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New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

theguardian.com

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Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#21

Post by thayne »

ggreer wrote: post #18

It's odd that this is a request for a preliminary injunction considering that the case is almost four years old. Both the 2022 and the new filing are heavily censored[1][2], so I can't know for sure, but I didn't notice any revelation in the latest filing. Amazon requires that anyone selling through their platform not offer lower prices elsewhere online. If a seller does so, they'll be relegated to the "New & pre-own…

> Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements

My understanding (IANAL) is that that is illegal, and those retailers should be prosecuted as well. That is essentially price fixing, because the retailer is enforcing their competitors have the same price, using the supplier as an intermediary.

> many manufacturers have similar requirements

That is a different situation, and is AFAICT legal in the US (but not in many other countries, and IMHO probably shouldn't be legal), at least in some situations, but there are limits.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#22

Post by reenorap »

How is this not a complete violation of anti-trust laws? If the federal government won't pursue it (questionable in this environment), surely there's more than enough to go after it state-by-state.

And can't we do a class-action lawsuit against Amazon at this point?

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#23

Post by jmyeet »

The entire use case of dynamic pricing is to raise prices.

Airlines were really the first to do this but there it kinda makes sense. You have a plane. It's going anyway. You want to fill it.

At the other extreme is RealPage, which is explicitly designed to raise rents and it's used by enough people that you can view it as the last frontier of anti-trust, anticompetitive behavior and price-fixing. It's also state-sanctioned violence because your price-fixing scheme has the threat of you being homeless attached to it.

That's another aspect to this: collusion doesn't happen in dark smoke-filled rooms anymore. It can be as simple as all "competitors" simply using the same software, which tells them all to do the same thing.

Another commenter had it right: this is beyond antitrust or competition law. It's a RICO issue.

There's no real structural reason for inflation since the pandemic. The pandemic simply broke the seal on raising prices and now everybody is in on it.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#24

Post by Ferret7446 »

thayne wrote: post #21
ggreer wrote: post #18

It's odd that this is a request for a preliminary injunction considering that the case is almost four years old. Both the 2022 and the new filing are heavily censored[1][2], so I can't know for sure, but I didn't notice any revelation in the latest filing. Amazon requires that anyone selling through their platform not offer lower prices elsewhere online. If a seller does so, they'll be relegated to the "New & pre-own…

> Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements My understanding (IANAL) is that that is illegal, and those retailers should be prosecuted as well. That is essentially price fixing, because the retailer is enforcing their competitors have the same price, using the supplier as an intermediary. > many manufacturers have similar requirements That is a different situation, and is AFAICT legal in th…

Is that actually bad for consumers? Wouldn't deranking the "not lowest" price make it easier for customers to find the lowest price (whether that is a different product on the same storefront, or the same product on a different storefront), and hence be good for customers?

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#25

Post by gruez »

fmajid wrote: post #4

[flagged]

>Under the law, the meaning of racketeering activity is set out at 18 U.S.C. § 1961. As currently amended, it includes:

It lists plenty of crimes, but anti-trust violations isn't one of them.

Also, obligatory https://web.archive.org/web/20170301062028/https://www.popeh...

See specifically sections "Wait. Isn't the defendant the enterprise?" and "So what's "racketeering activity"?"

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#26

Post by LorenPechtel »

And what's really stupid about this is that done openly there probably wouldn't be an issue. Insurance companies can demand providers charge them the lowest rate they charge anyone. Would there have been any issue if Amazon had simply said that to get those features you must match any deals you give anyone else?

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#27

Post by gruez »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #24
thayne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements My understanding (IANAL) is that that is illegal, and those retailers should be prosecuted as well. That is essentially price fixing, because the retailer is enforcing their competitors have the same price, using the supplier as an intermediary. > many manufacturers have similar requirements That is a different situation, and is AFAICT legal in th…

Is that actually bad for consumers? Wouldn't deranking the "not lowest" price make it easier for customers to find the lowest price (whether that is a different product on the same storefront, or the same product on a different storefront), and hence be good for customers?

> Wouldn't deranking the "not lowest" price make it easier for customers to find the lowest price

The original wording was

>Amazon requires that anyone selling through their platform not offer lower prices elsewhere online.

which means if the seller offers to sell something on amazon for $x, but has a shopify site selling it for The wording is admittedly ambiguous, but the fact that there are totally overpriced items available on amazon suggests amazon isn't deranking people just because it's not the best price on the internet.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#28

Post by refurb »

If Amazon punishes sellers for having lower prices elsewhere, isn’t it the sellers choice whether to lower their price on Amazon OR raise their price for other sellers?

I didn’t see anything in the article suggesting Amazon ask for the 2nd option, just examples of sellers who did the 2nd one.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#30

Post by cogman10 »

foobarian wrote: post #19
SilverElfin wrote: post #12

We need all new antitrust laws. The size of these companies is itself a problem. They have so much power that there is no possibility for fair competition. Maybe we can start by taxing companies that are worth more than 1 trillion at an extremely high rate.

I wonder who would prosecute them. What about an AG who, when confronted about doing a bad job, deflects by pointing out that Nasdaq is "smashing records?"

I'd be in favor of giving Lina Khan a lifetime appointment to heading the FTC along with 10x their current budget to tackle exactly this problem.

A major part of the problem isn't even that we don't have laws on the books, it's that funding to the enforcement agencies has been gutted to the point where they can mostly just go after extreme egregious violations or very easy to win cases. The IRS is in exactly the same boat.

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