
An Amazon revolt could be brewing as tech giant exerts more control over brands - juokaz
https://www.recode.net/2018/11/29/18023132/amazon-brand-policy-changes-marketplace-control-one-vendor
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bradfa
Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any
3rd party sellers now. I've had enough unexpected surprises when buying from
3rd parties that I'm fed up with it. I see Amazon's new restrictions on 3rd
party selling as being a good thing, although it seems the change is first
affecting manufacturers who sell on the Amazon platform who are probably the
least bad of the 3rd party sellers.

Overall, I see Amazon wanting to own more of the customer interaction as being
a good thing for me as a customer. Buying and returning items from Amazon
itself (not using 3rd party sellers) is a very good shopping experience for me
and always has been.

~~~
LiterallyDoge
Has anyone had any issue with "Sold By X, Fulfilled By Amazon"? That usually
works well for me.

~~~
simonsarris
Lots. Just this year: Opened "new" Makita power-tools where I can't be sure if
the batteries are legitimate or knockoffs or old/refurbished ones in their
place. Cracked sink that is still pending return after two weeks. Counterfeit
Whirlpool filters for my air filter. Floor oil that was opened, spilling a
little, and shipped in a bag alongside its non-spilling counterparts.

The only quality items I'm willing to order from Amazon now are small things
like pens, and commodities. No more high tech stuff, no more camera equipment,
etc.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> No more high tech stuff, no more camera equipment, etc.

Best Buy price matches. Always buy in person items such as these.

~~~
stronglikedan
I thought they only price matched items sold by Amazon directly. Do they also
do it for items merely fulfilled by Amazon?

~~~
guu
No, only direct.

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rchaud
Amazon has used 3rd parties for a long time, but they weren't shoved in your
face as "Sponsored Results" until maybe a year or so ago?

Honestly, it makes shopping on Amazon feel more and more like a flea market. I
especially don't like how Amazon now obscures the source of the product by
emphasizing the "Prime Shipping Available". I find myself having to manually
look to see if the product is sold by Amazon, or merely "Fulfilled by Amazon".

It's honestly an ugly experience these days. Is it worth bringing down your UX
to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth?

~~~
jjoonathan
That's not a fair assessment. Ebay doesn't bait & switch fast/free shipping or
swap vendors when you add an item to your cart. I am frequently disappointed
by ebay's lack of polish, but I have never gotten the impression that ebay was
actively trying to defraud buyers or enable such behavior from third parties.
Amazon, on the other hand, is 100% guilty on both counts.

~~~
rchaud
Fair point. My comment about Ebay had more to do with the weird split they had
between "Bid Now" and "Buy it Now", and the confusion I faced when searching
for a product and having to look at both the price AND shipping.

This was because Ebay took their cut off the sale price, not the shipping
cost. So sellers would reduce the sale price and jack up the shipping rate,
which is where they made their margins.

Haven't bought anything on Ebay in years, so I don't know if they cracked down
on that practice.

~~~
dingaling
eBay introduced sorting options such as "Lowest Price + Postage" which
undermined sellers trying to slip-in excessive shipping costs.

Plus on eBay the shipping charged by each seller is clearly listed on the
Checkout page. Amazon just lists a total shipping cost for the order and I
have to remove and readd items to find the culprit charging too much.

Well, 'had' to. Now I just avoid Amazon and its dark patterns. eBay is still
rather Wild West but it's sellers trying to rip me off, not the platform.

------
joeblau
I worked at Amazon on a team that built a mobile point of sale application. We
had one supplier for our card reader that was this family owned company. It
was a super tight night company — They even had a wall of how long employees
worked at the company and some were there over 40 years. That being said, we
(Amazon) wanted to move to blue tooth card readers. What I heard is that we
tried to strong arm them into doing what we wanted even though the company had
so many other clients and we weren't a big enough priority for them to drop
everything and focus on us. The relationship was so strained that when myself
and a few engineers went down to debug something with the hardware team from
the other company, we were told to walk on egg shells and be careful about
what we said.

