I gave my Prime membership up last February. I’m not missing it at all. Anything I need/want to get, I can wait a little longer or get it somewhere else (which I am increasingly doing). The number of orders I’ve placed this year on Amazon is about half (I’m guessing based of memory) of what it was last year.
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Apologies for this interruption. Just adding a friendly mod reminder about our prohibition on discussing politics on SAS.
Thank you and carry on! 
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Don’t you ever sleep? 
Not enough 
Edited to share our own experience.
Unnamed Countries in the Asian Basin will Copy and Duplicate our products. They are all then offered at a lower price with a lower quality.
Now, we have our own way of dealing with that, so not looking for pity here.
However, they also run ads, and click farms if we run ads. Amazon is nothing more than Oriental Trading Company on steroids.
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Costco (in my opinion) does not generate a lot of shareholder value. Also, all companies treat customers fairly well, because if you don’t they stop buying from you. Why do you think most ecommerce sites offer hassle free returns? Because otherwise people won’t shop there.
If you look at the biggest (and most profitable) companies in the world: Apple, Microsoft, and Google are the top ones, followed by Amazon. What do they all have in common? They all have some kind of monopoly power and they wield it to take advantage of others. All 4 of these companies are also facing lawsuits related to the usage of this power. None of these companies would be where they are today without using abusive and anticompetitive tactics. I own stock in them all except Amazon, and will be considering adding Amazon as they’re becoming an ad spending powerhouse now. The legal system in the US right now is very favorable for this type of behavior now as well. The DOJ and FTC have lost tons of lawsuits recently (For example, they just lost the lawsuit against microsoft acquiring activision. That deal is so anti-competitive it’s not even funny and they couldn’t win it). So the likelihood of any real action being taken against Amazon in the current political/legal climate is very low.
Amazon became who they are by looking the other way and doing the bare minimum they needed to do to avoid liability. The thing is, CHEAP sells better than anything else in the world. If something’s cheap, people will buy it. Whether the product is even safe or not won’t stop CHEAP from selling. Yeah, while it might piss off brand owners that RAs are selling used as new, or people are selling stolen goods, to the end user, they see it as getting something similar, but CHEAP. Same goes for knockoff/copycat products, yeah, they might be lower quality, but again, they’re CHEAP. Like if you go to Canal street in New York, even someone with half a brain knows all the stuff being sold there is fake, but it all sells anyway.
Amazon’s goal is basically to pit 3P sellers against each other, make them either bid up PPC costs, or bid down product costs (so that the cheap products generate more sales volume which Amazon takes 15% right off the top of + FBA fees for most), and then do the bare minimum of cleanup needed to avoid liability. So you’re wrong about the 2M sellers not all contributing. They ALL contribute to AMAZON’s profits in some way. They’re detrimental to the overall economy, but not to Amazon’s bottom line. As I’ve pointed out before somewhere, it’d be trivially easy for Amazon to clean up the drop shipper trash, but they don’t do it because they get to collect the referral fee twice from every sale they make.
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It is illegal. It’s called ‘predatory pricing.’ It’s not profitability that’s the problem. It’s that Amazon lost $50B last year selling their own products so they can simultaneously dominate as many retail markets as possible; they run at a gross loss. That $50B loss was subsidized by fees we pay and income from AWS. Separating AWS shuts off that flow. Separating marketplace and logistics shuts off the flow of income back to retail so it can no longer lose money selling items. Wal-Mart is in the business of making money selling items - they run at a gross profit. That’s not illegal; in fact, its the way that every other retail operation is designed. Only Amazon is designed to lose money retailing items.
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My point exactly, yet they still continue to grow.
Nope. Ever heard of insurance companies? How about utilities? I doubt customers of Martin Shkreli, or Billy McFarland would agree with your premise.
Because like utilities, they control who ends up paying for that convenience and it is not them. It is the vendors of Wal Mart, Amazon and Costco.
They are also operations outside of modern technology legislation who innovated their way there. They are not some insurance company who got there by bilking customers who are about to die so can’t sue.
If you think all 2m sellers are equally producing you are on something you have some failed logic. Are all the suspended ones producing at the same level as you and me? How about the ones who we have all read that are too dumb to know there were selling fees? How about those who operated with no liability insurance like the dog leash company? Not all sellers are equal and I assert most are trash because of the zero barriers to entry. Imagine the value of getting into a college where the admissions requirements were 7 on the SAT? Would you look around and assume everyone is your peer?
Notice the chart below is “Sales” not profit, meaning nearly half are not paying their mortgage without another job! We agree on more than we disagree on this particular point.
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Sorry but you are incorrect. As a West Coast resident I am familiar with a tire company called Les Schwab, where the owner wrote a book explaining that they allow their stores to lose money for ~5 years to destroy local competition and gain a foothold in the geographic area. Many business do it. I do it for my recycling operations locally, but your not claiming its illegal because it does not suit your nefarious paradigm.
When McDonalds buys land for a new location, they do it at a loss subsidized by a profit center.
I am just suggesting you target the demonstrable result for listeners and readers, not a common business practice of using profitable sectors to pay for less profitable ones.
