Amazon's Monopoly of the tech industry is ruining the US economy
Amazon's Monopoly of the tech industry is ruining the US economy
I wanted to get printer photo paper for my printer, a Canon. I went to Walmart, They had nothing. Went to Target, they had one pack of photo paper and it was crazy expensive, so I went to micro center. That one was just as expensive. So finally I went back to Amazon, which I was trying to avoid, and saw the price 25 to 40% lower than anywhere I had been. Literally everything that I was looking for, I could find within seconds. Not even Best buy has even close to the amount of inventory or variety, even when you're shopping online....
Therefore, I think Amazon has a literal monopoly in the tech industry right now, you're literally forced to buy from them, because unless you have the money and financial fortitude to protest with your wallet, you're going to be buying from them. There's no other choice. They have so aggressively and dominantly taken over the supply chain market that no other tech company can currently compete with them in any aspect at all. You will be paying 40 to 50% more on everything by cutting out Amazon, and no one has the money for that anymore unless you're upper middle class or above
I put some of the blame on retailers as well. Retail stores just don't want to carry inventory anymore, especially tech-focused ones with many of those just turning into glorified showrooms. I don't know how many times I've heard some version of: "Sorry, we don't have that in stock but we can bring it in for you."
We needed a short length of garden hose here for the house so I went to two hardware stores and one garden centre looking for one. Nothing. Not even in their dedicated gardening sections. I had to order it off Amazon. A goddamn garden hose.
Amazon has done a lot of damage for sure but retail is suffering from several self-inflicted wounds too. Home Depot, for example, is a multi-billion dollar corporation and even they have a weaker retail presence now. That's not Amazon's fault.
They don’t want to carry inventory because Amazon doesn’t. The prices are higher because vendors are contractually obligated to sell on Amazon at their lowest price. So retailers, with a need to have a physical presence and having to buy at more or less the same price a product is available for on Amazon, get fucked. Their only hope is vendors who make a “different” product to sell at other outlets. An example of what I mean is, Poppi soda sells for $20/12 pack on Amazon. They sell a 15 pack at Costco for the same price. Because it’s a “different” product they are not in breach of contract.
Check your local mom and pop hardware store if you have one! I had to get a feeder hose this summer as well, and the only place I found it was a local family owned hardware store.
Totally agree!
Looks like you've been hard at work blocking since people actually agree with you now
Here in Germany there are still plenty of independent online retailers and they're competitive with Amazon. I always try to avoid buying from Amazon and for tech products that's usually no problem.
Same in Spain. I don't even have an Amazon account, btw.
Netherlands here and as well we have so many local shops that outbeat Amazon that it isn't even fair. There is a very small chance I buy something of Amazon, think the only time I did was for a replacement item for a Dyson.
Do you have some good examples? I recently moved there, and want to avoid Amazon, when possible
I like to order tech stuff from mindfactory.de
In more general terms, you can look up the item at e.g. Idealo.de or other product comparison sites and then decide where to buy. Amazon is most often not the cheapest, even including additional delivery cost
Please name an actual good store that can compete with Amazon. Now, I'm lucky my local book store has a digital front where I can order but when it has to be something more general, Amazon remains the only address where the majority of orders didn't range between faulty and actual horror stories so far.
Amazon's pricing I not deterministic. You were likely tracked and information collected to know this was a key item for you. Amazon will market loss leaders to you in an attempt to get you to default to buying on Amazon.
As a former Buyer for a chain of retail stores, the loss leader is effective marketing. I sell you a popular item at or below my typical cost because statistically, a large percentage of customers are making a special trip to my store to buy that product and will make additional purchases at margin. On the wholesale Buying side, these are tools to get past bulk buying tier discounts for seasonal ordering with smaller scale retail.
Amazon is using a convoluted front end system of overlapping product categories and a supposed multi seller listings (despite collectivized logistics and warehousing) on the website you see. This is how they perform price fixing where you do not see honest or straight forward determinism. When you repurchase that same item later without making comparisons, the seller will shuffle so that a higher price is presented.
If you have a well isolated network where device history for social media and internet browsing is totally partitioned from e-commerce you'll likely see even more of the scam. If you see anyone online show the search results and pricing on Amazon, then try to replicate those search results and product price on a device that is totally partitioned from your viewing of the item/price elsewhere, you're likely to find it is not possible. If you then go back to the original device and do the same, you'll magically find the same product and lower price. It is a scam market. This is why they are collecting and paying for all that data about you. We are in an age when automated individual targeting and manipulation is possible and happening. This is why data mining stalkerware is insidious. Scam markets are only the tip of the iceberg and what can be uncovered if you go looking for it. Anyone that has done database or logistics management should have major red flags flying when looking at how Amazon's website is setup. The front end is absolutely untenable garbage for effective logistics. The only reason it is convoluted and search results are terrible is because it is a price fixing scam. The logistical efficiency proves that there is no connection between the front and back end of the site.
