Hacker News Reader

Comment by SavantIdiot | Hacker News Reader

> It's the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45% in fees to the sellers

I'm glad this was stated. It is new insight for me.

I got in the habit of only buying from the actual manufacturer store on Amazon, thinking it was benefiting the company. For example: buying Bose speakers on the Amazon Bose site, instead of the bose.com. Now I realize that Bose loses a lot of money going through amazon. I should just be going to the bose.com store and cutting out amazon. I never really need anything I buy online "tomorrow".

The only thing I've run into is the vendor site saying out of stock, but the vendor -store- on Amazon in stock. E.g., I bought a PixHawk4 flight contgroller from HolyBro. The HolyBro site was out of stock, but Amazon's HolyBro store had it in stock. /bangs head on wall/ I understand why, it's just... weird.

View on HN

> I should just be going to the bose.com store and cutting out amazon. I never really need anything I buy online "tomorrow".

That’s another point of the article. Amazon forces Bose not to sell at a lower price anywhere else. So the price you pay at Bose is also the 30-40% Prime premium that Amazon charges. Although you are right that premium goes to the manufacturer as opposed to Amazon but overall a significant loss to all customers prime or non-prime

In this specific example it’s probably the opposite. Bose is very good at locking down their supply chain to make sure no one is selling their headphones below list. They always have been. They probably imposed this restriction on Amazon even if now Amazon wants it too.

The fact that Bose has to set their retail prices to include the Amazon surcharge makes it an even better example.

If you buy the headphones at a brick and mortar store, you’re still forced to pay the Amazon shipping surcharge, even if the money is not going to Amazon. This puts brick and mortar stores at an unfair disadvantage, and it is directly traceable to Amazon’s anticompetitive behavior.

You are aware that if you buy headphones at a brick and mortar store, 30-40% of the price goes to [retail store] as well because they have warehouses, distributors, storefront rent, and staff salaries to pay right?

The point is that they can't compete on that percentage. That's what makes it anticompetetive.

Steam is doing a similar thing. It's wrong there too.

I disagree with Steam being wrong. It's kinda special situation where product also includes distribution on their store. So I consider justified of them having same pricing.

Now, I'm not saying that this should be apply to copies distributed via other channels. Just to those redeemable on Steam.

To my understanding, Steam does it to copies on all channels.

In this specific example. It is Bose that keep their pricing. And it is likely Bose and Amazon have deals that are not of the same percentage as other sellers. Just like Apple and Amazon's deal.

Reading the article it wasn't clear to me why exactly they couldn't sell elsewhere cheaper. That seems to be an important detail. Is there some fine print stating if you're 'caught' selling cheaper elsewhere you lose the buy button? This wasn't clear to me from the article.

They will exclude you from the "buy box", which "effectively" locks you out. (That's how I got it from thr article)

Seems like it's both. Bose wouldn't let Amazon sell below list, and Amazon won't let Bose charge an Amazon premium.

Supply chain is the wrong word here… Retail prices? What is the generic word for the same practice which is used by other global brands too.

What you get by shopping at Amazon isn't just the pricing, it's the convenience not to enter your details again and again and again for the sake of getting a single item. I'd love if someone could solve it and instead of 'sign up here' I'd get 'pay with superDuperSingleSolutionForAllECommerce' and it's done. Maybe I should ask for VC money and start working on it?..

The very problem that PayPal solves, and why Elon now builds rockets (and Google Pay, and Pay with Amazon, to come full circle). However, inevitably the vendor wants your details in their own database and now you're back to having to interact with their terrible UX, just with the benefit of a breach no longer exfiltrating your credit card info

That's not even mentioning the network effect, where a service has to have enough adoption or demand to "force" other merchants to accept it

I understand the vendor wants my details,I'd want it too, but the reality is that the buyer is voting for convenience and going to Amazon instead. Paypal kind of does it,but only to a degree-I'd love wider spectrum of payment methods+ some flexibility on what the vendor can/can't do with my data,similar to how app permissions work on Android. If it's some 'local brooms and stick', they only get my address for delivery,but if it's some specialist store with fountains of knowledge,then yes,sure,send me texts,emails and so on.

