No - the obvious play here is for Amazon to undercut the original vendors by 15%, sell at a loss until all of the sales go through Amazon, and then pressure the vendors into cutting their pricing and becoming suppliers subservient to and dependent on Amazon, allowing Amazon to become a middle-man dipping into the revenue stream.
But then brands could buy their own products back for cheaper and just get a real life infinite money glitch?
It looks like a good idea, this works better for refrigerators than pizza.
Don’t worry. If Amazon decided to undercut by selling at a loss, they would absolutely put it in their ToS that retailers cannot exploit this loophole and they would sue to enforce their ToS.
These manufacturers never signed any ToS, and the most Amazon could do to retaliate would be to de-list the product that they never asked to be listed in the first place.
When the manufacturer buys their own product via Amazon’s service they would become subject to their TOS as a buyer.
I guess they'll just have to use some service to buy for them instead. ;)
Retailers could put into their TOS that they are exempt from those clauses when buying things bought from them.
I like this. “By purchasing from
us you agree that you cannot enforce your ridiculous terms of service and if you try, you also owe us a pony.”
This actually happened to some restaurants who found their service on DoorDash. The restaurant owners were able to make a fine profit out of DoorDash’s arbitrage scheme.
It's worth pointing out that it only worked because doordash scraped their menu incorrectly (using AI maybe?) and used the price of a plain pizza for specialty pizzas. Also it was a trial period where they waved all their usual fees.
It is a data play. Which shops/product lines/customer segments can we take over profitably.
This should lead to anti trust.
How about a DMCA notice for Amazon accessing and using the websites of the actual sellers against their terms? If we're not going to get rid of that law it should at least be applied fairly.