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Amazon Jacked Up Prime Day Prices, Misleading Consumers, Says Vendor (foxbusiness.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A Charlotte-based startup says e-commerce king Amazon jacked up their suggested retail price during the company's annual discount event -- Prime Day -- to deceive consumers into thinking that they were getting a deal, when in reality, they weren't. Jason Jacobs, founder of Remodeez, a small company that specializes in non-toxic foot deodorizers and other odor stoppers, says he had an agreement with Amazon since 2015 on a suggested retail price of $9.99 for his products and was shocked after the tech giant almost doubled that on Prime Day to make it look like people were getting a discount, when they were actually paying full price. "They showed the product at $15.42 and then exed it out to put '$9.99 for Amazon Prime Day.' And on the final day, the price was like $18.44. So, we put a support ticket in right away and I rallied some friends through social media to go to their complaint board and complain," Jacobs tells FOX Business.
Amazon is no longer reliably cheaper than some brick and mortar options. I have run into this trend more and more in the last couple years.
You guys seem to think that this is bad. I was in BestBuy the other day to buy a new keyboard and mouse. I decided to look up reviews while i was standing there and noticed that the price on the BestBuy website beat the one in the store for the keyboard by $30, the mouse by $15, and the mouse pad I was also grabbing by $5. I HAD TO ASK THEM TO PRICE MATCH THEIR OWN DAMN WEBSITE!
There are many, many other defects in Amazon management. Every web page, for example, tries to sell you something else before giving full information about a product.
Playing games with prices is EXTREMELY self-destructive. People buy much more from companies they know they can trust. When a company can't be trusted, customers must spend time thinking carefully about every item before buying.
Amazon abuses employees, according to news reports:
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (Aug. 15, 2015)
Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Feb. 23, 2014)
Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, owns a spaceflight company, Blue Origin. Would you fly into space with a company whose owner makes abusive web pages?
Actually, Amazon has been forced to collect sales taxes, even in states where it has no physical presence (at least as of April of this year). The only exceptions would be the five states e.g. Oregon) which do not charge sales tax.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yeah, this basically means that they're now working like every other retail business in existence.
When I worked at a grocery store as a teenager, I must have marked up items hundreds of times only to "discount" some of them 10 to 25% off a week later. Basically, the item was only a few cents less than the old retail price, which then went back to the new marked up price a week later.
The number of items that went up in price every week vs the number of items that went down every week was like 10 to 1. Basically, they just used the sales to generate price confusion so you were less likely to notice that your total grocery bill was creeping up about 6% every year.
Yeah, this basically means that they're now working like every other retail business in existence.
Well not really. It means that they're working like every shady retail business in existence. In most countries this is illegal to do. It doesn't matter if it's pennies or thousands of dollars difference. Hiking the price before a sale, at least here in Canada falls afoul of federal consumer protection laws and provincial consumer protection laws in every province and territory. If you live in Canada, you should file a complaint. You can do so at this link here. Then click the "complaint form" section or you can call this number: 1-800-348-5358 and file a complaint directly.
The government does investigate this stuff, they do levy fines over it. One of the big problems is, some people don't notice it or believe it's simply the market forces at work. A few years ago, there was an entire chain of gas stations in Quebec for exactly this. And there's currently an investigation into one of the big food chains here in Canada over sale manipulation.
Om, nomnomnom...
There are a ton more reasons manufacturers dont want to sell directly to the public. Source, I work for a manufacturer.
1. Invoicing - invoices don't reconcile themselves automatically.
2. Logistics - all these one-off deliveries don't package and label themselves.
3. Returns - these things require a ton of manual intervention to process, rectify and account for.
4. Partner Relationships - Many existing distribution contracts have clauses to prevent direct to consumer sales. Even if they dont have such a clause in place you are risking damaging a relationship with your redistributors which could have huge impacts to your business (see reasons 1-3).
5. It takes capitol, resources and focus to run an efficient direct to consumer fulfillment center. Most manufacturers would rather (and smartly so) focus on making quality products and leave all the other business stuff to large distributors and re-sellers.
Have a good day!