Pay pal doesn’t solve the low transaction friction problem at all. They’re less convenient than entering credit card info over and over again. The last time I logged into my account, their site was half-down.

On top of that, you could fill a large book with descriptions of esoteric con jobs that only work on PayPal.

Elon builds rockets because of a well-timed exit, followed by lots of hard work and success building Tesla.

I don’t know when you last used PayPal but it is an incredibly convenient way to pay on vendor websites. I use it 75% of the time I do online shopping.

I would almost always prefer to click “pay with PayPal” than start some new account or fill in details on a given vendors site.

I would go so far as to say that if large enough retailers who already have storefronts were savvy enough, PayPal could make Amazon obsolete.

Amazon is more than minimal-friction payment, though. It’s also discovery.

I don’t like their discovery, personally. I know I don’t represent the average shopper- but I generally know what I want before I buy it online or I am using a specialty retailer for discovery.

And a sensible history of sales, search across it, and find out how sold me what.

I too, on usps.com, on domain websites, on subscriptions, basically everywhere non-Google properties. On Google I use the card itself, because Chrome has all of my cards saved in.

Also their return policy. I recently purchased something from Amazon rather then the producer's website because they only offered a 2 week return policy plus I'd need to be responsible for the shipping.

I know how returns work with Amazon. If I buy directly, are they going to give me the run around if there's a problem?

The return policy also leads to inflated prices. Since there is (effectively) no way to dispute a buyer's return, sellers must eat the cost when it happens--and they're out fees already charged in the purchase transaction.

The result is exactly as you'd expect: the items sold by third party sellers on amazon have a large markup just to produce break-even margins. Source: my wife, who ran a business including third-party selling on Amazon for a while.

> no way to dispute a buyer's return

This is another hidden benefit of shopping on Amazon: they see my (egregiously long) shopping history. I'm sure they have some risk profile on me that suggests I'm not buying and returning a bunch of stuff to rip off sellers.

If I say something some pack of kids underwear is the wrong size, or a $15 LED light didn't arrive, or a pair of boots needs to get exchanged, it's dealt with in maybe 60 seconds of clicking on their site.

There's a bunch of liquidator/clearance sites promising lower prices with the caveat of "all sales are final".

My guess is that people buying high-end headphones are just not comfortable with such setup.

Of course they will.

I bought a product from a seller on their website once, but mistakenly ordered the wrong colour. Upon reaching out to them, I was told I had to ship it back myself (at a multiple of the item's cost), or buy a new one.

Meanwhile the product was listed on Amazon for the same price. Did I also mention that when I ordered the product initially, it came from an Amazon facility? Why does the seller get to benefit from Amazon's logistics but I get stiffed on the return?

I’ve found Amazon’s return policy to be extremely unpredictable. In some cases, there’s no problem. In others, the seller says I need to pay return shipping to some random factory shipping dock in China (at a large multiple of the price I paid for the item).

Also someone you trust to intercede if things go wrong. Who knows what happens when I buy from some site I've never heard of and don't get my stuff or have problems with it. I prefer to deal with large, well-known sites for this reason.

Isn’t this the same as “pay with PayPal/Amazon pay/etc”?

> Isn’t this the same as “pay with PayPal/Amazon pay/etc”?

There is always the issue of how well the integration performs. It is not uncommon for merchants software to get confused in the process and ship your order to the billing address or for other things to go wrong. When that happens, you now have to deal with customer service of varying quality.

In most cases, the purchase decision is easier for me to make on Amazon than anywhere else. I've been a customer since almost the first days and while I can count a lot of minor irritations, there isn't anything better.

I’ve seen a good number of sites recently where you can pay with your Amazon account or PayPal. Also with browsers auto filling everything these days including credit card numbers, I haven’t found it too troublesome purchasing one-offs from stores online.

