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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

#311

Post by donarb »

ec109685 wrote: post #166
mdasen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a few differences. 1) Amazon has the kind of market power that triggers anti-trust concerns. You can't get anti-trust concerns when you're a small player. 2) It sounds like Amazon is not offering to buy units at a set price. They're offering to give the supplier $X if they sell the item. That means that Amazon can decide whether or not they want to sell the item - and the supplier has agreed not to…

Didn’t Amazon care if they tanked the seller because sellers would drop out of the program?

Why would sellers drop out of the program? Where would they go? Amazon raised the prices to match what the seller was getting outside of Amazon.

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

#312

Post by mmcgaha »

sfifs wrote: post #306
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In most cases, they even delay payment for a few months to account for returns and the cost of returning unsold products. You may be conflating payment terms of trade with sales/revenue recognition. In general for consumer goods (unless it's a consignment model), revenue is recognized by the manufacturer the day products are billed and shipped to the retailer. In other words Store inventory is usually on the retail…

I worked for a manufacturer of outdoor product with a short season. We didn't have warehouse space to hold an entire season of product and we did not have manufacturing capacity to build as needed so we used 180 day terms to let our customers buy throughout the year. It smoothed out the demand curve and was a win for everyone.

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

#313

Post by judge2020 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #229
erik_seaberg wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I’m not qualified to prosecute antitrust law; I’m not even a lawyer. How is it that I can throw the company under the bus just by misusing terms of art that I vaguely understand?

> How is it that I can throw the company under the bus just by misusing terms of art that I vaguely understand? You cannot. As you've seen the frequency of antitrust judgements is very low , you're really unlikely to harm your company by saying anything. Don't worry about companies being “thrown under the bus”, their are fine, thank you.

> the frequency of antitrust judgements is very low,

No it's not.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-case-filings

The only reason it appears to be low is because newsworthy antitrust filings against big tech are few and far between. You can still be a target of the DOJ even if you're not working FAANG.

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

#314

Post by coliveira »

eru wrote: post #268
coliveira wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Companies care whether a court of law could find them to be a monopoly (in jurisdictions where that is a problem). Somewhat generalized, they also care about the court of public opinion. Both kinds of courts rely heavily on interpretation and on words. They don't ascertain objective truths. Things revealed in proceedings in a court of law can often be used against you in the court of public opinion, too.

What you're saying doesn't disprove my point. Obviously they care about external perceptions, but this doesn't mean they think being a monopoly is a problem. In fact they want to achieve this result without the public realizing it.

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

#315

Post by parrellel »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #55
lucas_membrane wrote: post #35

It was pretty obvious what Amazon wanted from its business partners if you look at abebooks, a site owned by amazon, but not visibly if you just look at abebooks.com. 'Independent' booksellers sell used books through abebooks, but never for less than amazon sells the same books.

> but not visibly if you just look at abebooks.com At first (admittedly lazy) glance I agree. As soon as you click on the jobs link it takes you to Amazon. Looking at their wikip entry, it states abebooks was acquired by Amazon in 2008. If they are attempting to hide it, they are doing a terrible job.

Go look at the "become an affiliate page" for contrast.

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

#316

Post by namelessoracle »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #305
msrenee wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if JC Penneys counts as a large retailer anymore or if petsmart ever did, but both of those stores do eat the cost of unsold goods to my knowledge. Lowes does as well, except for certain types of products such as live plants from certain suppliers. Clearance is almost always the store trying to recoup any money from a product that they can't sell and is taking up shelf space. That certain suppliers take…

I was under the impression unsold plants were taken out back and destroyed and evidence returned to the vendor (usually a photo and the UPCs). When I worked at a store that sold books and magazines we would rip the covers off and send those back, the rest going into the trash.

Plants and produce work differently. If you buy a farmers crops you dont get to send the rotten food back to them and ask for a refund. Only very large sellers even offer that to begin with.

Also "return it back" doesnt mean the company got the same value. Some companies only give credits for the returns and sometimes those credits are less than MSRP.

If you ever see something on clearance it means A) they cant return it to get credit or B) the credit amount they will get is less than what the clearance price they are offering is

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

#317

Post by bluGill »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #305
msrenee wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if JC Penneys counts as a large retailer anymore or if petsmart ever did, but both of those stores do eat the cost of unsold goods to my knowledge. Lowes does as well, except for certain types of products such as live plants from certain suppliers. Clearance is almost always the store trying to recoup any money from a product that they can't sell and is taking up shelf space. That certain suppliers take…

I was under the impression unsold plants were taken out back and destroyed and evidence returned to the vendor (usually a photo and the UPCs). When I worked at a store that sold books and magazines we would rip the covers off and send those back, the rest going into the trash.

Depends on the contract and what the supplier can do. I know of a greenhouse that did take the plants back, then put them on sale there. I don't know if that is normal for plants though, or just how that one operated. Plants can also be composed to make better soil. Or they might need a few to come back which they grow for next year's seed?

For books some can go to half priced books type stores, but if there are a lot unsold it probably isn't worth the shipping.

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

#318

Post by xdennis »

dgrin91 wrote: post #27
ghostly_s wrote: post #10

Why are regulators incapable of assessing meaningful punitive damages? 2.5 million is peanuts to Amazon.

Arguably the more important outcome than monetary damages is that the offending program is ceased. From the press release - > Amazon will shut down the “Sold by Amazon” program nationwide. So in principle the problem has been stopped. Now whether Amazon will make a new "Buy from Amazon" program in 5 seconds that will have slightly modified details is to be seen...

> Arguably the more important outcome than monetary damages is that the offending program is ceased.

That's not how we punish other crimes. We don't give serial killers 1 year in prison and set them loose because the killin' spree has ceased.

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

#319

Post by adrr »

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…

Fry's at the end went consignment model and none of the big brands would do it so their shelves were empty. So highly doubt Target or Walmart are using consignment model for the majority of their goods.

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

#320

Post by adrr »

mFixman wrote: post #284
snow_mac wrote: post #227

One thing everyone is getting hung up on is the fact that Amazon isn't wholesaling the dongle. The contract isn't a wholesale deal, meaning if your widget doesn't sell, it's sitting on your balance sheet, not on Amazon's balance sheet. 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. Then they figured out how to make th…

Just curious: Isn't this exactly what most supermarkets do? Do merchants decide the price at which their product appear in stores?

Vendors will do rebates so they do have some control over price. Like new cars when a dealers sells at their cost, there is a large rebate the customer doesn't see.
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