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Amazon Is Kicking All Unauthorized Apple Refurbishers Off the Site (vice.com)
In a new agreement between tech giants Amazon and Apple, shoppers will soon see a selection of the latest Apple products on Amazon.com. This is not good news for everyone. Motherboard: John Bumstead is a computer refurbisher who, every year, saves thousands of laptops from the shredder. He buys MacBooks en masse from electronics recyclers, fixes them, then sells them on Amazon Marketplace or wholesales them to vendors who do the same. Friday morning, Bumstead got an email from Amazon informing him that he'd no longer be allowed to sell Apple computers on the platform, thanks to a new agreement between Apple and Amazon that will only allow "authorized resellers" to sell Apple products.
"As part of a new agreement with Apple, we are working with a select group of authorized resellers to offer an expanded selection of Apple and Beats products, including new releases, in Amazon's stores," the email says. "You are receiving this message because you are currently selling, or have previously sold, Apple or Beats products. Your existing offers for those products will soon be removed from Amazon's online store in the United States. Please contact Apple if you would like to apply to become an authorized reseller on Amazon." As the email notes, this is part of a new agreement between two of the largest companies in the world that will allow Amazon to sell new Apple products around the world; in exchange, Amazon agreed to let Apple pick-and-choose who is allowed to sell Apple products on the site.
"As part of a new agreement with Apple, we are working with a select group of authorized resellers to offer an expanded selection of Apple and Beats products, including new releases, in Amazon's stores," the email says. "You are receiving this message because you are currently selling, or have previously sold, Apple or Beats products. Your existing offers for those products will soon be removed from Amazon's online store in the United States. Please contact Apple if you would like to apply to become an authorized reseller on Amazon." As the email notes, this is part of a new agreement between two of the largest companies in the world that will allow Amazon to sell new Apple products around the world; in exchange, Amazon agreed to let Apple pick-and-choose who is allowed to sell Apple products on the site.
This is why we hate monopolies.
In the internet sales business, Amazon has effectively become a monopoly.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So, who amongst geeks or hardware hackers needs Amazon or official Apple Macbooks? Refurbished Macbooks are aplenty on ebay, as always. Similarly, macos Mojave works on cheap linux-using laptops in vmware with some tweaking.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Allowing others to sell used/refurbished hardware is certainly less profitable than being allowed to sell new stuff yourself.
These refurbished are free to set up their own storefront and sell their product. No one is owed the traffic that Amazon provides.
This is tantamount to a craft brewer complaining he can't put his beer in Walmart's aisle coolers.
Not quite. Amazon has been pushing their platform for years as a safer alternative to eBay.
To use your example, this is tantamount to a craft brewer complaining he suddenly can't put his beer in Walmart's aisle coolers after Walmart encouraged him to put them there for years.
Apple reigns in the renegades.
Time for some trust-busting, Sherman Act style. Where's Theodore Roosevelt when we need him?
Yes, a person can set up their own storefront, there will always be ways for dedicated customers to find a supplier. However, as a supplier who, I don't know, wants to make a living, this kind of power to cut you off 99% of the market is really devastating to people for whom it isn't a hobby.
Where are they getting your product?
If they're stealing it, then report that to the police.
If you're selling it to someone, who then sells it to someone else, you get no say about that. Once you sell it to party 1, it is theirs, and they are able to sell it to party 2 if they want.
Hell, my employer loses 10s of thousands of dollars a month in fraud from people reselling our stuff on Amazon and Amazon refuses to do anything about it, even after we've told them repeatedly that our products are not authorized for sale on their site.
Sounds like your employer's products are underpriced if resellers can make a profit reselling them on Amazon. Either that or you need to do better inventory control.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Not quite... this is tantamount to a craft brewer complaining he suddenly can't put his beer in Walmart's aisle coolers after Walmart encouraged him to put them there for years.
We're talking about the market for secondhand Apple computers. I suspect the market for secondhand beer is substantially smaller.
You buy a computer, sell it, and now Apple and Amazon say you can't resell it?
No, you can still sell it. Apple & Amazon are saying you can't resell it on Amazon.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
How is that fraud?
If they're MISREPRESENTING a product or the terms of sale, that's fraud and possibly trademark infringement.
If they're STEALING your product to sell it, that's theft.
If they're RESELLING your product, that's perfectly legal.
Except that there is no monopoly here. These refurbishers are still free to market their product on any other platform up to and including eBay.
Except Amazon is now 49% of all online sales. That means, it's as big as all of the other retailers-- combined.
At 49% they have considerable monopoly power. Not as much as 100%, a complete monopoly, but not negligible.
Are you really saying that eBay is about to go under because Amazon?
Unless somebody stops Amazon: yes.
I'm pretty sure that Amazon gets to choose what products are listed in their store, just the same as any brick and mortar gets to choose what goes on their shelves.
You may be "pretty sure," but if they have monopoly power, then no, they don't. Or, they shouldn't: that is what antitrust laws are about, and a monopoly making a deal to only sell one vendor's (more expensive) product is exactly why we have antitrust laws. Read some history.
What are you advocating for here, compulsory product listings from randoms who switch out fans and disks?
I am pointing out that monopolies are bad and destroy the free market.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Not quite... this is tantamount to a craft brewer complaining he suddenly can't put his beer in Walmart's aisle coolers after Walmart encouraged him to put them there for years.
We're talking about the market for secondhand Apple computers. I suspect the market for secondhand beer is substantially smaller.
You're right: we're specifically talking about secondhand Apple computers. But the bigger picture is that Amazon specifically made a selling platform for people to sell anything. Heck; in TFA it says the guy ships his refurbs to an Amazon distribution facility to take advantage of their logistics. And so years after people set up these business, Amazon rips the entire thing from under their feet.
there is no problem here, plenty of other places that guy can sell his things to those who like that stuff.
Except there's not. Show me another online platform where a seller can ship a bulk load of good to a huge warehouse and have that platform take care of shipment and delivery. Amazon has a massive logistics infrastructure that sellers can take advantage of.
This is tantamount to a craft brewer complaining he can't put his beer in Walmart's aisle coolers.
No.... this is tantamount to officials from your local flea market coming up to your permanent booth that you've been selling from for years informing you "We're going to have to close you down, because you've been selling reconditioned brand X products, and we've signed an exclusivity deal with brand X that only businesses authorized by brand X officials can sell brand X products at this market.".
This SEEMS like Antitrust, because Amazon != Apple, and Amazon is in the business of allowing 3rd party sellers to sell pretty much any kind of product on their website, which only a few general exceptions.... this is Not normal like Walmart refusing to allow a 3rd party to stock goods in their store. The Amazon marketplace is more like eBay..... it would be like Apple signing a deal with eBay requiring eBay to remove/block listings for all Apple-branded products unless the seller is pre-approved with Apple as "permitted to sell".
There goes.... not only all the legitimate used/refurbished equipment, But generic replacements for things like Macbook power adapters, non-Apple-OEM adapters, lightning cables, thunderbolt cables, etc.
Strange..
Both Apple and Amazon started in garages..
I saw this kind of thing coming for years, on their platform. A long time ago, I used to do a lot of selling via the original "Amazon Auctions" service. It was more or less a direct eBay competitor, where any individual or business could start listing whatever used or new products they wanted to sell, with auction bidding.
Then, that disappeared and all of us were herded to Amazon Marketplace instead -- a service that demanded you list your items for sale at fixed prices, but did help you determine the optimal sale price at least. (It would tell you if identical products were currently listed by other sellers, and if your price was below all of theirs or not. If you were willing to sell at the lowest price on the site, they'd promote your listing to people as such.)
Then, I kept seeing Amazon revising the Marketplace, catering more and more towards big businesses and large volume sellers. You started having to create listings in kind of an inventory grid, that looked totally out of place for an individual selling a few items at a time as a side gig to make some extra cash.....
