> 1. Think of Amazon as a search engine for products. 2. Amazon wants its site to be the lowest-price destination for products. 3. If Amazon finds your product on another website for lower than its own website, it'll just hide your listing from the search -- this is meant to be pro-consumer (when you go to Amazon you'll get the lowest price).

Stockholm syndrome at its finest -- reinterpreting "punishing a seller if an item is cheaper anywhere else on the internet, even a site they don't directly control" as "pro-consumer".

If Amazon really were a search engine for their own products, they should just give an accurate answer for their own site. If they really wanted to be pro-consumer, they'd say "Available cheaper here: ..."

ETA: Showing competitor's prices could still be a strategic win for Amazon. It conditions users to always first check Amazon; and most of the time if it's cheaper, the ease of one-click ordering and/or batching deliveries should make it worth ordering from Amazon even if it's a few dollars cheaper elsewhere.

Hell, even something as simple as their sorting/filtering is so broken/clunky as to be anti-consumer. Try sorting lowest-to-highest and seeing how hard it is to actually understand the final price of everything that pops up (amidst all the sponsored trash).

> If they really wanted to be pro-consumer, they'd say "Available cheaper here: ..."

Which company does that?

The elephant in the room is that Amazon keeps increasing their fees.

So if someone needs to adjust the price to accommodate Amazon fees, on Amazon, they're penalized.

Not to mention increasing ad costs, which at this point is another fee.

It's not for the benefit of the consumer, it's for the benefit of Amazon: Amazon wants people to buy on Amazon at the lowest cost for the consumer and at the highest margin for Amazon - they won't sacrifice their fees.