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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

#241

Post by kfarr »

geoduck14 wrote: post #220
8ytecoder wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend corporations, but they do. It’s repeatedly drilled down in you to reach out to the legal dept. That said companies care a lot about the legality of things and not necessarily the morality. And they hire people who would “get things done”. Consequently converting the legal training to “how to avoid to getting caught” training.

>That said companies care a lot about the legality of things and not necessarily the morality. I worked for a fortune 100 company. We are humans, and our customers are humans. We absolutely have morals - at an individual level, and those morals influence how we work

Morals don’t matter when the shareholders sue board members for failing to uphold fiduciary responsibility. Just saying, the law influences how we work

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

#242

Post by chefandy »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #239
Permit wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be like if Costco instead of buying 1000 legos, just stocked legos in it's warehouse, then paid Lego company everytime a single unit sold. For some reason I was under the impression that this is exactly how it works at some physical retailers? Can someone confirm that this is not the case? Does Costco/Walmart/CVS/etc. eat the cost if the items don’t sell?

It is exactly how it works for physical retailers. In most cases, they even delay payment for a few months to account for returns and the cost of returning unsold products. Costco, to my knowledge, is actually one of the more strict retailers with IIRC 6 month delay between a product sale and the vendor being played. Mostly due to their generous return policy. I don't know of any large retailer that eats the cost of…

I’ve never worked in large consumer goods retail, but smaller retail outlets, food, clothing, etc. do not commonly operate like this. Most don’t have the storage to pre-buy even two months worth of merchandise. In food, purveyors won’t hesitate to ask for cash up front if you’ve been late a couple of times or have a bit of an outstanding balance. The places you describe sound like they act as both distributors and retailers and are large enough to have leverage in their negotiations with suppliers.

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

#244

Post by bmitc »

pstrateman wrote: post #84
ISL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extra confused, as I'd interpreted "Ships from and sold by Amazon" as "Amazon supplied the goods and will vouch for their validity", whereas "Sold by ISL" would have meant that ISL was on the ultimate hook should the goods prove to be counterfeit. Learn something new (and important) every day.

Sold by Amazon and Fulfilled by Amazon seem to come out of the same box at the warehouse. Unfortunately if you really need genuine products you simply cannot buy things off Amazon anymore.

> Unfortunately if you really need genuine products you simply cannot buy things off Amazon anymore.

For whatever reason, I have noticed this getting dramatically worse over the past couple of years. Almost all "5-star" reviewed products are filled with top reviews of 1-star reporting fake products. And because of Amazon's overly generous return policy, there's a lot of used products sold as well.

Buying off of Amazon feels like there's a high probability you'll get a used or counterfeit/fake product or both.

I have been reducing what I buy on Amazon because I just don't trust it.

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

#245

Post by bryanrasmussen »

moate wrote: post #240
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat similar in books IIRC, if the books don't sell you send back covers of the books and get reimbursed? (based on info from 20 years ago, pretty static industry so probably still the same) on edit: of course book stores don't compete with publishers.

Not all industries have buybacks, and many producers won't take on contracts that involve them. (Fun Fact for anyone not familiar with this practice: in publishing the covers were shipped back as the proof because whole books are heavy/costly to ship and take up a lot of space/costly to warehouse so the retailer with them on hand would just have the rest of the book pulped).

I would expect it's pretty uncommon sure, I mean how would you do buybacks of canned goods. It works because of the many historical features of publishing, and the physical realities of books (removing cover to send back) and doesn't seem like it could work in most industries.

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

#246

Post by newaccount74 »

DannyBee wrote: post #180
robomartin wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and own the transactions I would strike that from the description. You never really own the transaction when it comes to Amazon. FBA customers are not your customers. You cannot communicate with them and have the kind of relationship you would have with your customers if you "owned" the transaction. Case in point: Amazon can shut down your FBA account next Monday and you'd have no way to reach "your" customers unle…

There are zero sellers I want a relationship with on Amazon. Almost all spam and annoyance I get by email is somebody I bought one thing for who wants a relationship with me. The vast majority of my shopping is transactional, and I want it that way. If I want a relationship with a seller, I can take care of making one The most frightening part of the Senate bills are that they require Apple, et al to let people commu…

While I do understand your take, I'm not sure it's a net positive for consumers. Marketing to previous customers is a very effective marketing strategy. If you prevent that, small companies are losing one of the few ways they can compete with bigger operations. Otherwise they have to keep buying ads on Google and Amazon..

Yes, most mail from retailers is spam. But for a handful of small retailers I actually like their newsletters, because they remind me that they exist, so I remember them next time I order something.

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

#247

Post by dangus »

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.

Alot of people outside of news/tech circles do trust Amazon. They're literally the most popular retailer, of course people trust them. Anecdotes are everywhere about inventory co-mingling being such a mega problem, but I think opinions are getting repeated and amplified by a vocal minority.

Beyond that, trust is irrelevant when returns/refunds are dead simple. It's wasteful, for sure, but I guess that's capitalism.

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

#248

Post by AnssiH »

dannyw wrote: post #103
pstrateman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sold by Amazon and Fulfilled by Amazon seem to come out of the same box at the warehouse. Unfortunately if you really need genuine products you simply cannot buy things off Amazon anymore.

To be specific, Amazon co-mingles inventory between Amazon, Sold by Amazon, and its third party sellers that are Fulfilled by Amazon. It doesn't matter who you buy from. The picker at the warehouse picks from the same box, the actual product could come from any seller, even if it's "Sold by Amazon". Who you purchase from is purely an accounting thing, unless they manage their own stock and is not part of Prime. If yo…

> The picker at the warehouse picks from the same box

That's not true. Commingled inventory is stored in separate bins so that the original source of the unit can always be determined.

This is explicitly said on the Amazon seller help pages for commingling ( https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/20014148... , https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/G... )

There is also this Financial Times article from 2019: https://archive.md/kfABj - quote from Amazon spokesman:

> The system is purposefully designed so that similar products are not placed next to or near each other, and Amazon can also track the original seller of each unit.

I guess the confusion came from the name "commingled inventory" - Amazon seems to have recognized this recently and is now referencing this feature as "virtual tracking" instead (quote from the above help pages):

> Commingling is a term that was sometimes used to refer to virtual tracking. However, virtual tracking is a more accurate term, because we trace the source of eligible products throughout the fulfillment process. Identical items from different suppliers are not stored together.

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

#249

Post by actuator »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #239
Permit wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be like if Costco instead of buying 1000 legos, just stocked legos in it's warehouse, then paid Lego company everytime a single unit sold. For some reason I was under the impression that this is exactly how it works at some physical retailers? Can someone confirm that this is not the case? Does Costco/Walmart/CVS/etc. eat the cost if the items don’t sell?

It is exactly how it works for physical retailers. In most cases, they even delay payment for a few months to account for returns and the cost of returning unsold products. Costco, to my knowledge, is actually one of the more strict retailers with IIRC 6 month delay between a product sale and the vendor being played. Mostly due to their generous return policy. I don't know of any large retailer that eats the cost of…

Yeah, even I was under this impression. OP should cite a source if they know otherwise as from their comment it seems like Amazon is the only one abusing their position like this.

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

#250

Post by luckydata »

istjohn wrote: post #221
luckydata wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Every one of those companies is or has been under antitrust scrutiny.

and the ones that haven't had the pleasure yet I'm sure are eager to keep it that way.
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