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The Amazon tax

seths.blog

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Re: The Amazon tax

#131

Post by bluGill »

detourdog wrote: post #22
bluGill wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What can we do about it? Not much. You should do what I do: look for someplace else to buy from first. Amazon has "everything" - if you can find it. However there are usually small sellers of that niche (often niche.com) where they know something about the product and will direct your to the best one without adds. The smaller/weirder the niche the more likely this seller is to be helpful. You get to support "the li…

Usually I can purchase directly from the company that makes the product website.

Sometimes. Larger companies will not do that since it makes the places that sell most of their things mad to have to compete with the manufacture. (or sometimes they intentionally price such that others can undercut them).

Mostly I don't do this because I don't know which company makes the one I want. An independent third party that knows the product and sells several different versions from different companies can help me select which one is best for me. This is a valuable service - when you can find it.

Re: The Amazon tax

#132

Post by yuck39 »

kccqzy wrote: post #97
yuck39 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine most readers haven't tried tiktok shop (or similar Chinese consumer shopping platforms). ByteDance has reimplemented their now infamous video suggestion algorithm for shopping and it is _very_ effective. Once the infrastructure and logistics of the Chinese eCommerce platforms improve in the US, it will be so much better that I imagine that Bezos only recourse will be to have congress ban them (a la the Chin…

I hate videos when shopping. Videos are not skimmable. I don’t want to watch and listen to a salesperson sell the product to me. I want at least a modicum of individual agency and choice. I already skip all product videos on Amazon. I hate the product images too as they have become too salesy and they sometimes no longer even show important facts printed on the packaging itself (like the ingredient list or Nutrition…

Fair; While I can only speak to TikTok shop (as its the only one I've interacted with), the videos typically take the place where product photos would be on the product page. A swipe dismisses it and its replaced with the product photos. The core browsing experience does not show videos in lieu of product photos from what I have seen.

Re: The Amazon tax

#133

Post by billyp-rva »

forestrywat wrote: post #112
billyp-rva wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with OP, this phrase specifically reveals it isn't a good take: > sales [the best product] were entitled to in the first place Unfortunately, this is not, and has never been, how it works. The best product is never entitled to sales. Marketing, which very much includes advertising, is a massive, massive factor in sales.

So advertising entitles you to sales?

Of course not. A terrible product may not sell well even if it has great ads, for instance.

Re: The Amazon tax

#134

Post by JKCalhoun »

abixb wrote: post #29

I've slowly shifted all my consumer purchases from Amazon to local shops and other online platforms, including Etsy. I'm now seriously contemplating deleting my Amazon account of 15 years in one whole swoop. The quality degradation is painfully apparent, and the value add of Amazon in my life has been steadily declining for a while. I've also had terrible experiences with AWS, but that's a different story. Amazon's o…

eBay is my first go-to.

Re: The Amazon tax

#135

Post by ndriscoll »

paytonjjones wrote: post #10

> They know the best-reviewed, least-returned, best-priced model. The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one Thoughtless take. Say you've just invented a better looking, better functioning, cheaper air fryer. How do you expect to reach your first customers if not through ads? Sell it to your friends? That's even more invasive and annoying. People's urge to rid the world of ads…

You take the money you would've spent on ads and instead offer a lower price than the current leader to make up for the buyer's uncertainty toward your product. This lets a search algorithm organically decide that you are among the top (risk-neutral) value contenders. Once that uncertainty disappears, you will have a higher value product and can therefore command a higher price.

Put another way, the buyer uncertainty about your product actually, concretely makes your product worse. They don't know whether your thing will fail. The don't know whether you will go out of business if they need support. All else equal, either your product is not the best product, or you need to offer a lower price. Ads are a way to instead just pay someone to straight up lie (i.e. defraud) and say it's recommended when it's not.

Re: The Amazon tax

#136

Post by aftergibson »

83457 wrote: post #30

When searching on Amazon I always change sort to Best Sellers. The default is Featured Items which shows ads at the top and throughout results. For some searches that have a small number of real results, the majority of the list will be ads. Sorting by Best Sellers eliminates all ads in the results.

