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Nationalize Amazon.
Mark the employees government employees with appropriate benefits. Use the unreasonable profits to fund UBI
Yes and no. Some are actually not reachable outside Amazon. Some tell you they only work over Amazon. Some offer only Paypal as payment method, which I don’t use. Some only offer some Chinese payment methods that I’m not going to use, either. Or their non-Amazon shop is only available in Chinese. And some have suspicious online presences where i think it is good to have Amazon in between, in case they do something fishy.
I’m the opposite. If they don’t offer PayPal or another common payment option I’ll usually not use it. So many sites have terrible security and I don’t feel like having my cc info stolen because it wasn’t properly handled.
Especially for a one time purchase not something I’d get monthly
I’ve done shipping for a company that sold direct and through partners, and a lot of times they actually make a better margin with Amazon just because of shipping costs. Amazon makes it so much cheaper to ship that even though they take a bigger margin it still saves the company money. Free shipping is a lie, it just means the company eats it and averages it into the price.
I had a very annoying interaction with this once. I won’t make the company because I’m willing to chalk it up to a one off and I don’t want the message to be “Amazon good” lol. They were able to ship something faster than Amazon, but it never arrived. I reached out about it and theor excuse was basically that they forgot. It sounded like it was a case of someone was supposed to physically move something and it got missed somehow. They gave me a refund for the shipping cost in the end, which was nice, because I told them the entire reason I used them was that they could get it there faster than Amazon but they didn’t.
Amazon is so big. It’s just become this system that we interact with that’s difficult to avoid. It’s frustrating because while that little mishap with a smaller retailer was annoying to me (a gift showed up late for a gift exchange), if it means that the workers don’t need to fucking piss in bottles then it’s worth it.
Sadly, I offen see stuff being more expensive on the company website…
Me too! Why is that?
Is Amazon’s shipping/ distribution system that much better?
Does Amazon require sellers, as a condition of listing on Amazon, to always have their cheapest price listed on Amazon?
I do note that, especially lately, I find a lot of stuff significantly cheaper on Ebay that Amazon.
Does Amazon require sellers, as a condition of listing on Amazon, to always have their cheapest price listed on Amazon?
I think, that is true… and should be forbidden.
I want something like amazon as a public utility. But much better, Amazon is such shit as a website today. And with 0% take from producer. And make online banking and free instant wire transfer as easy as using paypal, but without paying a rent to plutocrats. Two factor authentication using phone is a plague.
I dont think people realize how easy this would be if we actually made our politicians do their jobs. If we did this 5 years ago, think of the infrastructure we could have funded with the proceeds. Screw a giant worthless penis space ship, we could have funded schools to a crazy degree or made health care work.
We could do this with most major websites tbh, i was thinking “nationalize social media” like a decade ago
Just make it non-profit, all proceeds are to be used only to pay the workers well and make the service better. Otherwise you get political wrangling what it’s used for or pressure to make more profit. Just print more money lol.
Stop using Google as a verb. “Search” company name.
- If you stay in/get into the habit of searching for products using google, inflation will just keep happening and amazon will give them a kickback. (Google charge for the higher search results).
- They save and use your data, you are effectively an unpaid employee of google (it is how google ‘work’ - they also are the reason you are often paying more. The best way to do it is
- Find a cool product (if it happens to be on amazon, so be it).
- Search the name of that company on Duckduckgo, or qwant or many other non data collecting engines that don’t have a kickback agreement with seller, or just a lower rate.
- 10% (or any) code is the reason they are selling product higher. Some people buy at the higher price (presumably most) so why would they care if people find the 10% discount code (advertisement on search engines) to get the product for the normal price?
- Company avoids paying both amazon and google, - it’s not really “losing a 25% margin” unless you believe that they don’t pass the fees on to the customer (YOU).
- You avoid giving money to all the c**ts but more importantly, you pay the proper item value, or you help competition grow.
The old way (2007ish - 2026) is the shit way.
Genericize the word google so their trademark becomes useless. Google everything on duckduckgo
not going to work sadly
Step 6: Product comes shipped in an Amazon box using Amazon couriers :facepalm:
At least you tried
happened to me a few times too 😅 I guess it’s not worth for a company to have multiple different shipping procedures if most of their orders are via Amazon anyway
They usually offer free shipping if you buy past a certain minimum as well, with a handful offering free shipping on everything.
Amazon already exploits it at a lower floor of $35 so they can price everything at 34.99 to get you to buy more stuff.
If Amazon’s algorithms detect that a seller is offering the same item cheaper elsewhere (including on the seller’s own e-commerce site, then Amazon will immediately strip the listing of the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons. The algorithm will also hide or suppress the listing from search results. And for repeated or severe violations (especially related to price-gouging), Amazon may suspend or terminate selling privileges completely for sellers selling cheaper off site. And they call this “Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy”. F- Amazon.
This is one of the main reasons why many indie shops are doing so many coupons these days. Price obfuscation is not only a marketing strategy but also a genuine safety one.
Ugh. Fuck Amazon
Source?
A few sources around, here’s one from https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2024/03/13/understanding-amazons-alleged-anticompetitive-practice:
the FTC claims Amazon punishes third-party sellers for offering lower prices on other websites.[2]
Select Competitor – Featured Offer Disqualification (SC-FOD).[6] SC-FOD is an algorithm that prevents a seller from “winning the Buy Box” if it finds that the seller sells that product for less on a Select Competitor’s website.[7]
References for 2, 6, 7:
[2] Complaint at 85, FTC v. Amazon, W.D. Wash. Case No. 2:23-cv-01495-JHC (Nov. 2, 2023).