I entered my credit card on a small online store, they are legit, but got hacked and didn't even know. Months later I got three Netflix subscriptions and a few hundreds 'Uber Eats' billings on my credit card invoice. Got the money back but wasted a lot of energy.

Yeah exactly. It's the vetting, not the actual entering of information.

Klarna does this quite well here in Sweden. Almost too well, it often loads an Iframe with my information filled in already on a checkout page of a random store, without any input from me.

Wasn't there a data leak with Klarna?

> it’s the convenience not to enter your details again...

With more and more adoption of ApplePay and GooglePay to power the checkout experience this advantage might away..

On safari you’ll see the Apple Pay button, which automatically fills in your details on sites which offer it. It’s super convenient when it’s offered.

Apple Pay and PayPal when integrates properly can handle it all - address, billing, etc.

But most sites simply tack it on at the end as a payment option and ask for an account, address, etc beforehand.

I don't notice because Bitwarden takes care of entering my details for me.

The rule of thumb is simple: more middlemen equals lower share going to the person actually making the thing.

I had this revelation too when I started buying food from farmers direct and was surprised at the low prices. Its kinda obvious, when you think about it.

Eh,that's not entirely true. The farmer has to box up their produce in retail sized bits instead of shipping a truck sized load for someone else to do that. They also have to pay someone to man a store, handle returns, etc.

Same deal for online retail. You've gotta have a warehouse, someone to box orders, a website to take orsers, customer service, etc. This all costs money and Amazon has the scale to do it all a lot cheaper than you can.

Except for the fact that many of the large supermarket chains have the farmer put the vegetables into the boxes that are used in displays. Even more the farmers have to buy the boxes and are charged a rental fee. The world of supermarkets and how they deal with their suppliers is truly screwed up.

> The farmer has to box up their produce in retail sized bits instead of shipping a truck sized load for someone else to do that. They also have to pay someone to man a store, handle returns, etc.

We're able to get fresh milk from a local farm. It's (literally) sold ten steps from where it's milked, you can hear - and smell - the cows in the building.

It comes from a chilled stainless steel vessel with a spigot, you bring your own bottle and serve yourself, and as for payment processing ... there's an honesty box.

That’s why “farmer direct” often has you doing the bulk of the pick work.

Never heard or seen that here. They still have their pickers (and butcher), they just don't have an intermediary come take it at prenegotiated prices which then sells it to some grocer, they just sell it direct in their own shop. Meat is frozen, the rest fresh and on shelves.

Or the least practical packaging as with a CSA.

Probably depends upon how exactly it's done. Our local farms let us come out and pick our own food. They weigh it at the end and charge us based on that. It's cheaper than anywhere else. And fun for the kids.

> more middlemen equals lower share going to the person actually making the thing.

Most people forget that the transaction might not have taken place were it not for said middleman.

I would be surprised if Amazon had the same non-negotiable-take-it-or-leave-it terms with Bose as it has with others.

Which raises an obvious asymmetry: Amazon makes no guarantee that it is not offering more favourable terms for bigger suppliers – and although mere speculation, I would be surprised if that didn’t go on, because I seem to remember traditional retailers doing similar things.

I’m not saying this is good or bad, just pointing out that with all retail there has been almost a phase transition once the supplier is a household name, and the dynamics change almost to the point where retailers would offer their products at cost price or even a loss just to make sure that their customers could buy the household name through them.

> I would be surprised if Amazon had the same non-negotiable-take-it-or-leave-it terms with Bose as it has with others.

I'm not sure what, but there's a story on lower end, too.

A lot of crap on Amazon is from no-name brands like MAKNO and TURBLEX which don't even exist outside of Amazon. If I sell $19.99 TURBLEX kitchen knives on Amazon and the $11.87 MAKNO version through AliExpress, then I've not violated the policy.

> I never really need anything I buy online "tomorrow".

Gifts generally have strict deadlines. Sadly, Amazon has stopped offering any shipping speed guarantees -- there is no longer even an option in the purchase flow. It will get there when it gets there.

They won't refund if they miss their own self-imposed shipping deadlines, either.

I think that might be regional?