~~~
voicedYoda
Kudos to the family owned business.

Amazon is taking a page out of Walmarts playbook. Both are juggernauts and
won't fail overall. My hope is they help create new markets in the areas where
they do fail.

------
calebh
What are the alternatives to Amazon? I'm sick of having to deal with fake
reviews and potentially fake products. Nowadays I don't purchase anything
critical on Amazon due to these sorts of problems.

Amazon doesn't seem to be at all interested in tackling these issues - it's
only a matter of time before it degrades completely into something like
AliExpress.

~~~
tjr225
Buy directly from manufacturers or use smaller, more specialized retailers.

You'll probably pay around the same price, possibly even less. Worst part is
that you might not get your package in two days, but you also won't have to
pay for Amazon prime. In many, many cases retailers offer free shipping.

For knick-knacks(chinese garbo such as LED lights or whatever), car parts,
etc. eBay is pretty good.

I don't shop at Amazon for the same reasons I don't shop at Wal-Mart. They
have a history of using shady techniques to put competition out of business. I
also don't buy that their treatment of the customer is as good as they claim
it to be. Shopping on amazon had become a pain in the ass when I gave it up.

~~~
tracker1
If amazon raises their Prime prices again, I'm out... I don't really use the
Prime video services, which kind of suck and have limited use outside their
Fire devices, which don't support Youtube thanks to their war with Google who
created the Android base their fire devices use.

I'm generally clicking Seller: amazon.com in searches because I don't want to
deal with other vendors for delivery issues, which is often a problem.

It's gotten just plain more difficult to use. And I'm finding myself more
likely to go to local stores as a result. Not to mention, the 2-day shipping
now often means that it'll be delivered 2-days from when it ships, which could
be a few days out. Where it used to always ship out the same day for 2 days
later for delivery. The increased number of people that are stealing packages
left on doorsteps make me more leery.

It's getting close to a point where it just isn't worth it to me.

~~~
giobox
> I don’t really use the prime video services which kind of suck and have
> limited use outside their Fire devices

While I’m no fan of paying more for Prime either, Prime Video is supported on
practically _everything_ \- Apple TV, Roku, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Android,
desktop browsers, various smart TV vendors, all in addition to their own range
of really pretty cheap streaming devices and tablets. Amazon apparently really
don’t care what device you use.

~~~
tracker1
Unless it's Android TV (does work on the Shield TV, but UX is poor), other
times I've used it the different seasons of a show were broken apart by season
and hard to find/align last I did try. For the most part, their included
content just doesn't interest me.

It may be a bit better. My other niggle is Hulu's Live TV doesn't work on
NVidia Shield TV (their offline kind of works), but that's just an aside from
a different company. I got a new 4k fire stick because of Hulu in particular.
My GF watches a lot of the stuff in Hulu.

------
walterbell
Best Buy will price match Amazon and other online retailers, providing same
day local pickup of authentic products. The entire process can be done online
via chat, takes about 10 mins, once you have a URL to prove the price.

~~~
whoisjuan
I don't understand why people think price matching is a good experience at
all.

Do you really think that 10 mins in a chat trying to prove that you found a
better price is a good experience? Same when you're in the store, looking up
for the product online in your phone and chasing a floor rep to beg for the
price match.

Price matching is the biggest marketing illusion I have seen to hide the fact
that you're more expensive and less convenient.

The ideal customer experience should be always going into a BestBuy trusting
that I will get the best possible price from any retailer. Not this scavenger
hunt of prices that people claim to be great.

~~~
lostcolony
Amazon engages in dynamic pricing, meaning prices can shift very frequently
(multiple times per day), -and- vary by geographic region.

What you are suggesting would require every Best Buy store (or whomever) to,
independently, track the pricing they see across every competitor they wish to
price match, and update their posted inventory pricing (which requires manual
labor to print out a pricing sticker and go put it on the shelf, even if the
actual computer system updates automatically). All to reduce their own profit
margins.

What benefit to them? They can offer price matching, as they do, and everyone
who cares about that will take on the chore themselves. Even if they had a
brick and mortar competitor who was willing to do that work and that expense
(installing digital price displays on every shelf so it could automate
updating pricing, and had systems that were polling Amazon every minute, say,
and even if they had reason to believe Amazon wouldn't block their IPs because
it looks like a DDoS attack), the number of customers who would understand and
appreciate what that meant is so low they'd still be massively in the hole.

So, yes, that might be the ideal customer experience. It's also undeliverable.

~~~
canada_dry
> dynamic pricing

This is one of the (growing) reasons I dislike Amazon. Several times I've
found a decent deal that I know a friend or family member would like - sent it
to them, only for them to discover (sometimes just minutes later) that the
deal has suddenly vanished.

On the face of it, Amazon is doing this as a simple function of supply/demand,
though it sure could be construed as form of bait-and-switch pricing!

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bovermyer
I'm starting to shop more at other online retailers. Stories like this drive
me further away from Amazon. I'd rather buy directly from a vendor.

~~~
horchata97
What other retailers? The brand's store directly? I want other options but I
don't know of any.

~~~
scrooched_moose
Wal-Mart is really the only comparable one-stop shopping experience. Target is
OK on some categories but has a much smaller selection overall.

I've switched mostly to smaller single-category retailers:

Electronics - Newegg and Monoprice

Board & Table Top Games - Miniature Market

Pet Food - Chewy (owned by PetSmart now)

Clothing - Depends on your style, but I tend to stick to Eddie Bauer and
Duluth Trading Company for good quality, affordable clothes

Comic trade paperbacks - InStockTrades

Books - Barnes & Noble (new) and eBay (used)

Tools - Ace, Menards, Woodcraft

~~~
tracker1
One comment on Newegg... similar issue to Amazon marketplace, pretty much want
to select newegg as the seller, or you may be waiting a month for products
shipping from China.

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ilamont
If you want to see what a wholesale relationship with Amazon looks like, check
out Amazon Advantage ([https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-
page.htm...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-
page.html?topic=200329780)) which media publishers use to sell physical
product through Amazon. 55% discount off MSRP, demands to ship single units to
warehouses scattered across the country, no shipping discounts, no payment
until goods sold, and badly designed algorithms that usually order far too
much. Some media publishers are leaving Amazon Advantage because they can't
make money (see [http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-
ama...](http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-amazon/)),
pricing higher so they can make a decent margin, or simply telling Amazon that
there is no more inventory.

------
post_break
What I don't understand is the fake products. Been buying tons of stuff on
amazon, never got a fake product. What are you guys buying that you're getting
fakes of? Things like Apple chargers, SD cards, those things I can see being
fakes, but what else? And if you get a fake you literally just call amazon and
say hey, this is counterfeit, refund me.

~~~
sigstoat
what process do you use for identifying fake apple chargers non-destructively?

~~~
Scoundreller
Gravimetrically. IE: weigh it.

At least the bad counterfeits won’t have a small concrete weight.

When that doesn’t work, weigh each corner in each orientation and compare to
the original.

------
Twirrim
Maybe I'm misreading the article, but it seems like Amazon is trying to fix
the atrocious third party and counterfeit seller problem that people have been
complaining about for years?

~~~
chopin
How does this work if they don't allow the goods producer to sell on their
market place (or their affiliates) but any willing third party to sell the
same good?

------
bedhead
Hacker News posters are the most hyperbolically negative folks on Amazon that
it's almost funny. I always groan when clicking on Amazon-related comments
because I know it's just going to be people complaining about god-knows-what.
And yet, the company thrives.

~~~
GVIrish
HN may be down on Amazon but whether or not a company is 'thriving' is not
always tied to whether the company is doing the right thing, or even heading
for disaster.

Amazon is probably not going to fall apart over night, but it doesn't mean all
of their actions are taking them in the right direction.