How much does it say these beans cost?
How does CamelCamelCamel display a price history if the price is different for everyone? Perhaps it’s inaccurate for some (Just hasn’t been for me the handful of times I’ve “had“ to use Amazon.)
And Amazon doesn’t price discriminate if they put something on a nationwide sale? So the bloggers can advertise that AirPods are at their lowest price ever?
reporting on their bad biz practices
They definitely get accused of other unsavory stuff:
Amazon “tricks” customers into buying Fire TVs with false sales prices: Lawsuit
Thanks for this. I’ve only used Amazon a few times and was always baffled at the train wreck of its chaotic layout / ux. I had to buy something there once and it was such a process it was like being asked to leave the store before paying. Thought at the time it must be down to legacy and new features being showhorned around ancient web1.0 history, its success being its burden with customers having to learn how to use the thing. Price fixing scam is what I will think of it now, while continuing to avoid it.
chaotic layout / ux
Maybe it's stockholm syndrome or something, but I find it absolutely fine. My general rule of thumb is to look past the first page of results, since that's where a lot of the sponsored listings are, and then look at several listings before deciding. As long as you're aware that the first page or so of results are generally sponsored (i.e. ads), it's not too hard to find a decent product. And since it's online, it's pretty easy to compare w/ other retailers (I'll often look at eBay, Newegg, and a couple others depending on the type of product before pulling the trigger).
That said, I'm definitely not your typical consumer (I rarely buy things on impulse), so it's hard for me to understand the impact of their "price fixing" nonsense.
oh so basically the entire shitpost about walmart or whatever it was having "dynamic pricing" is literally already real...
ok.
If you see anyone online show the search results and pricing on Amazon, then try to replicate those search results and product price on a device that is totally partitioned from your viewing of the item/price elsewhere, you're likely to find it is not possible. If you then go back to the original device and do the same, you'll magically find the same product and lower price.
I noticed this on Walmarts website when asking chat GPT to find items for me. I was wondering why it was happening. Some of the price differences were extreme too.
Did 39 people really believe this enough to upvote this? This is easily proven false. Amazon is convoluted because it's old as heck and they hire subpar engineers. Like me. I used to work on the team that made the search page. It sucks because most of us were fresh out of college and had never made a website in our lives.
You've never done ecommerce logistics. You do not get Amazon's efficiency from such a garbage system, or the worlds richest man. I have no doubt there are dubious practices to give plausible deniability. The thing is too large and too successful for this to be the big picture. The collectivized warehousing invalidates the front end system and mechanics entirely.
you mean it gives huge discounts to random people because of an error? i would think amazon would want to fix that ASAP
Great post. Thank you for this insight!
It would help if you went to the right stores first. Try Office Max, Staples, Office Depot, etc.
The only things I buy off Amazon are the niche items from stores that only exist in the top largest cities in the USA. It’s difficult to find fountain pen stuff elsewhere, and most of the stores have a front on Amazon.
I don’t know why people buy everyday stuff on Amazon. It’s usually more expensive and you have to wait for it.
My old roommate bought a single roll of aluminum foil from amazon one time and I still think about it.
Hell even Costco probably has photo paper
Amazon has very good deals OR very bad ones. I find Microcenter often equal to or even better than Amazon in most tech stuff.
Your experience is exactly why you shouldn't make sweeping judgement on one data point.
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Photo paper isn't really tech. It's a supply.
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It's a low volume niche item.
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People that are buying it are less likely to care about cost (older) or want it right now. So Microcenter feels they can charge more. (IMO)
Was about to say, the last few times I have bought something, Amazon was actually the more expensive choice. Once we looked at them to buy some grocery type products and they were just absolutely horribly expensive compared to any local grocer.
Funny you mention grocery type items. That's where I first noticed how bad Amazon can price gouge. Sometimes 3-4 times what the price should be.
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Amazon has a healthcare company now too...
...and they own twitch.
Wait til you find out about AWS and how half the internet runs on it.
I tried blocking anything Amazon in my adguard home instance...holy shit that broke a lot of sites, I had to unblock it to have functional internet.
You were looking for office supplies: did you check an office supply store?
Definitely would have been my first choice to look also, but do you think that staples or office max is going to have something cheaper than amazon?
