I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof.
I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks.
I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. Within a few minutes of me receiving this claim, my account was suspended. I had no chance to rectify the situation.
No amount of calling or emailing Amazon could get me in front of someone that could help me. All responses were an automated rejection.
This was a rough time for me as it was my only form of income and Amazon held almost $30,000 of my money for 3 months. I ended up having to close my business and move on, though I did eventually get all of my money back.
I've built multiple successful businesses since then and Amazon has recently had many business reps try to get me to sign up with a business account, because we purchase lots of items on Amazon/month. I always try to get them to re-investigate my old seller account and our email correspondence stops shortly after this. It's crazy to me that after 10 years and in a completely different industry, I still can't open a seller account.
It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform.
It only gives them more control over you and they will most likely use your customers, data, and more resources to out-compete you, if you get too big. Twitter has also done this to their app developers.
My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time.
What's even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online. Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure?
> It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform.
This sounds eerily similar to what happened to a close friend of mine, and that's 100% the right takeaway from the situation.
> My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time.
Same as above, different friend, but again Etsy.
> What's even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online. Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure?
And that's why I'm in favor of strong individual privacy laws, and corresponding enforcement of said laws. Because 'I've got nothing to hide' only works so long as your values/goals are in line with everyone else in the system you're operating in.
The second that changes, good luck and godspeed.
Thanks for the great read, and... I dunno just validating your view of things.
I support such laws too, but I wouldn't expect them to really change this. I think what we're seeing is more of a monopoly problem than anything else, even if violating privacy is a part of how they pull it off.
It's very hard to prove that a company that does, in theory, have access to data is not storing it or looking at it. Even accidentally. I just finished explaining all this to someone who freaked out about a Facebook post they saw about how Facebook was starting to collect information about everything you do off-Facebook. I had them show me what they meant, and it appears to just be every app that integrates with Facebook comments or allows Facebook sign-in as an option, etc.
The problem is one Facebook naturally got because of it's success: everyone has good reasons to want to work within their ecosystem. So they get tons of data on everyone. You can inconvenience yourself and refuse to ever visit a service that might share data with Facebook. But honestly: who's going to find that practical and do it? And if Facebook ignores the setting and "accidentally" captures all this data, and I suspect they're misusing it, how do I really get an investigation and more than a slap on the wrist for them?
It's messy to be a platform that provides a service and a consumer of that service that competes with your other consumers. At a previous job of mine we made a conscious decision not to do that for fear it would hurt our core business to ruin relationships with our customers. The problem here is Amazon just doesn't fear that. And I can't say they should. But the root problem seems to me to be more of a monopoly problem than a privacy problem.
The American idea used to include anti-monopoly rules. Granted Amazon is not a monopoly, but the idea was to keep businesses small (and govt small) so no single superior entity would reign abusively on individuals. And that would make the federation stronger.
Maybe it’s time to revive it. Google, Apple, Amazon, all cause issues because they are too big and haven’t been broken up (or menaces of) for way too long.
We’ve scratched antitrust laws in 9/11, when Microsoft was recognized guilty but never sanctioned, because the domination of USA after 9/11 was important. But maybe that led to two decades of really huge corporations, and a bit more liquidity in the market (choice of platforms, etc) could be nice.
This is a legislative/governmental issue not a technical one. In jurisdictions where privacy and anticompetitive laws are enforced (EU) regulators have the ability to regulate with fines of real consequence which is not the case in the US. It does not always lead to perfect outcomes but it does give greater protection to most people.
The 'I got nothing to hide' is when discussing law enforcement surveilence? It is funny how fear of the "police state" is more or less irrelevant now vs early 2000s and private companies are the main problem. It is hard to predict the future.
Yeah that may have not been the correct phrase to turn there. I guess in this context it's more about personal ownership of data. Which at this point in time, is 100% trust based with Amazon and 0% tech based.
I don't think that's something people, even many very technologically knowledgeable people, are aware of.
1st I got an item from a fraudulent 3rd party shipper. Did not get my money back and amazon claimed they don't know his identity
2nd Packet got stolen. Amazon claimed based on statistical analysis this packet is assumed to have reached me. Delivered to "mailbox". Paid with CC, made a charge back, closed my account.
You know what is a pretty good competitor? eBay. As a business it may be terrible, but as a market place it is quite good.
