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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#151

Post by libria »

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…

> Amazon's only core product that they care about now is their stock price.

"Only" here is incorrect. I posit every public company's primary concern is stock price. But certain behaviors and values align with driving that stock price up and for Amazon it's Customer Obsession. And they are not obsessed with it because they love you, it's because they love your repeat business. But that obsession means your happiness and their stock price are aligned, for now.

I pushed Purchase on Amazon one day and was opening the package 36 minutes later. I can barely drive down to a gas station, get a coke and come back in that time. But I wanted a particular, random item one morning and was setting it up within the hour without leaving my seat. Ebay and Walmart and Local shop can't do that.

I support leaving out of principle, that's laudable. But it won't be because they aren't good at delivering CX.

Re: The Amazon tax

#152

Post by johnnyApplePRNG »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #51
forsalebypwner wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't "always believe this", this will lead to your account being banned eventually, or at least barred from returning products.

I certainly hope so. GP implies that they are committing fraud to "stick it to the man". Nine times out of ten, this simply results in the man sticking it to us again.

Amazon is not "the man".

They are for-profit corporation, not our government.

There's a difference.

Re: The Amazon tax

#153

Post by JKCalhoun »

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.

"Featured", ha ha. Should rename to "Paid For by Ads".

Re: The Amazon tax

#154

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

conception wrote: post #130
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…

Also prevents food deserts and other dark societal patterns.

I have never once heard someone try and claim Amazon is why food deserts exist...

Re: The Amazon tax

#155

Post by paytonjjones »

ndriscoll wrote: post #135
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…

It's a nice idea and I can see it working in some cases.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know the specifics, but I imagine in some cases, it's economically prohibitive to lower the price by such an amount that it makes up for the uncertainty in a typical search algorithm.

Re: The Amazon tax

#156

Post by toss1 »

cute_boi wrote: post #116
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…

I would love to support mom and pop stores if they don't charge 25% more than amazon. Here, in NY buying from small store means getting ripped off.

If it is only 25% more, you are NOT getting ripped off. Mere economies of scale and purchasing power yield Amazon more than 25% lower costs. the mom & pop stores you accuse of ripping you off likely have even slimmer margins than Amazon, even at their prices.

Yes, all of us who are not wealthy must have an upper limit to what we can support, and maybe 25% is over your limit, but please don't ignorantly accuse them of ripping you off when you clearly know nothing of the costs of vastly different scales of business.

Re: The Amazon tax

#157

Post by imoldfella »

Don't hate the player, hate the game. This is no different than grocery stores selling shelf space. It is not at all like theft (morally wrong) or taxes (infamously inefficient). And if you don't do it, you go out of business since you aren't competitive with someone that does. It's sad that such obvious rage bait makes it to the top of hacker news.

Re: The Amazon tax

#158

Post by anon7000 »

automatic6131 wrote: post #5

Amazon is almost completely unusable for search at this stage. I think perhaps 3/4 of the results are sponsored ads. Three in four. Trying to find a good deal on a product, even if you know precisely what you're looking for, is a real headache of trying to dodge the advertisement minefield.

It’s wild. I was trying to find a cheap bookshelf with a specific style the other day. Firstly, I couldn’t filter by exact width. It autogenerated a width range (like 24-30”) which was different on subsequent searches and several inches away from what I wanted.

Second, I found a product I liked but was the wrong size. As far as I could tell, they can’t even show you recommended similar products. They show you what other people clicked on or bought in the same order. But not just actually similar products in the same style.

Re: The Amazon tax

#159

Post by ndriscoll »

paytonjjones wrote: post #155
ndriscoll wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a nice idea and I can see it working in some cases. I'll be the first to admit I don't know the specifics, but I imagine in some cases, it's economically prohibitive to lower the price by such an amount that it makes up for the uncertainty in a typical search algorithm.

Then your product is actually worse for the customer. It's nice that you want it to be better, but it's not in a meaningful way that you can't just handwave away. Risk carries a cost.

Another possibility would be for the marketplace to be better able to load information about your product so you could provide some more information and reduce that uncertainty. E.g. that you use different (better) materials in your construction. Or you could work with the marketplace to purchase or demonstrate some kind of insurance policy to mitigate support concerns. Basically allow those unknown pieces of information to be discoverable by search engines and the customer. If the market has more knowledge, then if you have a better product, it should organically rank better. Either way, ads do literally nothing to benefit the buyer since they provide zero information (actually they provide a negative piece of information: someone paid for you to see something, so you can assume it's not in your interest to see it).

Re: The Amazon tax

#160

Post by advisedwang »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #42

Amazon has no mercy, so neither do I. In my defense, they started it. (I had purchased a stainless steel muffler with a lifetime warranty off of Amazon Auto, the thing was counterfeit, completely rusted through in less than a year, and Amazon would not honor their written warranty and I didn't care to fight it legally...) So the next time they dropped my package off in my lobby when I have specific instructions to br…

I would be pretty surprised if Amazon insures their package delivery. Do you have a source for them using insurance?

Maybe when they use a 3rd party delivery service they can strongarm that service into eating the loss. But, where I am, Amazon is usually doing 1st party delivery.

(the reason I assume they don't is that a) they are big enough to eat any loss and b) losses happen at a pretty constant rate. So they would basically be paying an insurer $loss_amount * (1+insurer_margin) in premiums to immediately get payed back $loss_amount. not a great deal.)

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