Results do seem better.. What in this instance, does "Best Sellers" mean?

Re: The Amazon tax

#137

Post by Symbiote »

retired wrote: post #111
audidude wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was something I would have never understood living in the US until I moved to France 4 months ago. And yeah, as much as I dislike the company, those lockers are clutch.

Package delivery is pretty good when you live in a country with a standardized address system, large homes and where the delivery driver can park in front of your home. However if you live in a historical city center where your address is the equivalent of “That small door if you go up two stairs behind the old tavern” then package deliveries plain suck. Especially since you don’t have the “village postmen” anymore.…

I live in one of those places (Copenhagen) and I prefer the local online shops, since they offer all the delivery choices.

I always choose delivery to the convenience shop on the opposite corner. It's open late, and picking up a parcel takes about a minute.

Re: The Amazon tax

#138

Post by teiferer »

BeetleB wrote: post #120
teiferer wrote: post #114

> Amazon makes enough in search ad revenue to give every single one of their employees a $35,000 cash bonus and still have change left over. As much as I'd like to agree with the article's point and am critical of Amazon etc etc, you lost me here. $35k cash bonus for every employee does not pass the smell test. I'm sure the delivery driver who famously needs to pee into a bottle because they can't afford a toilet bre…

He's not saying they get the $35K bonus.

Fair, but how easy is it to in that case mistakenly read it like that?

It's not the only questionable figure in Seth's post. He also drops an ad for his new book within 2.5 short paragraphs. While criticising ad practices.

He writes "if only to protect the sales they were entitled to in the first place". Who is entitled to ...what exactly? Maybe you could argue the best air frier should get the top search result spot. Already calling that "entitled" is a stretch though, let alone being entitled to a sale.

He writes "Who ends up paying the more than $50 billion a year spent on these ads? It’s not the sellers. Sellers can’t make heartfelt donations for long. It’s you." It's economics 101 that such overhead, just like taxes, is ultimately split between buyer and seller. Profits go down and paid prices go up. Seth surely knows this (if not then he should not be blogging about economics) but chooses to give you the simplified version to push a narrative. Which is sad. Again, there is enough to legitimately criticise.

I don't want to keep listing more of this, but it's really not feeling particularly honest discourse if you bend things while claiming a moral highground. Cause that makes you lose it.

Unless your goal as an author is just to fuel outrage, no matter cost. Sure, an option, but not part of a serious debate then. Which, again, is a shame.

Re: The Amazon tax

#139

Post by kfse »

throw5 wrote: post #126

Some European countries, including UK, have enough of a strong network of local supermarkets and department stores that Amazon is simply not necessary. I have not used Amazon in the last five years. Most of my family and friends rarely use it either. There is little reason to when you can walk into a supermarket or department store, often with three or five of them within 1000 feet, and buy what you need at the norma…

> The world would probably be a healthier place economically if every town and region could support a strong network of supermarkets, department stores and independent shops.

I don't know what you mean by that. I used to live in a tier 2 European city pre Internet and there were lots of things that were a pain to buy. We'd often have to check multiple stores. Specialty hobbies were served by one or two shops that you had to drive to. I remember having to take the train to a different city to buy a memory card for my computer. There was real consumer cost and societal cost.

The warehouse and online order model is economically a lot more efficient. The real question is what to do with the surplus it generates, make Bezos richer or something else?

Re: The Amazon tax

#140

Post by JKCalhoun »

retired wrote: post #129
scrollop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your next 10 purchases that you don't need within 3 days, use an llm to find the best choice for your needs (have been doing this and learning a lot on how the ideas I had about a product prior to purchasing missed many things I didn't knew I dind't know, and the llm helped to find better products) and ask the LLM to find alternative shops - you may be surprised and have the nice feeling of increasing choice in t…

Why use an LLM for something that is a 5 second Google? Google Products is right there in the top. Forums will advice you on alternative products. Am I getting old? I feel like a dinosaur still Googling things.

At this point in time…

…you've got to figure that Google is just as disgusting as Amazon in the ads/search dept.

LLMs seem positively naive in that regard. Just, you know, simply suggesting what their subsumption of the internet suggests.

(For now anyway.)

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