
The best Cyber Monday deals according to Alexa: any Amazon-owned brand - luu
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/3/20992885/best-amazon-cyber-monday-deals-alexa-private-label-brands
======
_arvin
Everyone is talking about Amazon promoting their own products, but can we talk
about the type of products being promoted in the top 5? Security camera, Ring
doorbell, Echos, i.e. all surveillance devices people are willingly and
voluntarily putting in their private homes, just waiting for that data to be
compromised by hackers, data leaks, you name it.

Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the
place is going to be bugged, I'm good.

~~~
anon9001
Your phone can do all the same things as those devices, and it's a better
target for attackers because it's always on you.

I just bought into the Nest system (which also had great deals on black
friday), and I'm just not worried about it.

In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting
data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?

I just assume all of my data is already compromised, and so is yours, and
neither of us can do anything about it. I think it's only useful to mitigate
real world risks that materialize from compromised data. So PIN-lock your
credit to avoid identity theft, physically secure your home to avoid break-
ins, block ads to avoid influence campaigns, segment and restrict your IoT
devices to avoid jumpboxes inside your network, etc.

If I'm doing something that I do _not_ want recorded, I'd be using linux with
a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I
don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.

If you're trying to host secret meetings in your house, maybe you should
consider building a secure room to facilitate that. There's a reason the feds
take this approach with SCIFs, because there's really no other way to do it.

~~~
hellomyguys
Are you arguing that we should give up on avoiding potential security risks
because we carry phones?

~~~
hnmonkey
They are also arguing that since they have given up on security and assume
they are fully compromised everyone else should give up as well and just buy
more of these devices for their homes.

------
millstone
Many comments refer to this as "Amazon promoting its own products over
competitors" but that's not the right way to look at this. They aren't
promoting their own products, they're promoting exclusively the
Ring/Blink/Echo family.

In the past I've bought Amazon house brand clothing, batteries, sheets. They
aren't promoting similar products that I'm likely to buy. Instead more than
half the storefront is devoted to Echo products which I've never bought, and
never will.

This isn't a case of "here's something we think you'll like," it's "here's
something we want you to have."

~~~
miguelmota
Spot on. Also consumers are attracted to tech gadgets during cyber Monday
sales so it's even way easier for them to sell those items over non-
electronics.

------
reading-at-work
To be the devil's advocate, what if those deals really were the best? What if
Amazon sold those items at such a loss that no other deals could compare?
(That's probably not the case, but just thinking hypothetically).

Also:

> That potential favoritism can come in varied forms... even right at checkout
> when an Amazon customer is ready to buy an item from a non-Amazon brand.
> This last tactic could be compared to a cashier in a physical store showing
> you a deal for the store’s own brand when you walk up to pay for a
> competitor’s product.

Would it really be considered anti-competitive if a brick and mortar store did
that? I feel like I've had cashiers actually do that before, and I was
grateful because usually it's a better deal on some generic stuff where I
don't care what brand it actually is.

~~~
scblock
I don't believe that scenario holds water.

All five of the devices in the list are surveillance or spy devices which
capture data that Amazon likely considers very valuable. As such, Amazon is
likely selling many of these devices at cost or below because they provide
Amazon with more data.

The list of five devices includes three cameras and two alexa listening
devices.

~~~
carty76ers
Lots of hyperbole there. Ring doorbells aren’t cheap and I pay for the
subscription plan (fairly limited without it). It generates revenue on the
subscription not the data.

~~~
sharkmerry
I dont doubt they make money from subscriptions, but they have been reported
as giving discounts/free Ring products to residents that choose to share.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/polic...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/police-
offer-amazon-ring-free-exchange-access/592243/)

------
rb808
For me Black Friday and Cyber Monday really didn't have many deals. The
Chromebooks I was looking at are all cheaper now than those days. Amazon
devices really were discounted heavily though.

~~~
mdorazio
I used camelcamelcamel to check prices on a bunch of things I was interested
in that were advertised as black friday / cyber monday deals. About 90% of
them were the same price as normal or the same price as if you just waited for
cyclical discounts to come around. There were a few advertised things that had
legitimate deals of about 10-15% off the best price from the last 12 months,
though.

~~~
markosaric
Yeah, I had my Black Friday shopping list ready and camelcamelcamel is a great
helper in these situations. Easy to see if you're actually getting a real deal
or it's better to wait.

------
mikestew
I don't browse Amazon, but when I was ordering something their "Cyber Monday
Deals" caught my eye. Oh, okay, I'll bite. Every single item under
"Electronics" was an Amazon device. Really? Because, for example, $150 off an
iPad Pro seems worth a mention (I bought one). Surely there was _something_
that was a deal that didn't have Amazon's logo on it.

I know, I know, smack 'em on the nose. I don't really care about that so much
as the fact that Amazon isn't dead to me just yet, but they're on life support
and every little niggle such as this gets me closer to pulling the plug.

~~~
helpPeople
Hope this doesn't get flagged, hn weirdly hides posts that mention-

Apple marketing.

They likely bought themselves into the top spot. Now that you are in the Apple
ecosystem, you will be buying Apple stuff.

------
JauntTrooper
Supermarkets and drugstores are notorious for this.

Supermarkets will often see a product that is selling well and copy it as
closely as they can without going over the line -- similar colors, size,
packaging -- then sell it under their own brand right next to the branded
product at a more attractive price.

It feels unfair if you're a producer, but it's often just one of the costs of
having access to the distribution platform.

------
cryptozeus
In other words, company is promoting its own product on its own platform. Some
people don’t like it.

~~~
EliRivers
In other words, something I paid for lies to me and misdirects me in order to
make more money from me. Damn right I don't like it. Do you like it?

~~~
sigstoat
the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to questions
is very small and doesn't include amazon.

> misdirects me in order to make more money from me

literally the entire sales profession.

if you want everyone around you to be under some moral obligation to tell you
the absolute truth at all times, you've got a larger cultural battle to fight.

~~~
okasaki
> the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to
> questions is very small and doesn't include amazon.

Poster didn't say anything about legal obligation.

~~~
reading-at-work
The linked article heavily implies that legal action could be taken against
Amazon for this, by bringing up other antitrust investigations that are
happening. Hence the debate about legality.

------
warent
Didn't Google get into trouble for putting their own shopping results above
other search results? It seems like Amazon should seriously be penalized for
this. It's completely anticompetitive.

~~~
RegBarclay
Amazon isn't a search company, so I think it's a little different case.

Also, if I call a Ford dealer and ask them for their best deals, why would I
expect them to tell me about Toyotas?

~~~
travmatt
Car manufacturers are legally barred from owning dealerships, it’s the
individual dealership groups who decide what to sell. Car manufacturers
selling directly to the public decreased competition as the manufacturers
didn’t have any incentive to undercut their own prices between dealerships
selling their own products.

~~~
warent
Really? I thought Tesla owned all its dealerships and employed the dealers. Am
I confused?

------
octocop
If you own one of these you kind are bound to fall down the depths of the data
harvesting gods.

------
miguelmota
Amazon also slapped the "Deal of the day" label on many products during black
Friday and cyber Monday, even though the prices for those products were still
the same as before. No price drops but good at creating FOMO for consumers.

------
Akinato
Yeah, I feel like there's a light slap coming Amazon's way for this. It's too
blatantly anti-competitive.

It should probably be more punitive than it will be, but that doesn't seem to
be the way our governments are going these days.

~~~
gtirloni
My local supermarket is a marketplace for lots of brands. They heavily promote
their own generic brands. What kind of punishment should they get from the
government?

