How the hell is this legal? Who do I donate to in order to start the ball rolling on making it illegal?
Amazon's policy makes total sense. If you discover an item on its site, benefit from its reviews, specs and descriptions, and then last minute, go buy at Newegg or Walmart or wherever because its $20 cheaper, how does that help Amazon? Amazon would rather have you "discover" items that it sells at the lowest price, and thus lowest probability of you going to an alternative store. I don't like Amazon's massive dominance but I can't blame them for directing you to items you are most likely to buy from them.
Amazon promoting products that Amazon is most likely to sell is NOT "anticompetitive behavior."
Every company seeks to do things to benefit themselves. Do you oppose them all?
Amazon is obviously free to show the best deals on Amazon. That's not at all what this is about, and you know it.
The OP suggested lawmakers should somehow make it illegal for Amazon to offer preferential treatment -- prominently featuring their items -- to suppliers that don't charge less to other retailers. Every store does the exact same thing -- and this is GOOD for consumers. When your supermarket puts Coca-Cola on sale (because Coke paid the supermarket), it brings out extra bottles and places them at the front of the store and makes it easy to buy. Sure you can still buy Pepsi, it's back somewhere on aisle 12 where it always is.
Haha you can't even pretend to have misunderstood the situation to this extent. QED on the bad faith. Amazon DGAF what percentages other retailers get. How would they even know those? They are penalizing suppliers for the prices that consumers pay at other retailers. So long as Amazon are allowed to do this, they'll just keep slowly increasing their cut. What's 34% today will be 40% next year, etc.
Although I made the initial mistake, I'm pretty sure you just piled on with more bullshit. I'm rather confident Amazon has a good read on what its suppliers charge other vendors, just Wal-Mart and Target do in the B&M space, and that they do very much care.
> Even though some competing platforms charge much lower fees, if Steve lowers his prices on another shopping site, Amazon’s algorithms punish him
I think in most cases, this "fair-pricing" bot kicks in because a seller has instead inflated prices on Amazon to squeeze more profit from Amazon customers. Amazon thinks that such tactics diminish the value of their marketplace, so they apply this crude heuristic as a way to disincentivize it.
So to answer your question: it's good for you, because if you're shopping on Amazon you can reasonably expect that you're getting good prices (at least in theory). This leads to a virtuous cycle which feeds the beast: people buy more stuff from Amazon, Amazon can operate more efficiently, you get lower prices.
Steve is griping against Amazon, but quite possibly he just has a bad business, and the core of his problem is that he can't compete effectively with other sellers on Amazon. But to him, Amazon seems like the problem because he feels like he's between a rock and a hard place.
But, hypothetical harm aside, Amazon (FBA especially) is currently a really good deal for sellers in terms of shipping costs and access to customers.
Presumably for the same reason(s) that you want an unelected corporate bureaucrat in Seattle making these decisions instead.
If a committee of Senators, on the other hand, makes a declaration -- Amazon cannot sell Chinese goods cheaper than American-made alternatives -- or maybe, delivery times to rural areas must match those to cities -- then everybody loses, and you can't opt out of that.
You can ignore a commitee of senators at any time by voting them out.
Do board votes or shareholder votes not count ?
Alternatively
"Why would you possibly want your democratic representative in Washington, or committee of such, regulating markets to work in favour of the average citizen?"
Amazon promotes items that it sells for the lowest price. Your local supermarket sends out a flyer every week with all the items it has put on sale, then makes sure those items are easy to find in the store. It's the same thing. Or maybe you want Senators to have final approval over supermarket flyers too.
When Amazon can force a "lowest price" the cost of Amazon's service always gets passed to me, and the lowest possible price is higher.
In context of article with specific point to make, it sounds awful. But think about it: if e.g. Marriott starts selling rooms for $100 on their website, but $120 on any other site such as Bookings or Expedia or whatever, isn't this ALSO something you as a consumer would get peeved at? Wouldn't you immediately demand that they put a stop to that insidious practice, and regulate some law that forces Marriott to give same low prices to everybody? :->
I'm mad it's the other way around, the cheapest price should always be direct. If someone wants to "add value" let them justify the mark up.
If Steve wanted to sell through a traditional retailer, he would wholesale to them and they would set the price to whatever they want.
Amazon's model is different, but not really. Imagine Steve could come in to negotiate a wholesale price with an Amazon rep.
Amazon would say: "Steve, we want to have the lowest prices in the marketplace. We checked 10 other stores, and the lowest price we found is $10. So, if we make a deal today, that would have to be our retail price. Now, working backwards, if we subtract our profit margin and expenses, the best wholesale price we would buy at from you is $3. Take it or leave it."
Also, what are these competing platforms charging much lower fees? In any case, if you're not profitable selling at the lowest price on Amazon, you don't have to sell on Amazon. You can go to these other platforms, or set up your own website. And the reason you won't want to do that is because actually Amazon offers a lot of value both to sellers and customers.
The whole spirit of market capitalism is "players are allowed to be relentlessly self-interested but we rely on competition to keep them in check." MFCs clearly undermine competition and therefore undermine the very foundation of our economy.
Discover typically charges the merchant lower fees than AmEx does when you checkout at a retailer. However the merchant is forbidden by it's agreements with AmEx (and Visa, and Mastercard) from giving you a discount if you use Discover card.
They do make about half their revenue off swipes, but I wouldn't describe Amex as low fee to cardholders. Their flagship card has an annual fee of $695.
What lender are you thinking of that makes Amex look low-fee?