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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

#181

Post by greycol »

ineedasername wrote: post #96
clintonc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be the same, except - Kroger isn't 50% of all grocery stores on earth - Kroger paid money up front for your potato chips - Kroger isn't charging you for storing your potato chips

In order 1) But most supermarkets do this in similar ways. Not quite the same as a single entity, but close enough (more like a cartel?) that I'm not sure I see much of a difference. 2) This is the major difference in my mind, but other vendors can still sell for less, so I'm not sure how much competition is stiffled. 3) Well, they actually are. It's called slotting fees. They can simply be for warehouse storage and…

It's also worth noting that with 1 you can find plenty of farmers and small producers do complain about the anti trust issuese of supermarkets in the same way.

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

#183

Post by colanderman »

addaon wrote: post #149
snowwrestler wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It takes a minute, they often have the best price, and vetting a new vendor -- with their own unknown challenges -- is non-trivial.

B&H and Adorama are increasingly my go-tos for anything with microchips. They've both branched out from photography to A/V gear to tech goods generally.

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

#184

Post by coliveira »

valar_m wrote: post #9

Former Amazonian here. When i was there, they made us take this antitrust training course that had things like "don't use terms like 'market share' in internal communications", but all along there were people doing this? I mean...

The most interesting part of their training is that they only talk about actions that employees should be taking or not. It never considers the end result: being a monopoly. In other words, being monopolist is just fine, as long as people don't do any action that can be used as evidence against the company.

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

#185

Post by DannyBee »

organsnyder wrote: post #37
valar_m wrote: post #9

Former Amazonian here. When i was there, they made us take this antitrust training course that had things like "don't use terms like 'market share' in internal communications", but all along there were people doing this? I mean...

> "don't use terms like 'market share' in internal communications" Sounds like the training was teaching you how to avoid leaving an audit trail rather than how to prevent illegal activity.

Can we please kill this trope?

it is because humans use terms colloquially rather than with the utmost precision, and then it gets held up as if the person meant the exact precise legal concept. This is true always, which is why the advice this person got is also commonly given in lots of forms. For example, doctors are often trained in being careful in what they write down for the same reason.

The audit trail is always there no matter what, and this wouldn't change that

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

#186

Post by nickcox »

coryrc wrote: post #152
jtbayly wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'd already have it if I had ordered from Amazon.

Because Amazon force their staff to keep working?

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

#188

Post by Firmwarrior »

Spooky23 wrote: post #178
encryptluks2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately if you really need genuine products you simply cannot buy things off Amazon anymore. That is a very generalized statement. I have bought hundreds products shipped and sold by Amazon and never had an issue with authenticity. I'm sure it happens, but I'm willing to guess it is pretty rare and Amazon has always been quick to refund products that are shipped and sold by Amazon.

How do you know? Some of the fake stuff is pretty good. Would you notice if your energizer batteries were random Chinese fakes? The first fake I discovered on amazon was a mouse trap of all things.

+1 to this

My friends and I all bought fake Bose headphones from a shady dealer in China (in person), and the $50 knockoffs sounded exactly as good as the real $600 ones. The only way to tell there was anything wrong was by the fact that they all broke down within a few months.

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

#189

Post by DannyBee »

luckydata wrote: post #148
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.

every large company does it. I've done those courses at Microsoft, Facebook and Google. It's just run of the mill corporate training.

It's not even restricted to tech. This kind of thing it is base level legal advice for anyone in any field that faces lots of lawsuits (for example, medicine)

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

#190

Post by DannyBee »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #24
nickff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they were trying to correct or prevent it? If they hadn't done the training, you'd be saying that they never even tried to avoid it.

This isn't about prevention. It's training to avoid recording damning evidence. The bad behavior can continue as long as it isn't written down. Preferably implemented in pieces that lend plausible deniability.

You are confused. The "damning evidence" is usually only damning in the court of politics and opinion. That's where it gets used too. You can't prove an antitrust case on the basis of some random set your of 500k employees saying "market share" in an email (unless they are like c level exec). Think how stupid a basis for liability that would be - "we are breaking up your company because a fresh college graduate you hired a month ago said market share in an email". The end result would be to ban email.

This is why these emails get highlighted in press releases mainly. In court, it would have to be email from someone who matters. Look at the level of exec in the emails in the Microsoft case.

Those kinds of execs are often getting regular advice from legal counsel, so usually the lawyers think whatever they are doing is okay. That's also why you also end up with emails from them later. If you have been advised you aren't doing anything wrong, there is no reason to act like you are doing something wrong. They will happily email as a result.

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