I'm thinking op isn't the brightest tool on the short bus. Walmart has a far better market place/e-commerce platform than shitass Amazon. Same delivery windows of 1-3 says. Can order groceries that aren't fuckin wierd marketplace seller with a garage packed with dented pallets of Nutella, wild rice and 5hr energy drinks lol. The groceries actually come from the store or the next nearest one. They basically already had the warehouse infrastructure. The dumped billions with a fuckin B last year just on developing and expanding on drone deliveries. Plus when your order gets fucked up from Walmart... YOU TALK TO A FUCKIN PERSON WHO ISNT HALF WAY ACCROSS THE PLANET WITH 3 PRELOADED REPLIES TO FIX EVERY PROBLEM. Fuuuuuuuuuck Amazon customer service. But also unless op was looking for the holy grail of printers I will bet my annual salary that Walmart's online store had the exact printer they were looking for or one that is an exact copy but another brand. So dramatic to write this whole post up for such a dumb reason lol.
Edit: Also no person or brand selling on Amazon is exclusively selling on Amazon. If the printer wasn't available anywhere it's prolly a discontinued model or a fuck up by the mfg. Such a dumb post.
Not just tech, all over the product spectrum. They started by selling books.
A large problem is payment system and accounts. I hate going to a new shop and create a new account, a new password, bla bla bla. I hate it. And wiring with online banking is still a pain the ass, you have to enter some password into your shitty phone keyboard and then wait for an SMS... paypal and amazon payment make shopping convenient.
So part of the problem is banks who have been sleeping on the job for decades. At least here in Europe. You finally can wire money so it arrives immediately from your bank account at a shop! (without having to waste some tax on a payment provider either). But 2 factor authentication is still a pita. Where is my online bank with easy to use FIDO2?
There are now alternative popping up because amazon has become so enshittified (high prices for many smaller items and reviews etc). And of course I'm a fan of aliexpress but shipping from China is stupid too.
We definitely need to avoid a monopoly by a corporation like amazon.
Books have always been a tool for power.
Guess even in our times that's true.
I am fortunate to live in a country where amazon is not strong and we have aggregated search engines that over all the small shops, compete against Amazon on selection and cost, often beating it. I hope it stays this way.
That's cool. EU?
Yes, Czechia. We can order from Amazon.de, but it's not usually much better than the other options, and returns and support are much worse.
Remember that time like 10 years ago, when some local news station was doing a story about Amazon having all the best tech deals, and then the one co-host butts in and says "You know why they have a monopoly, right? RIGHT??? SHE KNOWS WHAT I'M TALKIN ABOUT!!!"
And everybody was giving blank looks, like "Uh....no? What ARE you talking about?"
And he's like "Because they sell all the sex toys, and deliver it right to your house! Ladies? Right???? IT'S CONVIENENT!!!"
And everybody just had their mouth open in shock like "WTF ARE YOU DOING???"
and then he goes on and on about dildos, as his cohost continually tries to move on, but he keeps talking about dildos. And she's looking like she wants to strangle him.
No, but I enjoyed your retelling.
You should watch news bloopers on youtube. There's so many classics.
"........I so pale......." *You're on!" Immediately goes into news reporter mode as her cohost giggles
Also, a woman talking to the weatherman: "How bout that 69, huh? I know you're excited about the no rain, but how bout that 69???" Rest of the news crew stonewalls.
Or the woman doing an on-location report about a guy who grills hamburgers for his resteraunt.
"Now, can I try one of these?"
"Absolutely. I would LOVE to see my meat in your mouth!
"NOT THE FIRST TIME I'VE HEARD THAT!!!"
There was the cohost who was in a grape smashing competition to make wine, and she yelled "WAIT!!!" and then started stomping extra fast herself. Basically cheating. And then she slipped and fell face first off an 8 foot drop right onto her face. And she starts groaning in pain.
Lolllll found it. https://youtu.be/cZ0qpPTH1ow?si=b17mHt0cXsDWK1O_
That look on her face is priceless.
Not as bad as promised. I mean he has a point.
Wow... a morning broadcast, apparently? Imagine seeing that with your kids before school. "Dad, what's a 'sex toy'?"
Never saw that but that is hilarious.
I do remember that. It's not often you get to witness workplace sexual harassment broadcast live on air.
And he was right!
OP, I dislike Amazon and there are definitely plenty of things to accuse them of, but you're literally describing the opposite of a monopoly. Generally the problem with monopolies is that they don't need to compete on price so they'll over charge. You're saying Amazon is a monopoly because they're the cheapest option though. That doesn't follow.
Again, to be clear, I dislike them and believe they're worthy of criticism. I'm not trying to "defend Amazon" here.
You need to read The Amazon Anti-Trust Paradox by current FTC head Lina Khan. She argues that the consumer price oriented monopoly definition is old and outdated in the modern setting. Price is not a sufficient proxy for market competitiveness, and in fact, price is often used to kill competitiveness by undercutting new and innovative products.
