restaurants started listing “Living Wage Fee” on their bills. They’re bitching and moaning directly to the customer just because they need to pay their staff more and they’re butthurt a…
What's wrong with Amazon trying to make a political point? Amazon is obviously trying to pressure the Trump admin into easing the tariffs. Why wouldn't they? Why shouldn't they? Amazon is as much a political actor as any other company, and they have a major stakeholder when it comes to tariff policy.
Mainly with the concept of letting a ginormous multinational megacorp with more money and resources than 99.9% of the rest of America combined influence our political process is literally how we got here.
The CEO of Amazon is welcome to lobby as himself but letting an extremely already privileged legal fiction (an LLC) have more power over our society is just dumb.
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% this. I’d take it a step further and say that sales tax should be included when you are logged in and it can be anticipated, like is the case in most other countries.
Agreed in practice, but there is a key difference: sales tax is uniform for all products, import tariffs are not. As a customer I want to effectively compare prices between different options. For sales tax you can simply assume a uniform 9% bump. For tariffs the fee varies for comparable products. I would prefer knowing the full price ahead of times but I absolutely need to know the relative price ranking.
Sales tax is not uniform for all products depending on your state. My home state for example does not charge sales tax on food items and clothing. Some other special categories also have different sales tax depending on what they are - e.g. vice taxes for some items.
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was just someone showing you what the "Amazon programmer" was doing, and hence a deep cut reference to the likelihood of it being poor quality code :)
If you really wanted to look like Amazon codex you would write Java :)
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prices are always set by supply and demand. The price will rise until it gets high enough that the product of sales * price falls. It has always been that way. Businesses haven’t been selling goods and services out of the goodness of their hearts at an arbitrary price. It’s always supply and demand. Tariffs are expected to reduced demand because they increase prices. This is why the stock market is down and nearly ev…
I am so tired of people echoing “supply and demand” like it’s Econ 101. The modern market is infinitely more complex with infinitely more ways to create inefficiencies that don’t respond to simple supply and demand.
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the democrats who ran with a candidate who couldn't convince other independents to vote for Harris, or convince all the potential voters who stays home to come vote are also to blame.
I did vote, but not for Harris or Trump. :) Would I have voted for a Democrat or a Republican if they ran the "right" candidate? I suppose anything is possible, but given the history, I would consider that to be very unlikely.
Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure those bananas are grown elsewhere. Hopefully we'll still be able to get bananas in the near future. At some point, buyer demand will drop so much it may not make sense to ship them.
> Pretty sure those bananas are grown elsewhere. Yes. But the tariffs are on the import price, not the shelf price. The shelf price went up as if it were on the shelf price, because consumers won't realize/understand the distinction. (Hell, a good proportion of the population still thinks someone else eats the costs entirely.) We saw the same thing during COVID - "it's because of COVID / supply chain issues" was the…
The prices before these tariffs were arrived at by some confluence of factors such as cost and competition, it wasn’t some universally agreed “fair pricing” scheme that determined them. So what does it mean for a price to be warranted?
Now businesses have to raise prices because of the aforementioned tariffs, and, you speculate, they will add some extra margin because they think the customer is primed to accept higher prices right now than they’d normally be.
First of all, is that the end of the world? If this is only made possible because the wool has been pulled over the customer’s eyes, then at some point there will be a correction in the other direction - unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such). This particular mechanism on its own won’t cause prices to spiral out of control or anything.
Secondly, even if you think it is bad and don’t want it to happen, how would you prevent it? I can’t come up with a single feasible approach that isn’t basically halfway to socialism (which is fine if that’s your preference, but then that’s a larger conversation).