Competitor on what vector? Speaking from a US-centric viewpoint here, but my thoughts;
* Distribution & Warehousing - Walmart & Costco
* Sales & Advertising - Google & Facebook
A few notable online storefronts that are independent and I use frequently are B&H Photovideo and Newegg. Realistically though the options I listed above are the only companies I see having the scale to compete with Amazon at anything, and even then they're an order of magnitude behind. Just my opinion, again very US-centric.
As a side node: I am actually thinking of buying a tiny bankrupt travel equipment company. Friends advised against it because of "Amazon essentials". I would not sell on Amazon but it is a strong argument.
Maybe someone has some words of wisdom regarding to this.
What do they have that you want, or what do you think you're going to do differently?
Why did it go bankrupt?
If they claim it's only bankrupt because of COVID-19, then it must not have been very profitable (if at all) if they didn't have enough money to weather out at least 3 months. So I recommend not accepting that explanation.
They were "bankrupt" before. They just selling what is left of the stock.
I was always impressed by the quality of their products. It is a comparatively "old" company, they produce their stuff in Eastern Europe, not Asia.
Why they did not sell?
1. Their webpage looks like from the 90ies
2. No marketing. I think I can solve this, I also have contacts with some small travel agencies. I am sure they would be interested in some affiliate scheme.
3. Has also some niche products where I have contacts in the US (Military, dogs etc.)
Biggest problem is to convince the guy to either sell or take on partners.
Depends on the country. But why would you like to purchase one?
I asked this business if I can buy a stake before they filed for bankruptcy because I saw potential and value that I could bring to the company. I still do.
If a restaurant of bakery goes bankrupt I would not want it for free since I don't understand the business, nor can I bring value to the business.
Not only on goods, they even charge commission on shipping costs. With eroding seller protection and stupid changes to the UI, I guess one of the only reasons they still have vendors is their monopoly.
> I don't see how this is legal, Personally i don't think you should be able to run the market and compete in it at the same time.
It may be, it may not be. I don't know, I am not a Lawyer nor do I play one on the internet.
What I do know is that to date no individual, or collective, has had the financial or political will to test any of this in court.
I suspect this is largely a positive feedback loop whereby any entity that has the financial or political capital to do so and stand a reasonable chance of winning has done the calculus and come to the conclusion that setting said legal precedent would do their own businesses more harm than it would net them in value from Amazon.
Until that changes, meet the new boss same as the old boss.
Any individual or collective which had the wherewithal could do the math and it will always be strongly in favor of working with Amazon rather than against it.
Old boss wasn't going anywhere until a new one came along that was big enough to crush at will.
There’s a step before them undercutting you, and that’s the margin squeeze.
I’ve seen it happen, repeatedly - also years ago. If you sold a high volume commodity on seller central, you’d see your commission go up, and up, and up, until you squeak - you either quit or you complain.
They now know exactly how much that line nets you, and whether it’s worth selling.
I recently (pre-COVID19) sold all my Amazon and replaced it with Apple due to these issues. I feel Apple Pay, and the fast followers, will drive shopping to more platforms than Amazon by reducing friction for customers of independent websites (supported by USPS, UPS, Fedex... which Amazon has decided not to compete with anymore). With the Amazon COVID19 shipping delays, I’ve established many new shopping relationships online, and I hope that is the experience for many others, changing the market. The CEO of Shopify gives great talks about the important of this, so I do support that platform at this point.
It's one of those Schrodinger's laws that applies to companies like Amazon. They're either a marketplace or not depending on the complaint. Complain about shady sellers and fakes? They're a marketplace and not responsible! Complain about anti competitive practices? Well this is clearly the Amazon store, says so right on it, clearly not a marketplace!
I think this is just a special case of “online communication”. It’s illegal for the phone company to arbitrarily suspend your service for what (legal things) you say over the phone.
It’s legal for Twitter or Amazon or Etsy or Twitch or Discord or YouTube.
I recently got suspended by Twitter after using it daily for 12 years and in addition to not being able to send new tweets or DMs (or do data backup/takeout), I also can no longer see even the usernames (or the message history) of the people I was communicating with in DM. For many of them, that was my only contact info for them.
I am becoming increasingly convinced for the need to regulate arbitrary suspensions for communications platforms (including sales/business platforms, that’s just a special case of communication). The current emergency situation really woke me up to the huge dangers involved.
