What Amazon is doing is streamlining the process for the buyer.
Amazon is manipulating the buyer (and many sellers) into believing this. Just because they’ve convinced you, doesn’t make it true.
The seller who gets the Buy Box is not there for the buyer’s benefit. They are there for Amazon’s benefit.
it doesn’t ALWAYS show the lowest priced item in the buy box, even if they’re both prime offers. Keep in mind not every seller’s inventory is scattered equally
You always seem to forget that not every seller’s inventory is in FBA.
And lower prices are good for the buyer as well.
Well, sure. I wish everything I wanted was free. But cheap doesn’t always equal value, and value is what matters.
The buy box offer is designed to well suit the AVERAGE buyer
Yeah…no.
And one thing Amazon DID do is they added the “Might be cheaper from a non-prime seller” to listings when there’s an FBM offer that’s cheaper.
Right. In small letters up where nobody is likely to notice it. Just as Amazon wants it.
As a buyer, I think the buy box is great.
I’m sure you do. That’s Amazon’s goal. To manipulate you into believing that they can decide what’s best for you better than you can. Many people like having someone else make their decisions for them. I am - obviously - not one of those people.
We are in New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die” no sales tax too. I do know when we run into a bind shipping to FBA, I can drive 15 miles south and take a day off of UPS shipping.
That could be what we are seeing here.
Plus, the straw that broke this back, happened two weeks ago. We had to wait a full 7 days for the stay flats to arrive. Could have been out of stock, who knows.
Still Prime is not Prime. But not as bad as it was in COVID time.
Don’t forget that the question isn’t what Amazon promises, but what Amazon actually delivers.
I’m sure you know that I am not a Prime member, so am only going by what others who are have reported in forums. Lots of reports, as I recall, of 2-day delivery promises that were not met.
I don’t see it as being manipulated. If I’m paying for a prime subscription I’ll pay more for a FBA offer most of the time. So will other prime subscribers
And never would have known, except Amazon messed up. Would have used them forever. We had the same sales rep for 30 years, he retired, a “young pup” showed up and listened to what we had to say.
I’m just saying that location matters, maybe more than we realize, and makes it hard to make blanket statements.
I didn’t mean to suggest that it didn’t. Location does influence who a particular buyer sees in the Buy Box.
I was only trying to make the point that what Amazon says (ie you’ll get it by Oct 5) doesn’t matter as much as what Amazon does (package arrives Oct 8), and that those things seem to fail to match up more often than in the past. Again… according to what I’ve read. I’m not a Prime member and I do not shop on Amazon.
Location is key and what you’re buying is even more key (avail local inventory). If you live by a FC (I have a few within 20 miles of me), you’ll get your crap fast. 95% of what we order from Amazon (we order a lot) arrives within 12 hours. It’s great and we save lots of $ and gas…
As a buyer, I freaking love Amazon. As a seller… Not so much…
Different strokes for different folks. It’s good there are people who do like it, or we’d all be out of business.
I don’t see the appeal. I’ve bought a very few things on Amazon over the years, but I’m a good comparison shopper, and any time I’ve added Amazon into the mix to compare, they were not the best option.
I can’t resist pointing out the irony in this, though. @GGX, do you see it?
I love how they conveniently left out the fact there are non FBA prime shipping options. The problem is most sellers cannot make it work unless they are geographically centered/diverse or have margins to cover the rapid shipping.
It’s not a contradiction at all. Sellers competing against each other means you’re paying less for the same item. Paying more for an FBA offer is paying for a better service. I’d say 75% of what I order from FBA is delivered overnight, and 95% is delivered within 2 days.
As a buyer, why would I want a marketplace to foster keeping retailer’s margins high? I want them to make next to no money so I get the best price. Why do you think people shop at Costco and similar stores? Paying full retail for stuff sucks.
I also have no problem undercutting other sellers to get the buy box, so the system suits me fine anyway. Instead of hating the system I learn to embrace it. There used to be a time when there were a lot of ASINs that only had FBM offers, and I could get on it with an FBA offer and take 80% of the sales and charge a higher price. I did FBM for a short time at the beginning, but as soon as I realized the FBA advantage, I just jumped onto it.
Given the choice of complaining the system is unfair, or getting on the side of the system that benefits from the unfairness, there’s a clear winner there.
This is also true. The FBM sellers who complain about their offers being unfavored for the buy box really have no basis, because if they invested a few hundred million $ into a logistics network to provide quality fulfillment services then they’d treated equally because they actually deserve to be treated equally.
People can’t seriously think that their 3 - 7 day FBM shipping offer should be treated anywhere close to the same as a 1 - 2 day Prime shipping offer
