Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Discounts Other Sellers' Products as Retail Competition Stiffens (reuters.com)
Amazon is slashing prices of products from third-party sellers on its website, moving beyond its more typical method of discounts on items it sells directly. From a report: The "discount provided by Amazon" applies to products including board games and technological gadgets offered by other merchants as the holiday season approaches. The retailer has been trying to compete aggressively on some items to win sales and draw customers away from low-priced rivals like Wal-Mart Stores. The move allows Amazon to sell the products at lower prices while still giving full price to the sellers. "When Amazon provides a discount, customers get the products they want at a price they'll love, and small businesses receive increased sales at their listed asking price," an Amazon spokeswoman said in an emailed statement, noting that businesses can opt out at any time.
the old "drive all your competitors out of business" ploy. This time, powered by a global conglomerate.
Isn't this a perfect example of monopolistic behaviour? Use your large size to sell a service at zero or even below cost to drive anyone not using your service out of business?
Amazon sells nearly everything its third-party sellers do. I noticed after Amazon started collecting sales tax in my state they began to feature third-party sellers much more prominently in my browsing sessions, none of who collect sales tax because they're mostly virtual resellers with a physical presence in only one state. Amazon still makes money by charging transaction fees on the seller. The fact they're subsidizing discounts for these third-party sellers is more proof of Amazon's sales tax strategy.
I haven't bought from Amazon in 2 years because they aren't competitive with brick and mortar stores anymore. If I buy online it's through in store pickup at Walmart or best buy. Also, brick and mortar stores will price match Amazon; so.... No need to even buy from them. I don't want to wait days for something.... And, for fast service you want me to pay for prime? Lol nty
In the late 80s - early 90s time frame, Sam's and Pace (owned by KMart) were in competition. There were over a dozen Pace Membership Warehouses in the St. Louis metropolitan area by my recollection. I personally preferred Pace and thus watched what happened with interest.
Walmart decided they wanted the business. They proceeded to build a Sam's within sight of almost every Pace at great expense because they had to get whatever land was there instead of cherry-picking sites. It was so blatant that you knew what was going on from day one. After doing so, they opened the stores, set the prices below Pace (running them all at a loss), and fairly quickly put the Pace stores out of business. They then built some more new stores in the area with a different distribution so that they could cover the area with fewer stores and closed down almost everything they had built to put Pace out of business. When Pace started talking lawsuit, Walmart purchased the corpses to shut them up.
In a remarkably short time, we went from a competitive market to a monopoly market.
I sincerely hope that we're not seeing similar tactics happen here, but now to Walmart. Having Amazon in competition with Walmart helps us. Losing Walmart in that competition would put us right back in the monopoly situation with an even stronger predator.
It's not like Amazon has a workplace reputation for being rainbows and lollipops.
Table-ized A.I.
I know they are trying to paint a happy face on this, but over the past year Amazon has instituted a number of seller hostile policies and we are getting pretty sick of it. Most recently - very recently - Amazon instituted an automatic return policy. It used to be that we would get a return request notification with a reason selected and an explanation from the buyer. This allowed me to save many sales or otherwise turn some frowns upside down. A return request was a great way to get a good seller review. Being able to offer customer service on returns also helped reveal scammers. Now if a buyer wants a refund, they just pick an option, usually "bought by mistake" or "did not need" with no written explanation. Still want to contact the buyer? Too late, they already printed out the prepaid return label and it's on its way. The seller pays for the prepaid return label. Have a policy that the cost of the label will be deducted from the return? The buyer can file a claim to dispute that and will usually win. Otherwise you get a nasty review out spite, and there is nothing to do about that either. Need a new guitar for a gig this weekend but you have to pay rent in two weeks? No problem! So we can opt out huh? Yeah, right. This week maybe.
I would rather not have posted this anon, but Amazon has become so big brother the paranoia is justified.
The final nail in the coffin of Toys-R-Us was when they stopped differentiating and just carried the same stuff that everyone else did. They decided to compete only on price, and they should have known they would lose.
They stopped carrying all the cool toys. That is what killed them.
No, this isn't the usual scheme. Put your stuff for sale on Amazon and buy it back at a discount. Then sell it again and again and again until Amazon stops giving you free money.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Sure. But the compensation package is just good enough to keep people around until they're fully vested and then they take it out the door, it's common to take a long break from work after the end of a stint at AMZN. That's Amazon's formula for keeping top talent around until they're totally burned out and can be replaced with a fresh crop of good engineers to burn.
You can't pull off that trick with Walmart's attitude towards workers.