GP lost his business, which is sad and tragic and unfair. I envision that in disasters or emergencies, eventually someone is going to lose their life.
Imagine if the mobile phone or cable company could arbitrarily suspend your connectivity because you left bad reviews online about their service.
I recently did a deep dive on how these sorts of centralized, censorship systems pose an inherent and existential threat to safety and human rights in an emergency/pandemic/war that is non-obvious in peacetime: https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/
It’s truly terrifying to me that these systems (among them Amazon, Discord, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram) have final say, practically, over who gets to speak to whom in a lot of cases in society, or what is allowed to be said. These companies (and the government in their jurisdiction) are entirely unaccountable for this terrible censorship power they wield, and it is only a matter of when, not if, it will be horribly abused. TFA is just one important facet of this danger.
Can I see the laws that affect phone companies and free speech? That's an interesting observation, and does parallel Twitter/YouTube/etc, so I'd like to see the wording for it.
I think that the relevant laws are those related to the phone/cable companies being public utilities (and thus explicit, by-design, state-permitted monopolies or duopolies). They aren’t allowed to wiretap them (because communications privacy was a bigger deal to legislators pre-internet) and have to provide service to all comers (ostensibly in exchange for being a monopoly-by-design).
From my limited understanding, this regulation forcing them to offer service (as a utility) to 100% of the market is coordinated on a state-by-state basis by the public service/public utilities commission.
(Fun fact, I learned this at a young age because my dad ran a paging/voicemail service out of the basement of our single family, suburban residential home when I was about 10. We were the only house on the block with dozens of trunk lines coming into our little bungalow; but by law they had to do it if you ordered it. Try that today with internet access from a cable company, ha! It’s all but impossible due to TOS to run an internet business at a residential address now. Hosting for-profit services with the internet you pay for or reselling the service in any way means you get instantly unplugged.)
Sorry I don’t have a direct link to the all-comers bit of PUC/PSC regulation, but this should give you a starting point for research.
The not-allowed-to-tap-phones bit is a federal law:
It’s sort of insane how provider-wiretapped has been the all-encompassing default for almost all of the largest DM/1-to-1 communications systems in the world: SMS, WeChat, Facebook, VK, Instagram, Gmail. WhatsApp and iMessage are outliers in this regard. Almost all popular new entrants like Slack and Discord are provider-tapped, too.
This is a relatively recent development in our society’s relationship with electronic communications. Reading content by the provider used to be illegal as fuck.
Is life significantly better for retails selling through grocery or other retailers? What stops Safeway from one day selling a competing product under their store brand? And then they'd still be charging you for shelf placement.
Same happens to us but we split sales to Shopify. Any idea if Shopify does same? It seems their ambitions keeps growing, they started charging percentage of revenue instead of flat subscription.
I've had this thought as well, and certainly there seems to be nothing preventing them from going down that road. Though at least with Shopify, it's theoretically easier to move your website to another platform/service or just roll your own.
I'd say that you're basically at their mercy with regards to the charging a percentage of revenue though. I mean, that's how all card processors work.
By default I trust Shopify more than Amazon, and in both instances your business is essentially succeeding 'at their pleasure' so to speak. So I thought on it for a minute.
I think the main difference comes down to individuals in the business and culture. I'd elaborate more but I'm not sure I want to write that much speculative crap on the internet this morning, and I should get something productive done with my day.
EDIT: Also just realized, that if you look at my spending habits, they 100% imply I trust Amazon more than Shopify.
I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks.
I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. Within a few minutes of me receiving this claim, my account was suspended. I had no chance to rectify the situation.
No amount of calling or emailing Amazon could get me in front of someone that could help me. All responses were an automated rejection.
This was a rough time for me as it was my only form of income and Amazon held almost $30,000 of my money for 3 months. I ended up having to close my business and move on, though I did eventually get all of my money back.
I've built multiple successful businesses since then and Amazon has recently had many business reps try to get me to sign up with a business account, because we purchase lots of items on Amazon/month. I always try to get them to re-investigate my old seller account and our email correspondence stops shortly after this. It's crazy to me that after 10 years and in a completely different industry, I still can't open a seller account.
It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform.
It only gives them more control over you and they will most likely use your customers, data, and more resources to out-compete you, if you get too big. Twitter has also done this to their app developers.
My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time.
What's even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online. Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure?