
Amazon offered ‘Amazon’s Choice’ to vendors who bought ads and lowered prices - ilamont
https://digiday.com/retail/amazon-offered-vendors-amazons-choice-labels-return-ad-spending-lower-prices/
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ryan_j_naughton
While it is absolutely valid to discuss Amazon's market power and the nature
of monopoly in the modern era, the ideas that a featured product would be
featured because it makes the company more money is in no way scandalous!

If any retail store has an end-cap product placement of an item that they are
featuring, everyone presumes it is because it is a profit maximizer for them.
Why is it presumed that Amazon must be a more impartial arbiter of quality
versus traditional brick and mortar retail? In part it is because Amazon is a
marketplace, but both are middlemen (except for private label products from
your grocery store or Walmart/target).

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4ntonius8lock
If a mommy blogger who makes $0/month from her 'business' gets a free product
to promote a product on a youtube video watched by 100 people, they have to
disclose this. Even reviewers on amazon.

Yet Amazon charges for the 'Choice' wording without disclosing the financial
side. And they are making way more, and therefore can be way more biased, than
the mommy blogger who gets fined a few grand for not disclosing her
endorsements.

More than just the monopoly situation, the extreme disparity in enforcement of
rules, and the amount of fines as a percentage of yearly income, is quite
galling.

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wbl
Does your grocery store disclose the stocking fees paid for end isle
placement?

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4ntonius8lock
Two wrongs = one right I take it? I don't agree.

Disclosure should apply across the board. I personally don't even agree with
the disclosure rule, but if it's there, it should be for everyone under the
same standard. That's actually literally the whole basis of the concept of
rule of law.

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leggomylibro
These days, I see Amazon as a combination of eBay and AliExpress with faster
shipping and prices that are ~$2-3 higher.

I still use it a lot, because I'm almost always happy with what I get with
those expectations. But it surprises me when people talk about it like some
sort of heavily-curated marketplace.

Even so, it sounds like they haven't done what the title describes for a
couple of years. FTA: "An agency source said that while this bidding program
ran briefly in 2017, Amazon rolled it back and Amazon’s Choice badges are now
driven by Amazon’s algorithms."

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sixothree
The need to have the return policy and customer service they have because some
of the stuff they sell is just not high quality.

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rdtwo
I buy Chinese products that are failure prone from them for this reason. Sure
I could get it $10-15 cheaper from China if I wait 3 weeks and forgo the
return option but I end up returning that junk so often that it’s worth paying
15% more

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londons_explore
I have a fairly good eye for products that will fail right out of the box, so
I prefer not to pay extra for a returns policy.

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rdtwo
There is typically an inverted failure curve on these things, if it doesn’t
fail the first 30 days of hard use then there is a good chance it will last
another couple years.

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londons_explore
Which, when you paid $8 for fancy lab equipment that would cost $800 normally,
is fiiiiine.

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notatoad
>To be considered, Amazon required brands to be able to keep products in stock
for a 12-month duration, keep customer review ratings above four stars, and
maintain certain technical specifications for their respective subcategories.

i don't see anything wrong with this. Essentially, if multiple products in a
category are all good enough to be recommended, amazon was selling the
featured slot instead of picking one of the contenders randomly. They weren't
selling the featured slot to undeserving products.

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dubya
Look at the reviews for Amazon's choice for "iphone charge audio". The
questions, pictures and reviews are about some totally unrelated product. I'm
not sure if Amazon sold this slot, or just randomly chose from a huge
assortment of crap listings.

(Though seriously, if anyone has a recommendation of a decent product to
charge an iPhone and allow audio out at the same time, please post it)

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notatoad
this [1] is what i see listed as amazon's choice. it's got 4 stars, and it's
in stock. the reviews aren't amazing, but it looks like a competent solution
in a category full of terrible options. the same product is the first result
of a google search for the same terms. It looks to me like amazon's choice is
probably the best option.

