| ▲ | crazygringo a day ago |
| > The consumers’ 2021 lawsuit said Amazon violated antitrust law by restricting third-party sellers from offering their products for lower prices elsewhere on rival platforms while they are also for sale on Amazon. I've noticed that third-party sellers generally get around this by having the same list price on their own site, but basically offering everyone a coupon for 15-30% off. Not just for signing up for e-mails, but spinning a wheel that pops up a discount, items that are on sale 95% of the time, etc. So while this may very well be anticompetitive of Amazon, at the same time it's generally something savvy sellers and savvy consumers have been able to get around easily for a long time. |
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| ▲ | johnnienaked 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| No not easily. Also, amazon straight up steals successful products from 3rd party sellers, rebrands them as Amazon basics, and then undercuts until the 3rd party seller goes out of business |
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| ▲ | levkk a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That can easily be perceived as violating the ToS and get you kicked off the marketplace. Big risk to take if that's where you're making most of your $. |
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| ▲ | crazygringo a day ago | parent [-] | | I doubt it. I've seen this for products with 10,000+ reviews. It's totally mainstream. If Amazon had a problem with it, they would have cracked down already. What can they say, that "20% off your cart" coupons are prohibited anywhere else the product is listed? That's not feasible. You see North Face doing the same thing with sports retailers. Their jackets never go on sale, but retailers make cart-wide promotions available so you can still get the discount. |
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| ▲ | scyzoryk_xyz a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That savvy reality in which we all spin fucking discount prize wheels every time we buy something just because someone managed to monopolize a market. |
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| ▲ | jazzyjackson 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I immediately just click the back button when some spin wheel discount thing pops up, I just figured it was temu leaking. Thank you for explaining why they are doing this, tho I still wonder why it has to be gamified and not just, click here for a coupon, is it because the agreement with Amazon precludes them from offering coupons, but neglects to forbid casino games? |
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| ▲ | crazygringo 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think it's just a psychological trick, I'm sure there's some statistic showing that if people think they won a larger discount by chance they're more likely to use it or something. I don't think there's any connection to Amazon, as some sites do just provide regular coupons. | |
| ▲ | kamarg 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A lot of those things require you to give them your email to get the coupon. They could do that with a button as well but couldn't then follow up to let you know you didn't buy anything from them in 24hrs. |
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| ▲ | codazoda 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s also technically illegal, in many jurisdictions, for something to be “on sale” permanently. Though lots of retailers get away with it. |
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| ▲ | brewdad 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | I saw it with mattress shopping. Every online brand I looked at had their mattresses “on sale” pretty much always. There might be one day a week where they were full price or one week they were 15% off and 20% off the next. Rinse. Repeat. |
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| ▲ | IncreasePosts a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Neither here nor there, but about 15 years ago while I was a fresh grad/hire at Amazon, I realized that the crawler that was supposed to enforce this had not been running for multiple years. I went out and fixed it and got it running again, and I showed about $8M/month revenue increase from this. What did I get? From my skip level manager: "Great job, but too bad about that bug. Next time if it's perfect we can talk about promo" (the crawler went down for a day from an edge case that was preexisting, I fixed it same day) |
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| ▲ | cjbgkagh 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I made a BigCo $130M p.a. with a general improvement but was similarly denied a promotion. Changed my career plan after that and got out of there. These same companies complain constantly that it’s so hard to hire good people. | |
| ▲ | _DeadFred_ 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Brave to tell about that time you fixed the snitching machine. But I appreciate you telling it and I don't think you should get downvotes | | |
| ▲ | IncreasePosts 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | If a machine catches you doing something you weren't supposed to do, it doesn't seem like snitching. Are red light cameras snitches? | | |
| ▲ | harimau777 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Red light cameras are put up by governments not private corporations. | | |
| ▲ | tbrownaw 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | I thought they tended to be by private corporations with government contracts. |
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| ▲ | Spivak 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, what do you think snitching is? There's an automated security company called tattletale. That's what they do. The fact that there's so many social norms about not snitching is a beautiful illustration of how disconnected the rules we live under are disconnected from our own interests. | | |
| ▲ | brewdad 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Isn’t that so much of why our legal system exists. You want to get to work a few minutes faster, so push through a light as it’s turning red. Another driver doesn’t expect that and the collision causes delays for hundreds of other people at best or injury or death to you or the other driver. | |
| ▲ | IncreasePosts 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | "snitches get stitches" - yes, I guess it is in my interest to not be attacked by a psycho because I told the police what the psycho did, but I wouldn't really call that norm related to my interests as a potential snticher, more like a norm meant to protect people who would be snitched on. |
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| ▲ | astura 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I'm not sure it's really even enforced? For example Republic of Tea blackberry sage tea, 50 count - $11 on their site, $13 on Amazon with Republic of Tea as the seller. https://www.republicoftea.com/blackberry-sage-black/p/v00590... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0024SDYLI And that's not really a super obscure product, since it's ranked #69 best selling for the "black tea" category. |