Thanks
While I support the intent, I’ve personally found that:
- Half the time the company either doesn’t exist off Amazon or uses Amazon for their order fulfillment.
- See #1
- Price frequently ends up being mostly the same. I’m not sure if this is due to something that Amazon forces on companies, so they may have no choice.
- Shipping ends up being expensive and is definitely not in 2 days, more like 6-10.
- Spot on and perhaps still worth it for this reason alone.
I just try to buy what I can locally and avoid the larger companies that are all pretty disgusting. While Bezos is definitely the richest and most evil, make no mistake that the other companies would be in his place in a heartbeat if they could.
Or - as a Canadian - they DO have an online store but it doesn’t ship here :-(
Yeah, I was going to say the advice in the meme in kind of dumb. I can order the same product on Amazon or the website of the product, but on Amazon returns are super easy, shipping is overnight, and I am not dealing with some weird 3rd party payment system.
Now if the product is made locally at a small business, and is similarly priced, then absolutely, that’s my preferred way to do things.
Yes, I don’t ever shop with Amazon, but they use their massive anti-competitive scale to be the most convenient option.
I simply reject that convenience, because fuck Amazon. Fuck billionaires. Fuck executives. And fuck shills.
I’ll just pay $10 more and wait an extra week for my toaster. This is nothing compared to shopping in the 90s.
3a it shows up in an Amazon box delivered by an Amazon truck.
Or you go to their site and they just direct you to Amazon – and not because they’re lazy, to sell on Amazon you need to agree that you won’t offer the product cheaper than Amazon anywhere else, including on your own site.
And, that’s even assuming you can go to the manufacturer’s site. Often instead you’ll just get a facebook page, or maybe not even that.
I hate when I go to a manufacturers site and navigate to “products,” filter the list and find what I want, and on the product page it gives a description, no “add to cart” button but a “buy on amazon” button.
Like. FFUUUUCCCKKKKKKK.
[image of a computer leaving a broken window of a high-rise building]
Yeah. Especially if it’s a very specific version of a product you want, and they just link to their “amazon store”, which has terrible search filters, or doesn’t have that model available.
It’s not just that they give a big cut of their sales to Amazon, it’s that often the manufacturer puts a lot of effort into having different versions of their product with different features. But, then it’s dumped on Amazon. Amazon’s search is “helpful” and gives you similar products and then uses their “recommended” ranking to put products they make more money from at the top.
That one can be easily fixed by writing to them and complaining.
I mean not selling via Amazon theoretically too, but the company might not want to play with logistics, so it might be much harder.
Pro tip for manufacturers: sell a slightly different model number with more features on your own site if possible…
Or bundle one of them with something extra, so it’s not technically the same product and not subject to the price restrictions…
Yes, I’m sure you’ve outsmarted the multi-billion dollar Amazon with these hacks.
Not so much outsmarting as avoiding their wrath: like avoiding the eye of saurons gaze
What makes you believe these tricks, which took you 2-3 seconds to come up with, aren’t well known and already not permitted by Amazon?
Why wouldnt they be?
Yall don’t even try. Make up all the excuses you want. I see how little the majority give a fuck about giving money to bezos or whoever if a product of consumption is right there within your grasp.
What the hell you talking about? The person you’re responding to is correctly pointing out that Amazon has some awfully anti-competition rules and a lot of their sellers can not legally sell for less than they do on Amazon, even though Amazon gets a cut. No one is “making excuses,” and no one is happy about it, it’s just a reality.
If I didn’t try, how would I know that many manufacturers only have Amazon stores?
Or that even if you order directly from their site, the order is still fulfilled by Amazon. My partner actually don’t try any more because we’ve recently given up after trying for too long, paying more, and still ending up giving money to Amazon.
Don’t fucking blame us for billionaires rigging the system.
Same thing happens on ebay
This is the worst. Return it and email them that you like supporting small businesses and avoid Amazon. They may tell you to pound sand, but if they hear it from more of us it may (probably not) change things.
The only way we change things is fewer billionaires - which can be done. The power imbalance is too shot at this point.
Step 6: Company is a US only company, and Im not in the US so it’d be a lot more money due to increased shipping fees, later shipping times, and import fees.
yea, I bought a mouse a few months ago, and the company only sells to EU countries via their website, for us in the UK they only sell via Amazon
I highly recommend https://shop.app/ which is Shopify’s aggregator for all shopify powered e-commerce sites and in some areas like Europe shopify is the dominant platform for small companies. Obviously it’s no ideal to replace one corporation with another but it’s pretty good for supporting small businesses a bit more with zero effort.
Tried that, the company fulfills web orders with Amazon.
Now I just buy local.
One big antitrust issue with Amazon is that they require vendors to use their fulfillment services in order to get the best terms on being listed on Amazon: prime shipping, etc.
That deal for shipping/fulfillment itself isn’t too bad, even if they charge a pretty high price to sellers for the service, because the seller is actually getting something valuable in return, and it’s hard for Amazon to promise fast shipping not in their control.
But the FTC lawsuit a while back alleged that Amazon does more than that. They downgrade the search results of anyone who isn’t a paying advertiser, so they’re squeezing sellers in more ways than one. And worse, part of the contract for fulfillment is a prohibition on competing with Amazon’s listed price.
So if you’re selling something that you need $30 to earn a profit, and it costs you 40% to list on Amazon, you’ll need to list it at $50 on Amazon in order to make your profit, and you’ve hamstrung yourself from selling that same thing for $30 on your own site and turning the same profit by cutting Amazon out. That’s what’s anticompetitive and harms the consumer, even when that consumer intentionally avoids Amazon and goes straight to the seller’s own site.