[1] [https://www.amazon.ca/Belkin-Audio-Charge-Adapter-
iPhone/dp/...](https://www.amazon.ca/Belkin-Audio-Charge-Adapter-
iPhone/dp/B074WDWVX1/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=iphone+charge+audio&qid=1565968512&s=electronics&sr=1-3)

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esotericn
Isn't this obvious? I mean I'm pretty cynical, but the first time I ever saw
"amazon's choice" I figured oh - they have a higher profit margin on this or
something - it's obviously not (necessarily) the best thing for me.

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wpietri
Is it obvious? People could just as well think it's something like Trader
Joe's, where the first hurdle for selection is quality.

One of the big problems with e-commerce is trust, and I could easily see some
bright spark at Amazon saying, "What if we did extensive testing, found the
best-value item in each category, and gave it our blessing? We could reduce
decision fatigue, increase revenue, and strengthen our customer bond."

We see Wirecutter out there making good money on doing exactly that, so it's
not crazy to think Amazon would just do that themselves.

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lonelappde
Quality is the first hurdle for Amazon's Choice. Trader Joe's does the exact
same thing. They promote and sell stuff that makes them money. They offer
don't even let alternate brands into the store!

Wirecutter sometimes recommends (on commission!) products in categories they
specifically recommend against buying, like SFF PCs!

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Dylan16807
> Wirecutter sometimes recommends (on commission!) products in categories they
> specifically recommend against buying, like SFF PCs!

Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Listing the best of the category, while
also rating the category as a whole, means they're going above and beyond on
what their job is! It's not a moral failing that their recommendations come
with the context of "inside the category", that much should be obvious. And
they can't tell you which products are """objectively""" worth your money,
either.

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spraak
Unrelated, but lately I'm frustrated that so many household items I want to
buy are mostly available only in some kind of bulk pack. No, I don't want 6
bottles of dish soap if I don't yet know I like it. And it seems sometimes the
bulk pack is even cheaper than a single item, like how a round-trip can be
cheaper than a one-way. Also weird are the paid shipping options for me, even
with Prime - most often if I chose to pay more for shipping it would schedule
the package to arrive later than sooner, vs the free shipping being the
fastest option. I don't know why I'm even presented with that choice.

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all_blue_chucks
This seems a bit like the online equivalent of stories auctioning off display
space at high-visibility positions in their stores.

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dehrmann
What's odd is there isn't any outcry over stores doing that, and they don't
even label promoted placement. At least Amazon labels product ads. That said,
the opacity of Amazon's Choice is still concerning.

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duxup
-My bad-

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cheeze
[Citation needed]

Nowhere in that article is Amazon's choice mentioned.

Amazon has always taken a pretty libertarian stance on selling books. It's
been a dilemma for the company since inception. What is and isn't okay to
sell.

I agree there should be some moderation, but I don't see anything wrong with
the article you posted.

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duxup
You're correct, my mistake. I misread that article while reading about a
different story about Amazon's Choice.

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java-man
to put it simply: do not buy from 'amazon choice' vendors.

read the reviews instead.

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jrockway
I am not sure I would trust reviews either.

Everything is some sort of hustle. Companies pay for reviews. Reviewers often
have no idea how to use the product. All you can really do is be ready to
throw what you get in the trash if you don't like it.

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OJFord
> All you can really do is be ready to throw what you get in the trash if you
> don't like it.

Are you kidding? I buy from Amazon specifically because returns and refunds
are so easy.

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fmajid
Not all third-party merchants have the same return policy.

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OJFord
At least in the UK, if you contact them and they don't resolve it, contact
Amazon and you'll get a refund (and presumably they charge it back to the
seller) under its 'A-Z Guarantee'.

That said, I've never bought higher value items from third parties via Amazon,
so that may be a different experience. But I basically treat non-fulfilled by
Amazon as eBay in terms of trust/expectations.