If you tell people Amazon is “losing” inventory then making sellers go through 7 bots then 4 non english speaking people before they can even think about getting reimbursed. It would resonate better than telling the audience that Amazon made money at X and is scrooge McDucking it somewhere over at Y.
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They do continue to grow, but it’s unlikely they’ll ever be as big or powerful as walmart.
Yes, insurance companies sell a scam product, but it’s one required by law or required to do business. Utilities also have a legal monopoly because they own the supply infrastructure. I should’ve phrased it as “all companies where customers have a choice.” That applies to retail. If Amazon instituted an “all sales final” policy they’d be irrelevant within a year.
Who said anything about all 2M sellers equally producing? I said they all produce profit for Amazon in some way shape or form. Even used as new grey market/outright counterfeit sellers benefit Amazon in some ways. Do you know how many complaints there are of legitimate vendors needing to cut their prices to compete with grey market / counterfeit vendors? That helped Amazon be the low price king for a long time to build up market share (again, CHEAP sells), and now they’re finally caring about their image because they’ve already gained a dominant market share. Same goes for sellers operating without insurance selling shoddy products. At the end of the day a consumer was harmed, but the $ amount of sales Amazon gained from playing fast and loose outweighs the cases where their brand suffers harm or Amazon has to pay to settle something.
I’m not saying what’s been happening isn’t wrong, but I am saying Amazon intentionally looked the other way on many things as part of a strategy to becoming the dominant ecommerce company. And that behavior will not be changing. Any concessions Amazon makes as part of the FTC lawsuit will be carefully calculated for the purpose of allowing them to continue with the rest of their abuses to Amazon’s own benefit.
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It can if we as consumers and voters choose otherwise.
Lobbyists will be lobbying to ensure that… Also not a crime to do with profits from AWS.
Just saying it without saying RA is wrong, or IP theft is wrong from my previous readings. Apologies if I misread.
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Thing is, consumers don’t really care about the plight of sellers/brands. Would you rather buy an Amazon Basics copycat item, or the original creator’s item that costs more? Let’s assume it’s a relatively simple product where quality isn’t a huge concern. Most consumers will choose the Amazon Basics item.
Also, voters don’t choose that much. Lobbyists have far more power than voters. Voters get a “choice” of at most 2 candidates in most “elections” and both of them are corrupt as hell.
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Well most consumers are sheeple.
Depends on the product. I don’t think Amazon is stealing from anyones IP selling Amazon Basics printer paper, and it is a moot point being there are thousands of other sellers and brands from the same production line.
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Even if IP is being stolen, most customers will still buy it because for one, they don’t know, and two, they don’t care. You can’t get in trouble for buying a product that infringes on patents; you can only get in trouble for selling/distributing those products.
Big companies do often take chances infringing on patents as a patent lawsuit is often a long and expensive affair, and in some cases the ability to pay legal fees is the determining factor in winning the case.
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It’s not my “nefarious paradigm.” It’s a thing called Antitrust Law - the Clayton Act, the Sherman Act and the Robinson Patman Act. I’m happy that you’re aware of your general location - the west coast. California has an additional antitrust law called the Cartwright Act. These are actual documents passed by groups of humans called government regulators. There’s a thing you can use called “google” where you can search for things and read. You may find that your learn if you read.
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Not only that, because there is no barrier to entry as a seller, Amazon is essentially enabling people do it till they get caught, only to let the next huckster come along and do the same thing. No other marketplace other than a swap meet and Ebay does that.
I assert this is the majority of Amazon sellers.
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You may find an ad hominem is a pathetic way out of an assertion you can’t support with a judgement example or precedent in this case. Simply comparing Amazon to Pacific Bell and Standard Oil, is not going to make your argument for you.
Subsidizing losses is a common business practice.
I understand your emotions are high, but the personal insults will make you and your assertions look weak. You can also consider this a warning for being uncivil.
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I think it’s time for everyone to get some pretzels and watch a cat video or something before people end up in time out.
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Remember when they had ungating fees for certain brands? They kind of had the right idea there, but instead of protecting brands, it’d be better applied to protecting the entire marketplace. A $1500 fee to be approved to sell on Amazon would go a long ways to getting rid of crap sellers, and make Amazon a tidy profit as well. The problem is if they did that, it would give the FTC more anti-trust ammo against them. Imagine the world’s biggest marketplace charging sellers a big fat fee for entry.
Logically speaking that would make a lot of sense. If you’re serious about starting a real business on Amazon, $1500 should be a relatively minor expense.
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Yup. Loved it.
Agreed 100%.
Ya but some people would assert this would be an unfair access to the marketplace and I can kind of understand what they mean. I think supplier verification or capability statement/vetting like government contracting does would go greatly to protecting consumers and the marketplace.
True but a lot of that can be tied into consumer protections. “Hey we need to protect consumers, so we need to charge to vet all these sellers, oh and by the way we caught X sellers last year selling counterfeit goods, so we need this”
I agree Amazon is 100% responsible for the zero barriers to entry, and I completely support qualifying sellers. But imagine the outrage if you told smaller business single mom’s who started a homemade business they had to pay $1500 to sell their stuff here. $1500 in a HUB zone economy can be a few weeks wages.
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