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The Amazon tax

seths.blog

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Re: The Amazon tax

#231

Post by giamma »

I live in Italy, Amazon opened its Italian branch about 15 years ago. Initially it had a smaller catalog of products, with products sold almost entirely by Amazon. They were delivering packages in 3 days and the price was almost always much better than any other online or physical shop.

Over the years they largely improved the delivery time. Now if I am ordering a package before 4PM there is a high chance I will get it the next day in the morning. Prices however became higher and higher, at the point that for many products Amazon is not that convenient anymore: if you need home appliance (TV, dishwasher etc) other online or physical shops are now significantly cheaper. If you look sport equipment (e.g. climbing, mountain bike, hiking) the specialized shops are usually cheaper as long as you are OK to wait for longer delivery time and maybe combine 2 or more products to reduce the shipping costs.

I still find Amazon convenient during prime days and black Friday, and because of the large catalog with many alternatives and sometimes useful reviews (need a new shower head, a new mouse, a hole puncher, a tire for the bicycle...) but prices are not as good as they used to be. But if you need something in a hurry, the fact that you can order today and get it tomorrow is a big plus.

Re: The Amazon tax

#232

Post by sholladay »

preg_match wrote: post #176
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…

The best part about not using Amazon is I get to get my stuff quicker, and I can see/feel it. Buying clothes off Amazon is basically the worst thing ever, for instance. One day shipping is fast, but I can run to the store in 15 minutes. Can't beat that.

Amazon built their own in-house logistics network because UPS et al. weren’t cutting it. They offer one-hour delivery for a lot of basic items where I am and it’s not even a particularly urban area. I think in urban centers those same items have 15 minute delivery. They are also the only ones who will consistently deliver on Sunday, when your local store might not even be open.

There are still lots of good reasons to shop local, but I’m not sure speed is the best reason.

Re: The Amazon tax

#233

Post by BeetleB »

teiferer wrote: post #138
BeetleB wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

I had no trouble parsing it, but then again, I'm used to people whining about how they're getting screwed because their employer made so $1M/employee but they're not getting paid $1M.

Otherwise - yeah, I was not impressed with the article. Ads are acting just like ads always have. There is nothing special he could point out about Amazon's ads.

Re: The Amazon tax

#234

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

gizmo686 wrote: post #216
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #201

Grocery stores and department stores have played games with what items they stock and where they stock it (location on the shelf is hugely important in a grocery store) for decades, it's just better hidden than the 'sponsored' text next to Amazon paid ads. It's infinitely easier to make a product and get it available on Amazon.com than it ever was to get your product into a grocery store. >They know the best-reviewed…

> without ads, even if you make the best air fryer on the planet tomorrow, good luck getting people to realize that. If you are Amazon, this is essentially just the multi-armed bandit problem, at it is not particularly difficult. You show the no-name product/vendor to enough people to get data for it.

>You show the no-name product/vendor to enough people to get data for it.

You just handwaved away the hardest problem. What is 'enough'? What if the first user failed to plug it in and left a 1/5? Or liked it but left a 3/5 anyways? And what if you show it too many people so now rebranding products and just dropshipping them takes off?

Re: The Amazon tax

#235

Post by andy_ppp »

amluto wrote: post #208

> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far is the search “Seth Godin The Knot“ I think it would be interesting to see legal action here. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like there should be at least three ways to go after this: 1. Trademark infringement. If Amazon is using someone’s search that is clearly searching for a specific product, possibly trademarked, it seems inappropriate for them to serve up an…

1. If you get banned from Amazon largely this is very bad for business. They can find a reasonable excuse I’m sure!

2. Fraud is a stretch, these things are labelled even if it’s deliberately designed to be difficult to understand. The discovery on this would be fascinating though because I can guarantee you there’s records somewhere of a ticket to make things more deceptive…

3. I don’t think the fraud thing will get you the results you want (I guess this is a slightly ironic statement given what we’re talking about). According to Claude it’s more likely deception under “FTC Act §5” but you can’t directly do this anymore and apparently “Amazon reinstated binding individual arbitration with a class-action waiver in its Conditions of Use, effective 14 August 2026.” So even taking them to court got much much more difficult.

I think unfortunately until a different administration (maybe one less motivated by billionaire donors) comes in, we are stuck with this type of practice.

Re: The Amazon tax

#236

Post by Jach »

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 live in Bellevue so by supporting Amazon I'm supporting a local business. It's hard to imagine replacing most of the things I get from the site with someplace else. (Though it'd be nice to have a Micro Center.) I've even started getting more grocery products as Safeway/QFC/Fred Meyer up their prices, and the Redmond Fred Meyer closed which had the best produce. Etsy is mainly useful to me for the occasional copyright-infringing merch.

Re: The Amazon tax

#237

Post by loeg »

devin wrote: post #99
snarf21 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally curious but a lot of the stuff I find on Etsy is the same crap from Alibaba/Amazon .. What are you buying from Etsy that isn't this?

Etsy suffers from the same review astroturfing and product category crowding that Amazon does, but the product categories tend to be narrower so it's never quite as bad. Etsy is certainly _bad_, but getting to Amazon levels is a whole other animal.

It's Amazon bad, but with much worse customer service when anything goes wrong.

Re: The Amazon tax

#238

Post by muvlon »

delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

This "dark forest" feeling is what has recently driven me back to brick-and-mortar stores. Of course they can and do manipulate me via ads, store layout etc. but at least the store looks the same for me as for the person before or after me. They can't algorithmically optimize the store around my behavior in particular.

Re: The Amazon tax

#239

Post by colinrand »

delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

>>Somehow nobody noticed.

I disagree, many many people noticed and we were irked by it, but it's extremely impractical to fight against it.

Re: The Amazon tax

#240

Post by pirates »

AlanYx wrote: post #200
sleepyguy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in Europe, where everything is harder, and when it comes to shopping, you have maybe one-fifth of the choices Americans have. I spend a good four months every year in Poland and Austria, and there’s really nowhere in the world except China that offers consumers as much choice and availability as the U.S. does.

>there’s really nowhere in the world except China that offers consumers as much choice and availability as the U.S. does. This is true, although I find it interesting that so many people then gravitate to Costco, where consumer choice in a given category is deliberately restricted to one or two product variations selected by the head office.

Over time I have come to trust Costco’s curation. Their standards seem high, and there are definitely products and brands that they sell that I don’t like, but those are subjective tastes vs objective low quality in my experience. I don’t buy everything there, but I take note of the brands and products that they either keep for a long time or dump quickly.
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