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Amazon's New Refunds Policy Will 'Crush' Small Businesses, Outraged Sellers Say (cnbc.com)
Amazon sellers are up in arms over a new returns policy that will make it easier for consumers to send back items at the merchant's expense. From a report: Marketplace sellers who ship products from their home, garage or warehouse -- rather than using Amazon's facilities -- were told this week by email that starting Oct. 2, items they sell will be "automatically authorized" for return. That means a buyer will no longer need to contact the seller before sending an item back, and the merchant won't have the opportunity to communicate with the customer. If a consumer is returning an electronic device because it's difficult to use, for example, the seller won't be able to offer help before being forced to pay a refund. "Customers will be able to print a prepaid return shipping label via the Online Return Center instantly," the email said. Additionally, Amazon said that it's introducing "returnless refunds," a feature that the company said is "highly requested by sellers." The change enables sellers to offer a refund without taking back an item that may be expensive to ship and hard to resell.
Amazon isn't in the retail business. Amazon isn't in the cloud computing business. Amazon isn't in the logistics business. Amazon is in the business business. It is no longer The Everything Store; it is now the Everything Everything. It wants to be the platform around which all of the world's businesses depend.
This is about as ambitious a mission as a company has ever launched, in my opinion -- and Amazon may be the first company with a justifiable claim to such ambition. Its only business constraints at this point are geopolitical, really. I believe it aims even higher in the long run: it is aiming to become the macroeconomic backbone of at least the Western world.
When viewed in that context, traditional definitions of monopoly -- especially the most widely known definition of the state, which is based on market share within a specific industry -- almost feel antiquated. Jeff Bezos isn't JP Morgan; he's freaking Cohaagen from Total Recall.
(To be very clear, I say all of this in admiration of Jeff Bezos, not in fear or criticism of him.)
Imagine the tragedy of a world where a seller is liable for making the products they sell actually useful out of the box rather than forcing customers to go down a "support" rabbit hole before they give up.
Amazon's competition nuked themselves with their inadequacy. All Amazon did was spot the weaknesses (which were pretty obvious) and exploit them.
No, what Amazon did was figure out that they didn't need to make profit so long as they kept investing in new technology that they could maybe sell eventually. They now make so much money on cloud computing and related services that they don't give a crap about profit in their retail side. They are walmarting the entire retail business model safe in the knowledge that everyone else is going to go broke long before they do trying to compete.
People who have never worked in a small retail business don't understand the business model. You don't "compete" with lower prices, that's just a race to the bottom with everyone dying a slow death. Including the manufacturers who now have a thoroughly devalued product that they can't wholesale.