I sound agree price isn’t always the best factor to determine a monopoly.
Walmart use to go into a town, sell everything cheap and drive everything else out of business.
It’s one of the many reason I hate Walmart.
Growing up we have a cool downtown area. It wasn’t big but had a bunch of small stores. They all closed within a year of Walmart.
That's a good point. Especially when we see so many things where there are exactly two companies competing.
I agree. Price is important in a classic "free market" where people compete to sell goods and services for cheaper and whoever does it best makes a profit and grows, etc, etc.
This ain't a classic free market. We frequently see companies become market leaders without ever earning a profit. That's not a classic free market.
Succeeding as a company because you make customers happy sounds nice, but the most powerful companies today succeed by gaining favor from those already in power (venture capitalists, etc), and the customers are just a bargaining chip to be tossed around on the bargaining tables of the wealthy.
"A monopoly is a market structure with a single seller or producer that assumes a dominant position in an industry or a sector. Monopolies are discouraged in free-market economies because they stifle competition, limit consumer substitutes, and thus, limit consumer choice." ~investopedia
Nothing about needing to jack prices up. I'd say Amazon fits the description perfectly
Many monopolies form by first using a dominant market position to sell at a price no competitor can afford to match. Choice has already been removed before the "competition" folds or pulls out of the market. The consequences don't happen overnight; you feel the squeeze before the "true" monopoly emerges. Amazon isn't going to sell at a cheaper price once their competitors go out of business out of the kindness of their hearts.
Further, high consumer price is just one form monopoly power takes. Reduced labor power, wages, and worse working conditions are other important concerns, in addition to removing product variety and innovation incentive.
OP didn't say it, but Amazon also forces agreements with sellers not to list same items cheaper elsewhere online which is monopolistic.
I get the nuance you are communicating though.
I am no economist, but don't you think this behaviour of Amazon leads to "carrot and stick" and at that point it is basically a monopoly right?
Just because they are the cheapest option doesn't mean they aren't a monopoly. They clearly have the most inventory. One store having all of the inventory of everything and being the leader for selling products of any kind, is a pretty big problem.
If they can put others out of business (pretty sure they have put smaller stores out of business in the past), they can become an even bigger monopoly.
I’m surprised there’s so few mentions of AWS in this thread. It’s a huge profit centre for the company and a large portion of the internet is now running off of it. AWS is basically the internet’s landlord now, and the profits generated from being the most popular cloud service provider globally are probably why they can afford to invest so heavily into their logistics infrastructure and retail that people are more familiar with.
I went to a conference this weekend, and it slowly dawned on me how every single one of the vendors was selling their app hosted on AWS. That's all it is. Just different flavors of AWS.
Even if you dont interact with AWS directly, every business needs business services - you can bet that no matter what you're buying or who you're buying it from, some of your money is going directly to AWS marketplace.
Not to mention a lot of eggs in one basket. They've built in a lot more redundancies now yeah, but all it takes is a hit to AWS and a shitload of the internet is just DOA. Yeah you can argue about protections and data centers or whatever, but still. It's one big nest in control of one company, no matter how well they guard it, it's still a risk, technical, ethical, or whatever.
One shit update is all it takes, just ask CrowdStrike and Microsoft
It's not just the tech industry, it's most industries. They have tons of inventory of everything.
Microcenter price matches amazon, you could've bought it for the same price at microcenter. Also, you can try ebay, I've been buying more stuff from ebay and the experience is pretty good.
1/2 the time on eBay (for new stuff) it's someone sending a gift package from Amazon and pocketing the difference.
I'll say one problem is that for a number of items, there's a technicality in the supply chain that exempts stuff from the price match. I don't know about Microcenter, but have seen it in other contexts.
For example "Oh, Amazon is selling a 120 pack, but we only carry 125 packs, so it's not equivalent". Or in the most egregious, "You have the price for model number 762LAZ, but we stock 762LWM", and you search and find out those two model numbers are absolutely identical, but "AZ" models come in a box with an Amazon logo printed on it.
Micro center does that? Because I asked them about that and they said they will only do it for certain items. That's really strange honestly. I would also feel a little bit bad about it, because Amazon is clearly trying a loss leader strategy to mark down the product prices to ridiculous levels, I'm sure that would not help local small businesses if I can't afford it, so I wouldn't want to exploit that
Ive had different stores & managers give me different policies. One told me the items needed to be shipped and sold from Amazon. Another told me it was only for items that weren't on sale. Another told me I couldn't price match a part that was in a bundle purchase. But yes, they respect price match to almost every major competitor.
Best Buy does some price matching as well.
I was thinking about this recently after a frustrating trip to a brick and mortar store that was missing the specific item I wanted to purchase which should have been easily available.