------
mark-r
This sounds like a repeat of the process Walmart went through. As they become
the reseller that's too big to ignore, they can start dictating the terms of
the relationship.

So how'd that Walmart revolt turn out?

~~~
tracker1
Can't speak for anyone else, but personally I only buy a limited range of
products from Walmart. Their quality tends to be so low, and service as well
that I just don't shop there. I know they've become an online competitor to
Amazon, but I don't even think to look most of the time because I've tuned
them out.

I don't think I'm the only one. I am certain that Amazon is starting to lose
customers because of bad returns experiences via the marketplace alone. They
keep raising the price of Prime to fund other products that I don't use.
There's a limit to what people will continue to pay for. Although Amazon is
really good at knowing where that line is.

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taprun
I've argued [0] that what people see as a bug (obvious counterfeit products)
is actually a feature that will lead to increased profits for Amazon. I can't
understand why people think Amazon would be so quick to stop it...

[0] [https://taprun.com/articles/amazon-pricing-power-
conspiracy](https://taprun.com/articles/amazon-pricing-power-conspiracy)

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aj7
Peak Amazon.

------
mkirklions
I have cut back in my use of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. These companies are
dangers to consumers and developers at their current scale. I'm not sure that
is debatable either.

As much as I like capitalism, these tech giants have power that worry me.

~~~
asutekku
The others I get but what is the problem with Apple?

~~~
cptskippy
Apple exerts pressures and demands on it's ODMs similar to what Walmart did on
vendors in the 90s. Google all of the troubles Foxconn has been having with
it's workforce, this is primarily due to it's relationship with Apple.

~~~
tracker1
And don't forget their war with 3rd party repair options, which does not help
them, since their own options are overpriced, and generally their genius techs
are less knowledgeable.

------
zebrafish
This article is mostly alarmist nonsense. Vendors would welcome the addition
of Seller tools to Vendor Central. Vendors do not have access to the
Marketplace APIs, get watered down reporting, and are generally treated like
suppliers where Sellers are treated like customers.

In addition, this is not a new shift in policy for Amazon. They have never
allowed a product sold by Retail to be sold by the same Vendor on Marketplace.
They would have to compete on price with the Vendor for that item and would
win absolutely zero buy-boxes. If anything, Amazon has softened on this stance
recently. They now are open to "hybrid" sales models which allow the Vendor to
sell & fulfill items that Amazon cannot profitably sell itself because of the
always on price-matching in Amazon's pricing engine.

One gripe that many have about Amazon is their hands-off approach to policing
non-authorized listings of products. Many small time players will simply
purchase products through a myriad of channels and sell them on Amazon,
sometimes attaching them to the Vendor listing, and sometimes creating fake
UPCs and listing the product as a separate item. This causes customer
confusion and a bad customer experience because of duplicate listings or
unknown sellers & fulfillers on a Vendor's listing. Of course, Amazon has no
incentive to police these listings because they still collect the $99/yr fee
from these sellers as well as 15% of any buy-boxes they do happen to win.
Amazon makes money on these sellers for the cost of the hosting the minute
traffic that ends up on these listings.

~~~
ikeboy
This is very much a new policy. There was never a written requirement for
brands not to sell both through VC and SC, until a few months ago.

Also, the fee is $39/month, not $99/year.

~~~
zebrafish
It may be a new written policy for certain categories, but I haven't been
exposed to such a policy. A VM would have scoffed at the idea of allowing
their vendor to sell the same product through Seller Central for years now. A
vendor could discretely do this by setting up a 3P account and not telling
their VM about it, but that's dishonest business and to be completely fair,
you cannot honestly expect Amazon to allow that.

In the case of CRaP items, it's actually become a new strategy for VMs to
allow some hybrid selling to keep assortment on the site while still allowing
the company to turn a profit on the sale.

My mistake on the pricing of Seller Pro, but the point still stands.

~~~
ikeboy
In the OP, they stopped selling to Amazon and then sold to a 3p seller who
Amazon then blocked from selling

