Is Amazon anti-competitive ?

[aja8888]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExFlyBoy5 Have you seen prices on Amazon, lately?.....................

Yeah, we ordered a new LG TV from Best Buy on Friday afternoon. It was delivered this morning. The price was $20+ less than the same one on Amazon.

Sorry to hear about the bad deal on returning the cameras. Try calling Amazon....it's not that easy anymore. Actually,I have tried and can't find a number that gets through.

[KarlH]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sengsational Walmart as well as Amazon can and do bring prices down.

Sometimes, this is smoke and mirrors as well. Walmart has a sale on Kingsford Charcoal, and its an 18# bag instead of the 20# one at other stores... They order Brand Name detergents in sizes that are slightly smaller than you get at Kroger/Target/Jewel, etc... they use their economy of scale to buy products that deceptively look like good deals until the consumer normalizes the price to the unit and compares, and it turns out that you are paying the exact same price or higher for a smaller number of loads of laundry. When I worked for a major consumer goods company, I learned that Walmart demanded Walmart specific SKUs just to create the illusion of a bargain.

[Chuckanut]

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Originally Posted by karen1972 I'm still waiting for more consumers to wake up that their "subscription" to auto-ship is costing them a fortune. I go on there all the time and look up pricing for household goods and I'm like holy cow this is 20% more pricey than what I can find at the local store. It may be on sale on any given day but the auto-subscription isn't looking for the best deal for you.

+1

Excellent point. At times Amazon is the price leader or priced low enough that it's not worth the drive to get it at a lower price. But, low prices cannot be assumed. I just ordered a new tracking tile for some items I can't afford to misplace (another cost of growing old?). $30 at Amazon. $30 at the 'normal' discounted price for existing customers on the maker's website. $23 on the special deal that popped up on the tile app.

[Chuckanut]

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Originally Posted by OldShooter To me the signal that eBay and Amazon are a duopoly is the way they are able to treat their sellers as serfs. Huge penalties for small infractions and high-handed behavior in requirements. That is why many eBay listings include pleas from the sellers to contact them directly so a complaint is not registered with eBay. But the duopoly has enough control that sellers have no practical alternative to goveling before these masters and taking whatever they are given.

It's not just them. Online travel booking sites take a chunk out of mom-and-pop hotels. I want the little hotels to stick around, so I make a point of booking directly whenever possible. Sometimes they will toss in breakfast or a room upgrade.

[RetireBy90]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckanut It's not just them. Online travel booking sites take a chunk out of mom-and-pop hotels. I want the little hotels to stick around, so I make a point of booking directly whenever possible. Sometimes they will toss in breakfast or a room upgrade.

DW uses the online travel booking sites to find a good rate on a hotel then calls the hotel directly and gets the same price most of the time. She has found that if she books through a travel site then often the hotel doesn't provide the same amenities such as morning news paper (for me), breakfast, or reward points to brand rewards or card rewards. We visit Key Largo every Jan (hoping to in 2021) and she is able to get a good rate then call and get the room we like, top floor and end unit for best gulf view and little noise from other rooms.

[Aerides]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExFlyBoy5 I requested a refund and selected the "UPS pickup" from home option. UPS was out the next day and took the package, but never scanned it in...so it still shows as "awaiting pickup". The driver didn't leave a receipt (like they normally do) so I am to assume the package will never make it to AMZN and I am at a loss as to how I will get my almost $400 back.

Call them and be very persistent that you followed their steps and need a refund. Don't take no for an answer. Ask for a super if you must (and probably will for that amount).

[braumeister]

I had a couple of similar incidents in the past, so now I never send anything back to anyone without getting a receipt, whether USPS, UPS, or FedEx.

[braumeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExFlyBoy5 Have you seen prices on Amazon, lately?

On this issue, I have often been amazed. When I ordered a new Dyson vacuum recently, I found Amazon's price to be 20% higher than ordering it directly from Dyson. Both had free shipping, so that's not an issue.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ExFlyBoy5 Have you seen prices on Amazon, lately?

Another example is name-brand tools from Home Depot vs. Amazon. I've been buying a lot of Milwaukee tools in the last couple of years and only once did I find a lower price on Amazon.

There have been a couple of other instances with other products whose names escape me at the moment but while Amazon is often the lowest price, that is far from a sure thing often enough that I also make sure to shop around.

[CardsFan]

Amazon is in business to make money. Surprise! They will try to get rid of competition. Surprise!

Personally I buy very little from Amazon, or on line in general. Most of my on line purchases are things not easily found in stores. Replacement parts for a 20 year old gas grill, as a recent example.

I always check on line, including Amazon, but will gladly pay a small premium to buy it locally, if possible.

I do shop at Walmart, but mostly for price. I wanted a few cheap, light tee shirts last year. I think they were $3/each. I only wanted them to last a two week trip. Still have them.

Another example. We like Gosling's ginger beer, both plain, and in a Moscow mule. 6 pack is $5.98 at WM. If I can find it elsewhere it is 8 bucks or more.