Has it always been this bad and we just accepted it until Amazon came around and carried most everything, or have stores significantly reduced the inventory they carry to the point where they have become practically useless except as a showroom? It extends to things I only want to purchase in store. Why do clothing and shoe stores never have my size in stock of the item I want? Clothing has become so poor in quality (even expensive stuff) and I'm hard enough to fit that unless it is an item I already have and need to replace I only want to buy stuff I can try on first.
As much as I'd like to avoid Amazon, the lack of inventory at other retailers really pushes me towards them. Why would I pay more for slow shipping from the East coast because the local store doesn't carry anything when Amazon delivers in 1-2 days for free?
I've also been really struggling recently when trying to buy items that are less than $15. Amazon often charges double what it should cost for the items, but at the same time, local stores don't carry what I'm looking for. I can find it for the right price online, but then the shipping cost makes it more expensive than Amazon.
the shipping cost makes it more expensive than Amazon.
There is a lesson there folks
That lesson/related lesson:
We cannot accept capitalism’s conception of economic relations as “free and private,” because contracts are not made among economic equals and because they give rise to social structures which undemocratically confer power upon some over others. Such relationships are undemocratic in that the citizens involved have not freely deliberated upon the structure of those institutions and how social roles should be distributed within them (e.g., the relationship between capital and labor in the workplace or men and women in child rearing).
It's a mix of both. When Amazon came around, stores got less traffic and had to get rid of niche products, and because shelf space was so important, there could only be so many products carried by a store.
The American consumers worship of convenience/price above all else is precisely what got us here. Just like how everyone discusses how toxic twitter is........ On Twitter.
In regards to twitter - Of course it's where everyone is, nobody will leave.
In regards to Amazon - Of course everyone else is struggling, nobody will pay $3 more to buy it from them instead of Amazon.
I'm not saying there aren't times it does end up having to be amazon or that you can't be lazy and use amazon occasionally. I have prime myself and do use it on occasion (probably wouldn't if I didn't split it with my ex though.) I AM saying nothing will ever change so long as people REFUSE to even consider their habits for a second.
Do you mean you went to walmart and target physically, and then directly to amazons website, and no other online shop? There are a ton of competing online stores with similar or better prices than Amazon, often stores specializing in the product you're buying. Instead of looking up amazon specifically, look up the item youre looking for
Exactly. For tech stuff, B&H Photo and Newegg are generally pretty good, and there are still niche sites within that depending on what you're looking for (e.g. keyboards and mice have multiple high quality vendors). At the very least, it's worth using the "shopping" feature on your search engine (I use DuckDuckGo and check their "shopping" tab to get a feel for which vendors sell a given thing).
I've been buying a ton of stuff recently on eBay because I usually don't mind buying used if it's something more expensive (i.e. cell phone, console games, etc), just be aware that they have different standards than other retailers (e.g. if it's a refurb phone, you could get an aftermarket screen). But as long as you read the listing carefully, it's usually all spelled out.
Newegg has started selling shit products since last couple years.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8xNAti0AnfyrhbiKreMAL30MLGfTMqrN
I canceled prime a year ago as I can no longer support the monopoly and destruction to everyone else
So politely, how does Amazon offering a better price on a niche paper product conflate into them having a monopoly on the "tech industry"?
I'd posit the real thing here is that Amazon's warehouses allow them to keep less-purchased products around in stock that a brick-and-mortar retail store simply wouldn't bother with at all, but that's been the case for decades at this point.
And, yes, printing out images has become an uncommon activity and I can't say I'd blame any of the larger stores for only having a single expensive option available, but that's their decision, not Amazon's.
The long tail has always been one of Amazon's strengths.
That said, buying anything from them runs a good chance of getting knock off garbage these days.
knock off garbage these days
Yep. I actually order more junk from AliExpress than Amazon now, because it's the same shit except AliExpress is half the cost so if I'm going to get junk at least I'm paying junk-level prices.
(This is mostly components and other hobby-related stuff where there never really was any difference between AliExpress and Amazon, other than faster shipping.)
Not only that but Amazon isn't the only online retailer to sell stuff like this. OP only checked some brick and mortar stores then went straight to Amazon without even checking out other places like Canon directly, B&H, Walmart.com, etc.
Doesn't look like they went to an Office Max/Depot or Staples either, which honestly, would be my first stop for printers and printer accessories these days, since printers have very much fallen into just office-use shit and that one damn thing a year you have to print because some jackass is still stuck in 1988.
how does Amazon offering a better price on a niche paper product conflate into them having a monopoly on the “tech industry”?
For starters, it's typically not "better price" so much as "only people able to consistently obtain supply". The real price is very likely higher than it was 5-10 years ago when production was prolific.
