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Comment by krater23 | Hacker News Reader

When Amazon can buy stuff on your own website thats out of stock for wholesale prices without your knowledge, it's time to get your shit together. Your shop software is at least misconfigured.

When you really lose trust from your partners because officially announced things Amazon does, like adding your products to their shop system, then your partners have no trust in you at all.

When you don't want that Amazon sells your products, cancel the orders you get from them. Add a link to the real shop and a explaination why to the cancel mail.

It could all be so easy. And this are just the things everyone could do. Delivering doubled prices to AI crawlers would be a advanced thing.

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"Amazon announced it" in some back alley press report and certainly not in a proactive outreach way to tell these folks they were listing their products. At the very least there's a trademark issue here because these sellers in no way gave Amazon permission to reuse the images and descriptions of their products.

If I announce in my local paper (you get to guess which one) that you'll be throwing a party outside your house, I don't think you'll be on the side of "just tell them to go away and my neighbors will totally understand it wasn't really me"

Reminiscent of the Vogon plans for the highway through Arthur Dent's house being on display in Alpha Centauri for 50 Earth years.

> “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.

Using images of something you are selling is nominative use of the trademark. Whether their actual listings contains something that falls outside the nominative use test I don't know.

But at the end of the day you can't stop someone from reselling your stuff no matter how much you hate it, that has been clearly established by the First Sale Doctrine.

> If I announce in my local paper (you get to guess which one) that you'll be throwing a party outside your house, I don't think you'll be on the side of "just tell them to go away and my neighbors will totally understand it wasn't really me"

The comparison here would be that you are selling tickets to a party outside your house, which I don't think anyone would bat an eye at if the local newspaper announces?

>there's a trademark issue here because these sellers in no way gave Amazon permission to reuse the images and descriptions of their products

Good luck claiming damages with an "and then I sold more of my things at the advertised price" kind of argument.

> When Amazon can buy stuff on your own website thats out of stock for wholesale prices without your knowledge, it's time to get your shit together. Your shop software is at least misconfigured.

I really wish the article had dug into that more, because it made very little sense.

> Delivering doubled prices to AI crawlers would be a advanced thing.

Doubling prices to the AI now means you're product shows up twice as expensive on Amazon. Nobody is comparing Amazon to your site directly, they're comparing your product on Amazon to the next item on Amazon. Now instead of this person going to Google to find your product, they're skipping your product entirely.

That is, if I go to Amazon and search "Krater23 Widget" and don't find it, I might search elsewhere. If I find it and see it's outrageously priced, I'm probably no longer buying it.

If you find something on amazon you want to buy (and if it's made by a real company and not by some random string of letters) you should always check the actual company's website no matter what amazon's price is. I've found that amazon often has prices that are much higher than if you buy directly.

Honestly, higher prices on Amazon are worth it in some cases. Amazon fulfillment (at least where I live) is far more reliable than some of the brands I buy from, but getting the product within a week versus [gestures at the future] is worth it in some cases.

Take the soap I buy from Blueland. A spray cleaner costs $2.25/tablet direct and $2.40 from Amazon. I'll basically get a free month of cleaner buying direct. But:

1. I have to pay $5 for shipping if I don't buy enough at once. I don't want to buy a year of soap all at once to get free shipping.

2. I know exactly what date it'll arrive if I order on Amazon. Probably before I'll need it. Ordering direct, it sometimes takes weeks before it even leaves the warehouse, with no estimate.

I'm sure I could be being more efficient, but I'd rather spend the extra few bucks sometimes so I don't have to worry about running out of stuff or try to predict my needs months out.

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