[Amethyst]

Amazon uses buyer psychology, by making the "select...click...pay" process easy and quick. They get people into the habit of buying from them over and over. That way, people are less likely to check around to see if someone else has a better price.

Price deception isn't always hard to spot. The Amazon "free shipping" price is often the same as the third party price + third party shipping.

[CaptTom]

I haven't seen higher prices at Amazon. If I ever do, I won't buy them. I think that's kinda the whole point of capitalism. I do expect some types of things to simply be cheaper to stock in a store than to ship, and for those I wouldn't even check Amazon.

I have no great love for any big corporation, but I do give Amazon credit for totally disrupting the old-school shipping BS that on-line (and before that, catalog) sales used to involve. Allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. Add phony "handling" charges which exceeded the cost of the product. I don't want to go back to those days.

Since the pandemic, Amazon's shipping, even with Prime, has been hit-or-miss. Far fewer things show up with 2-day delivery now.

[CardsFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 Another example is name-brand tools from Home Depot vs. Amazon. I've been buying a lot of Milwaukee tools in the last couple of years and only once did I find a lower price on Amazon. There have been a couple of other instances with other products whose names escape me at the moment but while Amazon is often the lowest price, that is far from a sure thing often enough that I also make sure to shop around.

And, Home Depot offers a ship to store option, so no shipping fees. Bought a replacement part for a kitchen faucet. About $8. Ship to store, pick up 3 days later.

Not available locally at all. Except maybe if I called a plumber?

[timo2]

I'll look on Amazon, but will then go find the website of the third party seller (if they have one). I'll then buy directly from the third party who often is the original manufacturer or importer. This doesn't always work and I end up ordering from Amazon about 40% of the time still.

The problem of late I have with Amazon is the resellers that buy something and then resell the product on Amazon for more money than elsewhere. It's been crazy since the beginning of the year.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptTom Since the pandemic, Amazon's shipping, even with Prime, has been hit-or-miss. Far fewer things show up with 2-day delivery now.

I don't fault Amazon for that, every online seller has had to deal with swamped shipping. Millions of people switched to online buying all at the same time and I'd wager it takes a while to gear up to the change.

And it is getting better as time goes on.

[JoeWras]

Needed some Tervis cup lids. Found it cheaper to buy directly from Tervis, at the cost of a 9 day wait instead of 2.

[triangle]

Amazon is a great company, its leadership is smart, risk taking, knows how to execute well, etc. But I do think they gamed the system in that in their first ~15 years they never reported a profit (I am generalizing here). So they were able to subsidize and bootstrap themselves into a big company while paying no taxes as any normal company would have needed to become profitable or disappear in the interim. They plowed those savings back to into building up their business. For example leveraging the internal technology they built to quickly scale up their eCommerce website as AWS. In the early years of the company Bezo would state over and over that Amazon should not be profitable, that growth was of upmost importance.

I don't know much about corporate accounting, but I recall some criticism of how they structured their different businesses in a way (one business unit subsidizing the other) that was not legal but they were not called out for it by the IRS. I believe free markets are the best economic system, but to the extent there are corporate taxes maybe there needs to be a different accounting of them, perhaps not just on a year-by-year basis.

Example of their anti-competitive practice that came up in the hearing last week (this topic of diapers.com might have already been old news):
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...th-price-cuts/

[Popeye]

Quote:

Originally Posted by triangle Example of their anti-competitive practice that came up in the hearing last week (this topic of diapers.com might have already been old news): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...th-price-cuts/

Wow, that’s really bad. Based on the repeated training back in my Megacorp days, that was likely filled with violations. Too bad they didn’t have the emails back when the merger was investigated. Maybe something would have been done.

[JoeWras]

I have a friend who preaches to anyone they can to avoid Walmart because of anti-competitive behavior. Same friend loves Amazon. Upon listening more to her, I realize her real issue is politics, but she's hiding that behind the small business competition issue. So it is, I don't argue, I just listen then ignore.

I don't boycott Amazon or Walmart.

I don't love Amazon or Walmart.

I try to buy local, or direct, like my Tervis lids, for example. But it isn't always possible. Sometimes, Amazon is just too convenient, or really the only reliable source of delivery. Sometimes a Great Value brand of a basic food staple is priced so well, you can't pass it up.

In the case of both A and W, I have fallen out of love and am wary, looking for other options first. That's all.

[folivier]

Lately I've been re-considering my Amazon Prime purchases. Back a few years ago when we were fulltiming in the motorhome and traveling extensively Amazon was nice with their guaranteed 2 day delivery. We could order something and it would be waiting for us at our next stop. Now? Not so much. Amazon Prime used to ship an item out either the same day or next day. But now it seems to take them up to a week to ship an item. It still comes in a couple days but why so long to ship?
I have 4 items on order now, 1 finally shipped after a week from order date. The other 3 haven't shipped yet. 1 of them is a re-order that is lost somewhere between UPS and USPS. Neither one seems to know where it is. Not Amazon's fault directly. Unfortunately our summer spot is a 1 hour drive to the closest town to pick up anything. Hopefully they will get a handle on their shipping problems soon.
Maybe this should be in the pet peeve topic?