But also, we saw this game play out with Walmart. The monopoly retailer has an opportunity to outsource to the least ethical producer.
So Amazon gets to be the sole distributor of printer paper, the manufacturer is some old growth harvestor in the Amazon using prison/slave labor for harvesting/processing, and even then you're paying more for a worse product than when a well regulated and unionized workforce was producing the commodity a decade earlier.
So Amazon gets to be the sole distributor of printer paper, the manufacturer is some old growth harvestor in the Amazon using prison/slave labor for harvesting/processing, and even then you're paying more for a worse product than when a well regulated and unionized workforce was producing the commodity a decade earlier.
That doesn't really make sense in this context as this paper is made by Canon not Amazon. You could make the argument that Canon is using rainforest paper, but then the rest of this kind of falls apart.
Have you checked Staples?
They're scheduled to close 225 storefronts by the end of 2024.
You really think that in 2024 - a time when not even school children are expected to print out reports because everything is submitted digitally - the fact that photo printer paper not being ubiquitous reflects literally anything other than we've mostly moved past paper as a society?
I'm not saying reddit is better - it clearly is not - but ask yourselves why Lemmy is so absolutely shit at applying Occam's Razor to their own biases?
You’re listing all of the reasons it’s not a monopoly - you can go almost anywhere else and buy the same good.
Therefore, I think Amazon has a literal monopoly in the tech industry right now, you're literally forced to buy from them
You literally weren’t and literally aren’t, so they’re literally not.
They have so aggressively and dominantly taken over the supply chain market that no other tech company can currently compete with them in any aspect at all.
If nobody was in competition with them, they’d be raising their prices.
Boy, do I have some bad news for you...
This article literally proves their point. When Amazon doesn’t need to compete (because other sites are indexing off their prices) they raise their prices. When they do need to compete (like in the examples OP mentioned) they keep their prices low.
Check Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox by Lina Khan (FTC). A very detailed review of how Amazon is a monopoly and how they dodge antitrust legislation.
That article has basically been validated over time. At the time it was written, the argument was that monopoly is bad for consumers even if it makes prices cheaper, and that consolidation of producer market power needs to be understood as consumer harm in itself, even if prices or services paradoxically become better for consumers.
It's no longer a paradox today, though. Amazon has raised prices and reduced the quality of service by a considerable margin, and uses its market power to prevent the competition from undercutting them, rather than competing fairly on the merits.
I enjoy this narrative of "being forced" to go against ones own morals and principals by big bad companies because one just absolutely has to have a product for as cheap as possible.
You went to two stores and then straight to Amazon. That doesn't mean they have a monopoly, that means you really didn't try that hard to find an alternative.
If you think you have no other choice you are right because you stopped looking for one.
Yup, I know of a handful of local stores that would have what OP needs:
- office supply stores - there's an Office Depot right next to my local Target
- photo supply stores - they specialize more in lenses and accessories, but they should also have photo paper
- art stores - even hobby stores like Hobby Lobby, Joanne's, or Michael's would have it
- CVS/Walgreens/etc - Walgreens even does prints, so you can just send your prints there if you really can't find paper
- "tech" stores, like Best Buy (or Microcenter if you're in the eastern US)
- random "everything" stores, like Big Lots, "Dollar" stores, etc (less likely, but worth a shot if one is close)
Your area will certainly be different, and there's also a bunch of online stores, like B&H Photo (and dozens more, not going to list them all).
And I'm not in a big urban area, if you're near a major city, you'll have dozens of small stores that'll sell that kind of stuff, along with some larger stores with discounted items.
Yes, asking for every damn material on facebook group of the university academic year is not suitable in the long run. Yes, there is to be one guy on my year hosting all material for free but he stopped and everybody moved to facebook groups.
Also there is always the second hand market... If you are really looking for deals and can take some risk which I think most adults with jobs can...
The second hand market is 80% suck since 2021 or so. Everyone wants retail for their shit. And goodwill has decided to be “the last reseller” and priced accordingly.
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People want to sell their beat up tools for $10 less than the full warranty with returns tool (router, brad nailer, palm sander, belt sander, recently, different sellers.) a plug in craftsman belt sander as old as my dad and you want what now?
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Shirts. Even the best thrift store will have a $7-8 minimum on a used shirt. Meanwhile, I can get 2 for $10-12 on Amazon, new, with returns.
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Photo paper is an uncommon thrift. Though I found two 5x7 packs for $1 each this year. They were in a box with wrapped postits and index cards so I think someone was confused.
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Remember, time is a commodity. Killing a day and coming out empty handed isn’t for everyone.
I agree with you there. The second hand market is wonderful for finding ridiculous deals on things people just want gone.