Finally, they added so many rules and restrictions on sellers, it became unreasonable for the "little guy" to even bother with it. (Essentially, you got kicked off Amazon as a seller if you didn't agree to give any buyer a full refund for just about ANY reason. They could buy your product, switch it out with a defective/worn out and dirty version of the same one, and ship it back for a full refund claiming "Product was not as advertised." They could claim your perfectly good product was non-functional and get irate with you as soon as you tried to email them back to help them troubleshoot it. Again, you had to give them the refund and eat your original shipping costs to mail it to them. And if this nonsense went on a few times within a couple month period? Your percentage of satisfaction dropped to below their acceptable levels, even if you happily handed out all those refunds and lost money trying to sell your stuff. And you'd risk suspension for not keeping up your metrics.)
Since then, they've been pedaling Chinese counterfeit versions of everything from shoes to iPhone chargers -- and only apologizing when someone like Apple catches them in the act, red-handed. Then, Amazon claims "We fixed the problem!" as they move on to the next high volume seller who wants to give it a try. So of COURSE they're gonna cater to Apple on this one. They don't want to get branded the bad guy....
what am i talking about?
The fact you can buy tons of counterfeit goods from amazon
https://www.forbes.com/sites/w...
but now not legitimately refurbished apple products.
Hopefully, Apple will continue to push on this, and get Amazon to stop selling all the shabby "Genuine Apple" Chargers that overvolt your laptop, Batteries that last 6 months, Adapters that are barely (or less) compatible (or just plain shoddy), cables that break, etc.
That has gotten SO bad that I don't recommend anyone looking for those items to look on Amazon. It really is THAT bad.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/a...
And still do. Lots of people use Amazon Logistics. You can be someone to ship via Amazon but not sell anything via Amazon. You just ship your product to Amazon, and Amazon warehouses it and ships it. All you have to do is tell Amazon where to ship your item to.
I've bought tons of stuff from eBay that were drop-shipped by Amazon in the end (complete with smile boxes). They didn't have Amazon on the label,
The only thing happening here is that Amazon isn't letting refurbishers sell on Amazon. They're still free to use their logistics services.
And yes, Amazon offers a full suite of services, including customs clearance for product. If it's new product, it needs to be palletized and labelled in a special way before Amazon will break it down into individual units.
The cynic in me also thinks that the brisk business of selling Apple or 3rd party replacement parts such as laptop screens as well as batteries and screens for iPhones is also going away, right?
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Anti-trust doesn't ban strategic partnerships, it mostly only bans price fixing; and even then only if it harms consumers.
Exclusive deals like this require a monopoly to be problematic, but it also would require use of the monopoly to force the deal; if Amazon had a monopoly on cell phone sales, and they used that monopoly to force Apple to do something that restricted access or raised prices, then that would be an anti-trust violation.
But Amazon doesn't have anything close to a monopoly on cell phone sales, and Apple is the one who wanted the deal! So it is not even close to problematic; no gray areas are even involved.
And anyways, if the refurbs move to ebay, the prices won't likely change. Without a price increase, consumers were not harmed.
called a cartel.
The word you were looking for was "strategic partnership."
A cartel is a horizontal partnership designed to fix prices or prevent access horizontally. Amazon is not a cell phone manufacturer, and this relationship doesn't change the prices of cell phones. It also doesn't prevent access by other cell phone manufacturers. So it isn't close to a cartel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A strategic partnership can be horizontal or vertical. Here, it is vertical; it is between the supplier of a good, and a retailer. While horizontal partnerships have to tread carefully around anti-trust law, vertical partnerships have very little exposure to that; they only have exposure when a monopoly is used to force some action that harms consumers by raising prices. Amazon is not a monopoly of any market, they're only a market leader; and here they're not using their position to force Apple to do anything. It is the opposite; Apple is such a big presence in the cell phone market that they finally were able to get Amazon to do what they wanted!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
As long as the cell phone carriers are all selling phones directly to customers, and most cell phones are being sold that way, claiming some sort of "monopoly" by a retailer would get laughed out of court.