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Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

atg.wa.gov

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Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#151

Post by halostatue »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #95
FireBeyond wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it can create any product that is selling well, and at any price point, because it _also_ has the right to subsequently raise _your_ price. You're selling dongles for $20. You sign a contract with Amazon. It realizes that dongles are lucrative, and starts getting them manufactured. Hey, it can sell dongles for $20, too. But then they're competing with you, because you both sell $20 dongles. So, solution, they…

Substitute Walmart for Amazon. Substitute corn-flakes for dongles. Substitute Kelloggs for "me". That is the situation right now at Walmart. Kellogg's Corn Flakes are $3.28 for an 18oz pack. Great Value (Walmart own-brand) Corn Flakes are $1.43 for the same size package.

Walmart is given a wholesale price by Kellogg’s. Walmart’s choice is to set their markup over that wholesale price. On average, the wholesale price by Kellogg’s cereal would be $1.64 and the wholesale price for the GV would be $0.715.

It’s complicated for Walmart, because there is documented evidence of them telling suppliers what wholesale price they will _accept_, but that does not change that it is ultimately Kellogg’s wholesale price that is being met by Walmart.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#152

Post by coryrc »

jtbayly wrote: post #145
addaon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't co-mingle inventory on everything, it varies from product to product (although the majority are indeed co-mingled). While there's no visible way to tell if a product is co-mingled, Amazon support is able to look it up. Whenever I'm buying an item that I would be unhappy with a counterfeit (so anything expensive, electronic, or that goes in my mouth or body) I contact Amazon support by live chat and ask the…

So you keep buying from them? Seems a bit crazy to me. I’d rather find a reputable seller for things where it matters.

I'm not GP, but I just ordered from a reputable seller online.

They're closed for several weeks because the warehouse staff is out due to COVID. Who knows when I'll get the several hundred dollars of stuff I ordered. I'd already have it if I had ordered from Amazon.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#153

Post by Supermancho »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118
Supermancho wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion hasn't been circling back to "all big corps have this kind of training" in a more general sense, but in a more specific one. There's antitrust training and there's ANY training that says "never use these words", which are wildly different.

Is there any big corp that doesn’t do “never use these words” training? “We are going to crush the competition” has been taboo in emails since the mid 1990s. Not to mention a lot of words that should be avoided for sensitivity reasons.

> Is there any big corp that doesn’t do “never use these words” training?

As I stated I've never seen it, in the context of anti-trust. If your company has to have that in literature, they are already skirting and it's just a matter of time.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#154

Post by fragmede »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #89
bo1024 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounded to me like the problem part was where Amazon sold competing products, then used the agreement to price-fix between their own products and the third party's. Example: Amazon sells a dongle for $20, the competitors sell them for $20. Amazon makes a deal with each competitor, then raises all the prices to $25. (edit) I think this kind of example also: The competitor's dongle is priced at $24 on Best Buy. Amaz…

"Loss Leader" is the term and the problem. A wholesaler sells to a reseller at their usual price. Reseller deliberately sells less than RRP & sometimes less than their buy price. It's a good way to guarantee the reseller "owns" the market. Then, if the reseller is big enough and has captured the market, has the leverage to tell the wholesaler to lower the wholesale price and/or the reseller gets it made elsewhere and…

It's more nefarious than simple loss-leadering and undercutting your competitor's margins. That's business 101. Amazon is playing business 201. Amazon took over pricing for the widget, and then undercut that price with their own. Stay with me for a second because 201 is kinda complicated.

Widget usually sells for $25. Amazon agrees to buy 1 from you at $20 (you give them a volume discount because it's Amazon buying so you figure it'll sell like hotcakes. You still make a profit at $20.). Amazon then prices your widget on their marketplace for $30. Seems fine so far. The trick is that Amazon turns around and sells their widget, made by an alternate supplier, for $23.

Your deal with Amazon means you no longer have control over how much your widget sells for, just that you're selling them to Amazon at $20 and Amazon gets to charge however much they want.

To no one's surprise, your widget, priced at $30, doesn't sell because Amazon's is $23. You're not allowed to turn around and sell them on Amazon's marketplace at all, so they just sit there at $30 and don't sell.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#155

Post by p1necone »

blocked_again wrote: post #92
bee_rider wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our system is not a totally free market, we have consumer protection and antitrust regulations to avoid some of the possible negative outcomes there.

I don't really buy that consumer protection and antitrust regulations actually result in a better free market. I think the market is better off doing it's thing rather than a bunch of politicians trying to make it more efficient.

Do you want a single megacorp ruling the world? Because this is how you get a single megacorp ruling the world.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#156

Post by bilbo0s »

snowwrestler wrote: post #140
addaon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't co-mingle inventory on everything, it varies from product to product (although the majority are indeed co-mingled). While there's no visible way to tell if a product is co-mingled, Amazon support is able to look it up. Whenever I'm buying an item that I would be unhappy with a counterfeit (so anything expensive, electronic, or that goes in my mouth or body) I contact Amazon support by live chat and ask the…

Why not just buy from somewhere else? I don’t understand why you would put this level of effort into shopping at a place you don’t trust.

Well, I think people do trust amazon, they don't trust all the other companies on amazon. But unless I'm misunderstanding, this move means that people can't buy from amazon any longer. They have to buy everything from all the other vendors on amazon. The problem being, of course, that these other sellers may or may not scam you. (I'm not 100% about that interpretation of this move, but that's what it sounds like? Lawyers may want to chime in.)

So under these conditions, I would strongly urge people not to purchase from amazon's site, because it's gonna be essentially 100% potential scams. They should move to target or walmart. At least until those stores are also obliged to do the same thing. (Since they have the same fulfillment business models I'm assuming they'd be next? But they should be safe for now.) After the law gets to them too, people may want to limit online shopping only to small ticket items that won't cause too much disappointment if you get scammed. Because online shopping will become the wild west with every transaction being backed only by caveat emptor.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#157

Post by irrational »

snowwrestler wrote: post #140
addaon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't co-mingle inventory on everything, it varies from product to product (although the majority are indeed co-mingled). While there's no visible way to tell if a product is co-mingled, Amazon support is able to look it up. Whenever I'm buying an item that I would be unhappy with a counterfeit (so anything expensive, electronic, or that goes in my mouth or body) I contact Amazon support by live chat and ask the…

Why not just buy from somewhere else? I don’t understand why you would put this level of effort into shopping at a place you don’t trust.

Free shipping

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#158

Post by ggff67 »

pixl97 wrote: post #104
blocked_again wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy that consumer protection and antitrust regulations actually result in a better free market. I think the market is better off doing it's thing rather than a bunch of politicians trying to make it more efficient.

Well then, hopefully you dont want IP laws either.

The funny thing is IP laws are by definition monopolies protected by government. Every one of the big tech "quasi-monopolies" are sitting on a mountain of it.

Re: Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

#160

Post by [deleted] »

skybrian wrote: post #46
urthor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually surprisingly cunning. Run a very in depth training program on how "not" to do antitrust. Secretly, it's just a training course in antitrust. Gotta respect the level of commitment to evil.

It sounds like pretty ordinary corporate training. The idea is that you don’t want ordinary workers saying things that sound bad in discoverable messages, which is very likely if there is the ordinary amount of speculation about things they don’t really know about. Whether any particular thing actually is an antitrust violation is for the lawyers to decide. I guess they decided wrong?

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