The only problem with the second hand market is the effort needed for it. That effort keeps people from considering it a viable option for goods in the same way the effort to find another store made OP B-line to Amazon.
Here in Canada, I find the prices pretty neck and neck. Small items tend to be a bit cheaper at the stores, since there is very little overhead for them to carry small items compared to Amazon's picking and delivery logistics. Big items tend to be a bit cheaper on Amazon. For tech specifically, Best Buy price matches items, so it's not that bad... Memory express and CC sometimes have lower prices than Amazon too (see PCPartPicker).
The main reason to use Amazon is you can easily find some really obscure stuff. Then again, you can buy direct from manufacturer, like Vevor, for often cheaper.
Wait, your Canon printer needs a specific type of photo paper, not just generic photo paper that's been around for inkjet printers for a very long time now? Have printers really become that enshittified?
I believe they are sublimation printers, which require specific inks and papers. I seem to remeber that they produce very long lasting prints, which ordinary inkjets (even pigment) can't achieve.
Canon printers specifically are designed to take Canon specific photo paper. Even the drivers on your Windows PC are programmed to understand what those photo papers are, and you have to match up to them. If you use some generic paper, the prints will never come out right.
Canon printers specifically are designed to take Canon specific photo paper.
OP, this is what you should be complaining about.
Amazon is a place where you have to deal with fake items and getting fraudulent returns shipped to you as new. Your reward for this is maybe a 5% discount.
Have you tried buying from aliexpress? It's the same products as on Amazon, but directly from the supplier. Imagine Amazon, but everything's 50% off.
Source: I'm cheap as heck and buy random trash from them
Walmart online is eating Amazon they don't have a monopoly
Walmart online is pretty good for most things. Not everything. But if I can get it on Walmart I do.... Walmart plus is pretty good. It currently comes with Paramount Plus, which doesn't show ads with my pi-hole (so far, Roku), and compared with Amazon Prime showing ads.....
Anyway fuck Amazon.
Only in the US unfortunately
Bought a RX 6400 for a little windoze game box, and shelled out around 30€ /35€ more at a conventional well known shop here, materiel dot net. Bought most of my stuff there over the years, nice people, etc.
But I couldn't just go get it, it "had to" be delivered, so I paid for that too (I guess you do the same on Amazon), high class delivery or so I thought. Ordered thursday, scheduled delivery "wednesday 8h-19h" so okay I WFH but man better be there every minute right?
Got a confirmation SMS/Text around 12, we're delivering your package today! (No more info).
Surprise, they didnt.
Suddenly it's scheduled "Thursday 8h-19h".
Grrr
I bet I would have gotten my card on saturday if I had used amazon (+30€ too...).
I mean are brick & mortar stores dead now for real maybe?
Services quality is down across all segments of economy tho this ain't retail specific.
We pay more, we get less. Entire life is being rapidly enshitified
There are other online shops besides Amazon. I find an alternative for almost everything that I order and it's not more expensive. And finding the right product inside Amazon is so exhausting nowadays that it's not more work to compare different web shops.
the money and time you spent traveling to three different stores outweighs the couple bucks more you would have spent at walmart. protip: next time try staples or office depot. also, taking a moral position means sacrifice, and often times that's financial.
I recently wanted to get a pre-workout, I looked it up on Amazon and then I went to the company site to just order directly from there. It was like $10 cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping and subscribe & save.
It's because Amazon requires the seller not undercut its Amazon store through other outlets, including their own website. If you are a seller and you want to take advantage of Amazon Prime, then you have to make sure your Amazon price is the cheapest price available on the internet.
It's hard to compete when you're basically a warehouse and your market is the literal population of the internet.
Yeah, microcenter, even if it's the only computer/electronics store for 100 miles, can still only hold so much, and they only reach people in/around their city at most. It's not like people are crossing state lines to get to a computer store.... Unless you live on the border of your state, I suppose.
Amazon has, at the very least, dozens of warehouses across the country that can deliver whatever it is you want with remarkable efficiency because postal/parcel services have been systematically improving over the past 50+ years.
I'm not saying I'm a fan of Amazon, but bluntly, is it really surprising, in the slightest, that Amazon can out price everyone else?
If it's sold and shipped by amazon, you should be able to price match it at bestbuy or target. I don't know why walmart stopped price matching anybody.
Amazon most times has name brand stuff that isn't electronics that you can have delivered very quickly. But seriously, any device, anything with an expiration, shoes, anything that might break in transit, off brand plastic crap, and any other of the useless items amazon carries, just buy a name brand directly from the manufacturers website. You will most likely get a tested product, and when something goes wrong you can talk directly to the manufacturer support. Not amazon. Also, purely anecdotal right now, but check your bank account for amazon purchase totals that don't match you order history... I got 3 charges for $24~ in 3 days when I hadn't ordered for a week, and now I have to fight thru automation to get it fixed.
