<story><title>Amazon Prime inflates prices, using the false promise of ‘free shipping’</title><url>https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/amazon-primes-free-shipping-promise</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SavantIdiot</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45% in fees to the sellers&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m glad this was stated. It is new insight for me.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;tomorrow&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The only thing I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s HolyBro store had it in stock. &amp;#x2F;bangs head on wall&amp;#x2F; I understand why, it&amp;#x27;s just... weird.</text></item><item><author>nonameiguess</author><text>Seems like commenters are misreading the lawsuit here. My first instinct after reading the top paragraphs of Stoller&amp;#x27;s post was also &amp;quot;so what, this seems fine,&amp;quot; but if you read to the end and see what the suit is really alleging, it&amp;#x27;s not just a policy that punished sellers for offering discounts on their products when sold off Amazon. It&amp;#x27;s the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45% in fees to the sellers, which is much higher than other online marketplaces and obviously less than the 0% they&amp;#x27;d charge themselves to sell through their own site (though they&amp;#x27;d still need to pay money to operate the site), and &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; punishing them if they sell somewhere else that has lower fees for a lower price.&lt;p&gt;That seems like legitimately monopolistic behavior and something that is illegal and should be stopped. The post is still misleading in that it doesn&amp;#x27;t mean Amazon is raising prices across the board by 30-45%. But they are raising prices across the board by whatever the delta is between their fees and WalMart&amp;#x27;s fees, or some other marketplace that charges even less, minus the difference in shipping.&lt;p&gt;Normally, market forces would solve this problem without any need for legal intervention, because some other marketplace like WalMart can just offer lower seller fees and attract all the sellers. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t happen precisely because Amazon&amp;#x27;s massive subscribed user base represents so much of the market that no can afford not to sell there, which is seemingly the definition of a monopoly and why legal intervention is called for. Lower-cost marketplaces can only compete if Amazon is not allowed to blackball sellers from access to the only customer base that matters.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>victor106</author><text>&amp;gt; I should just be going to the bose.com store and cutting out amazon. I never really need anything I buy online &amp;quot;tomorrow&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;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</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon Prime inflates prices, using the false promise of ‘free shipping’</title><url>https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/amazon-primes-free-shipping-promise</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SavantIdiot</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45% in fees to the sellers&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m glad this was stated. It is new insight for me.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;tomorrow&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The only thing I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s HolyBro store had it in stock. &amp;#x2F;bangs head on wall&amp;#x2F; I understand why, it&amp;#x27;s just... weird.</text></item><item><author>nonameiguess</author><text>Seems like commenters are misreading the lawsuit here. My first instinct after reading the top paragraphs of Stoller&amp;#x27;s post was also &amp;quot;so what, this seems fine,&amp;quot; but if you read to the end and see what the suit is really alleging, it&amp;#x27;s not just a policy that punished sellers for offering discounts on their products when sold off Amazon. It&amp;#x27;s the fact that Amazon is charging anywhere between 30-45% in fees to the sellers, which is much higher than other online marketplaces and obviously less than the 0% they&amp;#x27;d charge themselves to sell through their own site (though they&amp;#x27;d still need to pay money to operate the site), and &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; punishing them if they sell somewhere else that has lower fees for a lower price.&lt;p&gt;That seems like legitimately monopolistic behavior and something that is illegal and should be stopped. The post is still misleading in that it doesn&amp;#x27;t mean Amazon is raising prices across the board by 30-45%. But they are raising prices across the board by whatever the delta is between their fees and WalMart&amp;#x27;s fees, or some other marketplace that charges even less, minus the difference in shipping.&lt;p&gt;Normally, market forces would solve this problem without any need for legal intervention, because some other marketplace like WalMart can just offer lower seller fees and attract all the sellers. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t happen precisely because Amazon&amp;#x27;s massive subscribed user base represents so much of the market that no can afford not to sell there, which is seemingly the definition of a monopoly and why legal intervention is called for. Lower-cost marketplaces can only compete if Amazon is not allowed to blackball sellers from access to the only customer base that matters.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brnt</author><text>The rule of thumb is simple: more middlemen equals lower share going to the person actually making the thing.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>