Prime customers get pretty much anything delivered in two days.

I still haven't figured out how they do it. I ordered two obscure oil filters, and they were delivered within a day. I think they had driver go into a local automotive store, and buy them?

Anyhoo, they were cheaper than the store price.

(I don't hate Amazon. I'm pretty amazed how effient they are. I never thought I would pay for Prime, but that MGM buy was brilliant. Local retailers need to up their game. I'm getting tired of being quoted a cheaper price online, just to pay more if I go in to buy. Automotive parts stores are notoriorious for this behavior.)

> Prime customers get pretty much anything delivered in two days.

So? That has nothing to do with my comment.

Amazon used to let you select a shipping speed! The benefit of Prime was that two-day shipping was free, not that it made anything any faster.

You can no longer do this. Amazon will tell you how long they plan to take to deliver the item. Do you want it faster than that? Suck it up. Did it, in fact, take longer? Suck it up.

Two day shipping? That sounds amazing.

In New Zealand it can easily take 2 months for packages to arrive from overseas, if at all. In Taiwan I could buy locally-produced electronics and had it delivered in less than a week, and I thought myself lucky - but overseas packages got lost twice (maybe 10% of the time) due to not having a Chinese address written on them.

The long shipping times, combined with moving house periodically to keep a low rent, mean my buying habits usually involve splurging on $$$ of online shopping once a year or two.

Asking girlfriend/parents to forward parcels from Taiwan/France delays it even more. I'm still waiting for my Christmas 2020 present: "Oh, I'll just put something else in!" Friends have been even worse: some belt clip cases would only ship to the US, and a friend there still hasn't sent them on (after buying them in 2014). Similar story with a magnetic iPhone cable from Korea (2016). I've basically given up on ever getting those parcels.

Also import fees are all over the place: on Amazon, a Sabrent Rocket Q 8TB SSD costs $1399 + $992 fees (USD) to ship to NZ. The price to Australia is $1399 + $216 fees. I could fly to Brisbane and back for cheaper than that!

Some products (e.g. MacBook Pro A1494 battery for A1398) can't even be shipped at all: OWC and iFixit won't send lithium-ion batteries overseas due to federal regulations. The third-party knockoffs that are available in NZ are faulty, and broke my logic board. Trying to get a new battery is an ongoing struggle for me, and has been since I noticed the swelling in September 2020. I can only dream of the convenience of 2 day shipping.

Amazon has completely abandoned most of the state of Montana as far as "Prime Two-Day Shipping" goes. I've fought with them for over 6 months now, I ended up getting a 125% refund of my Prime Subscription for the year. Still didn't solve anything, so they told me to email "jeff@amazon.com". I did, got a handful of "executives" who gave me the run around about COVID and shipping delays (which is all horse shit, I provided my order history where Amazon switched my shipping method to "UPS Ground" about 20 months ago, and it takes 5-6-7 days to arrive AFTER shipment. Used to be "UPS 2-Day".

They literally told me they wouldn't reply to my emails anymore. It's total crap, they are using the Prime subs of rural customers to pay for same-day delivery in the cities, and hoping we won't notice.

So, yes, it is regional, but I have not even seen the words "Prime Two-Day" on any Amazon checkout in well over a year.

Do I have this correct?

- You complained to customer service about shipping speeds to a low population area

- Customer service refunds your Prime Subscription with a bonus ABOVE your purchase price

- You emailed jeff@amazon.com and got it escalated to Amazon higher-ups, who take the time to address your concerns (even if unsatisfactory)

After all of that you're upset at Amazon? What's the outcome you're expecting here? I can't even get the first thing you got in that list from any local retailer.

> What's the outcome you're expecting here?

Presumably for Amazon to stop advertising Prime 2-day shipping to market segments that it won't be able to deliver on that promise to.

That seemed clear from the sentence "they are using the Prime subs of rural customers to pay for same-day delivery in the cities."

- Amazon Prime 2-Day Shipping delivered in 2-days almost 100% of the time from 2009-2019. My address didn't change in 2019, nothing, but the service got way way worse. I am simply asking for the delivery times to go back to what they were.