It sounds like you went to several physical stores and when their stock on hand was not sufficient you concluded your only option was Amazon. What about the rest of the internet?
I’ve been deeply hooked on Amazon for a long time and trying to wean myself off of it for a variety of reasons. The most helpful thing in this, I’ve found, is Apple Pay.
I happen to use an iPhone and Apple Pay is easy. It is increasingly accepted everywhere, making any online store a one-click purchase. Maybe for you it would be PayPal or Google Pay but whatever your preference is, these payment services have come a long way.
For years I was stuck on Amazon because of the convenience. I am not ashamed - convenience is a real benefit when life is busy. And I had everything set up on Amazon, and they had most things available in their search.
But Google Shopping also has almost everything in the world available and most or all the retailers there accept Apple Pay. So now I just do that. It works just as easily.
You can even search on Amazon and then take note of the name of the seller and search the internet for them and then buy direct. Most have websites because Amazon fees eat into their profits. They would rather sell direct. And easy payment services plus ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Square make it easier than ever.
Amazon is becoming a cesspool of Chinese scams these days. I am tempted to say that I still prefer Amazon because the returns are easy but the fact is that I have HAD to return a lot of things to Amazon because they were not what I thought I was buying or they were just absolute shit quality or arrived broken.
So the point remains: you have alternatives. Use them. If you want physical stores, that’s another matter entirely and I agree those are getting fewer and worse. But Amazon doesn’t always beat them on price. You should check every time and you might be surprised. I was in my local CVS and I saw they had the exact LED bulbs I needed to buy but I thought they’d be too expensive there so I checked Amazon on the spot. CVS beat them by a couple of dollars. So check every time!
Brick and mortar will always be more expensive and there are always cheaper options than Target. I used to love Fry's but they are no more.
It depends on the product, but brick and mortar is superior to Amazon in some cases now. It's mostly just things that are easy to ship that Amazon is cheap for.
Ain't recent data showing amazon longer cheapest?
Sounds like one off here tbh
My last post being unclear. Amazon has about as much a strangle hold on the tech sector as Walmart has on retail. They don't. You get the product you paid for. AWS is no different.
But the Walmart difference are brands and reduced quality in brand names. There are weird brands on Amazon but I'm not aware of any quality reductions when paying for known brands.
You tried three in person places and then went straight to Amazon? Why not trying to buy directly from the manufacturer? You clearly didn’t try at all. Ignoring the fact that there are still plenty of other retail stores, you didn’t even try the online shops of any of your retail stores.
I frequently buy stuff online from Target because they also do free shipping, it usually arrives in 2-3 days, and they have somewhat frequent deals. So I'll get a similar or lower price vs Amazon and still get it relatively quickly. Oh, and I can check inventory of my local stores if I really need something same-day. That way I don't have to drive around all that much, I'll just order for same-day pickup and grab whatever it is on the way home from work (and I pass like 3 Targets on the way home).
So I almost never need to buy regular things from Amazon. Between Costco, Costco.com, Target, Home Depot, and eBay, most of my bases are covered. For the rest, I search a bit before going back to Amazon.
I used to spend several thousand dollars at Amazon every year, and now it's a few hundred. I'm not "boycotting" them or anything, I just prefer other retailers because I don't those alternatives to disappear.
You should offer printer paper on xmrbazaar.com
So the way it’s ruining those markets is by making more goods available at lower prices?
It's about how they do it. They achieve this not only by being incredibly efficient through exploiting thier employees, but also by systematically destroying competition, and using thier marketplace to unfairly favor thier own products.
It's techno-feudalism, here's a great presentation/interview about it:
I think it’s worth noting that this is the effect of the free market behaving as designed, however no one has risen up to challenge Amazon enough along the way. So many retailers ignored e-commerce in the early days and went on with business as usual. Fast forward 20 years and Amazon has eaten into their market shares. A large retailer like WalMart absolutely has the ability to challenge Amazon by investing in the user experience and warehousing/delivery infrastructure. But often the old heads at these companies ignore improving the user experience in favor of making cuts. Amazon didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a steady growth in their business model over decades and the user experience is key to what made them so popular. It takes seconds to find what you want, for often times cheaper than the competition and in many cases the shipping is lower and faster.
What would be difficult is for a start up company with little capital to try and take on these behemoths. Perhaps a coalition of large companies like Target, Best Buy, B&N, Kohl’s, etc. grouping together to create a large distribution network and app platform with a good user experience could compete.
Just a thought.
AWS is a whole other can of worms.