Amazon Undercuts Competition Through 3rd Party Sellers

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monkeymagick

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Apparently Amazon is now discounting certain products from its third-party sellers (warning auto-start video) in order to make a sale on its website. Of course, undercutting your competition is not new in the retail space. Items affected with the price cut will be designated with a "discounted provided by Amazon" message on the site. The company will absorb the difference price and still pay its sellers the price of the product.

Marketing the items at lower prices, however, risks angering Amazon's third-party sellers, who instead could list their products elsewhere online. The move has drawn attention within Amazon Services' seller forum.
 
Yeah. Archaea hit the nail on the head.

I've ordered a lot of stuff from Amazon - 3rd party and Amazon. You never know what you'll get or WHEN you get it when you go third party. I always expect problems when buying from a third party.
 
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Ok.... I get the sentiment that Amazon is essentially driving down the prices of the third party sellers (by utilizing them as well)....

But do I need to remind you of what the alternative is? The alternative being, Amazon simply says Fuck you Third Party sellers and buys an inventory of 200,000 of the product and sells it themselves for $19.99 instead of the third-party sellers $24.99. Which one do you think would hurt worse? If anything, they should be blowing Amazon for not wiping them out immediately and it gives them time to plan (e.g. reduce costs to compete or move to another product to sell).
 
I sort of get why third party sellers are angry but...they still get paid the amount they wanted, amazon just absorbed the cost. Its kinda slimy business but its better than the alternative. They could get a notice from amazon saying they are cutting their price or cutting them off completely.
 
There are always people who will buy at the lowest price no matter what. There are always some people who don't even look at the price or compare. But there is still a significant number of people who look at more than the price when deciding what to purchase, or from where to purchase.

Lesson is, don't get upset about what Amazon does with "low price" - compete where Amazon won't - offer better products, better convenience, or better service. I know Amazon has set the bar pretty high, but it can be done!
 
Eliminate third party sellers. This and a dump truck full of other problems are instantly solved.
 
RogueTadhg said:
Yeah. Archaea hit the nail on the head.

I've ordered a lot of stuff from Amazon - 3rd party and Amazon. You never know what you'll get or WHEN you get it when you go third party. I always expect problems when buying from a third party.
Click to expand...

While this can be true... if you find the same exact seller on eBay, the Amazon price is generally a bit cheaper.

AND there are eBay sellers who just drop ship stuff from Amazon. Not sure how they even make a profit that way unless they are the ones that are selling on Amazon and just use their Amazon shipping instead of eBay shipping. Does Amazon give better shipping discounts than eBay?
 
cyclone3d said:
While this can be true... if you find the same exact seller on eBay, the Amazon price is generally a bit cheaper.

AND there are eBay sellers who just drop ship stuff from Amazon. Not sure how they even make a profit that way unless they are the ones that are selling on Amazon and just use their Amazon shipping instead of eBay shipping. Does Amazon give better shipping discounts than eBay?
Click to expand...

I don't pick Amazon first because of the price, I pick them because I've got a very high chance of actually getting what I ordered, when it was promised and not being given any shit if there is a problem. The exact opposite is true of third party sellers (and most other vendors period) unfortunately.
 
when searching through things on amazon, the first thing i always do is to check, prime shipping
 
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