- Customer Service refunded 25% of my subscription one time, and then about a week later a sympathetic supervisor/manager reviewed my delivery history and agreed it was sub-par and gave me a 100% refund. I was very honest with him that I had already received 25%, he didn't care. This has been the only person at Amazon who has understood my issue, but he was powerless to fix it.

- The higher-ups did not try to address my issue. They tried to gaslight me into believing that I didn't have a problem. They kept going back to the "orders take time to process before shipment", which I had explained over and over again that was not my issue. Once my item ships, it takes easily twice as long as it used to arrive.

Lastly, they tried to blame the carrier (usually UPS). Which is also BS, I am able to purchase shoes from Zappos (an Amazon company, BTW), and they arrive THE NEXT DAY. When I pointed that out to them, that is when they told me they would no longer be responding to my emails. I completely understand it is more expensive to ship packages to rural America, but I'm not the one advertising "Prime 2-Day Shipping" to anywhere in the lower 48 states. I just want them to be honest with me and tell me straight-up that I'm not worth a Prime membership anymore.

I mean, I am guilty of putting things off too. But my mother's birthday happens on the same date every year.

> They won't refund if they miss their own self-imposed shipping deadlines

If they miss their shipping deadline, just select the return reason as defective, or item "not as described" or whatever, and it will let you return it for full refund.

Don’t do this, it unfairly dings the seller for something that isn’t their fault. The item isn’t actually defective.

Yeah but what's the alternative? Unfairly ding me instead of the business? Not sure I should be forced to accept that.

I need something by date X, Amazon says they will deliver by X-1, they actually deliver on X+2, so I buy from a physical store on X because I still need it on X, and now I have an extra item and it's not my fault.

I mean, if someone here is an Amazon manager and can convince their engineers to add an "shipping delayed" option to the list for free return reasons, I'm all for it, and I'll use it.

You didn't get dinged, you got the item you ordered. You should contact Amazon about shipping issues since they're responsible for it. Also they don't guarantee delivery dates, and it's reasonable that shipments will be delayed occasionally.

Returning for the wrong reason just creates more work while you end up with nothing, and creates waste as the returns usually end up in the trash while the seller loses money and reputation for something they can't control.

Amazon does have guaranteed delivery dates. Almost always in my experience (I live in a top 5 metro area in the US). Sometimes they provide an estimate and it will be listed as such. But anytime they say, "Delivery date: specific date", then that is a guarantee.

I don't want to return the item. I want a refund for the shipping. The item wasn't defective. The shipping was.

Often when something's delayed I end up buying from a physical store at the time I actually need it, and then have to return the Amazon-purchased, late-delivered duplicate.

In Australia, Amazon still offers strict shipping speed guarantees. For Prime members, next day delivery is free, including Saturday and Sunday delivery.

If you order before 3pm, same day delivery is available for $9.

> Gifts generally have strict deadlines.

If you're a procrastinator, yes. About 10 years ago I started buying winter holiday gifts in August. :) But only for my partner.

Did she ever complain about receiving her gifts several months too early?

> I should just be going to the bose.com store and cutting out amazon.

There is one significant negative with going direct, which is the fact that online stores are often hacked. Amazon has yet to be hacked (afaik) so leaving your data with Bose is a higher risk than with Amazon.

> I should just be going to the bose.com store and cutting out amazon

I'll do that if these websites will stop assaulting me with GDPR popups 5 seconds into the site and then newsletter popups 10 seconds into the site, require me to search 10 different coupon websites to find 49 fake "no coupon needed" coupons and 1 real coupon that actually gets me the same price as listed Amazon, and then requiring me to register an account with email (or in some cases $#$*& SMS verification before making a purchase, and then unsubscribe from the goddamn newsletter after making the purchase.

Until they can learn to not annoy me, I'll buy from Amazon, and they will pay the price.

Oh and also, pay for return shipping. Amazon does.

I would like more information on that number. It doesn't sound tenable as presented for physical goods.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com