------
ng7j5d9
Stop the presses ... I asked a Ford salesman what the best Black Friday car
deal was and he recommended a Ford!

~~~
j79
If Ford dealerships were a marketplace for vehicles other than Fords, I'd
agree with this comment.

The issue I have with Amazon is that for many folks, they ARE the marketplace
to buy goods. Pushing their own products as the "best Cyber Monday deal" is
when things get a bit suspect, at least for me. And honestly, what represents
"Best"? Best for the consumer? Or, best for Amazon?

(My cynicism is probably due to working retail (Staples) and having managers
push us to sell Staples-branded items due to higher margins for the
store/company (and we sales were happy to comply due to the higher spiffs).
While I truly enjoy on-line shopping since I no longer deal with sales people,
I'm fully aware that the algorithm pushing that "BEST CHOICE" IS the new
"sales person". And they know more about me than any sales person in a
physical store would ever know...scary.)

~~~
winsome
Used cars are a thing. Albeit not identical, dealerships definitely do sell
other vehicles and will almost always push the new model of their brand over
the used model of the other brand.

~~~
j79
> Albeit not identical, dealerships definitely do sell other vehicles and will
> almost always push the new model of their brand over the used model of the
> other brand.

I'd argue this will vary with dealerships. And, the pushiness would be more
sales person, rather than the dealership.

For new cars, there are a couple reasons why a dealership may push a new car
over a used car. The manufacturer may be providing volume incentives and the
dealership needs to sale a certain number of models to meet that incentive.
Or, a new vehicle has been sitting on the lot for too long and the dealership
needs to move the vehicle (this is more true for used cars).

But, USED cars are a cash cow for dealerships. Either through trade-ins or
auction purchases (based on the type of dealership), there's WAY more margin
in a used vehicle than there is in a new car.

Unless it's a purely volume-driven dealership, dealerships will be perfectly
happy to push a used car over a new car.

------
xz0r
I keep seeing this way too frequently - Amazon pushing everything towards a
dystopian environment. These posts gets highly voted and then its as if we
forget and move on let things be the way they were. Amazon has gained too much
momentum and now its way too difficult to stop it.

------
jhawk28
Amazon just needs to hire Kris Kringle...

------
droithomme
This really seems to be anti-competitive behavior by a monopolist.

------
lacker
Similarly, when I go to apple.com they say the best deals are all Apple-owned
brands. I can't even buy a Kindle there!

~~~
sdnlafkjh34rw
These are two completely different businesses. Amazon is a marketplace that
sells basically anything sold by anyone. Apple is a manufacturer who lists
their own products or accessories for their own products.

~~~
luma
When I walk into my local grocer, they offer better deals on the house brand
and advertise as such. Why does Amazon need to push people toward someone
else’s product? We don’t hold any other retailer I can think of to this
standard.

~~~
sdnlafkjh34rw
Well in this case, the primary issue is around anti-trust and competition.
Given that amazon has a bout a 50% share of e-commerce, this kind of behavior
could be harmful to competition and well functioning markets. The counter
argument is to say that their space is not e-commerce but all retail and thus
Amazon is not a monopolist, but I would argue that this not a good precedent
to set for a well functioning economy.

Most tech companies have avoided anti-trust by arguing that they don't hold
monopoly power, but I think we are behind the game in terms of regulation.
Again, I wouldn't have a problem with Amazon promoting their own products if
it didn't have a strong effect on competition and how well markets operate,
but I really believe that a lot of the placers are exhibiting monopolist
behavior.

------
BookmarkSaver
Can you buy Amazon products anywhere except Amazon?

I feel like this would be more legitimately "anti-competitive" if these
products were available in all sorts of places (like most of Amazon's
merchandise). But the only place to buy Kindles and Echos is Amazon.

~~~
tzs
You can buy Kindles and Echos and Rings at Best Buy, Target, and Office Depot.
You can also buy Echos and Rings, but not Kindles, at Lowes. Home Depot has
Rings, but not Echos or Kindles as far as I can tell.

