Totally.
Yes, in the past Amazon has as some point contributed to the lowering of prices, by challenging the dominant players in retail markets.
But now, Amazon is the dominant player in the retail market, and Amazon seems to exploit this to the greatest extent possible.
Here's an excellent quote from recent thread [1] about one of Amazon's practices:
"Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly."
Which is an interesting assumption, but certainly not a correct one. They have lost a lot of my business in recent years due to frequent poor quality control and customer service issues.
This is similar to the chronological vs. algorithmic timeline debates in social media: it's annoying to many users, but the overall result must be positive, otherwise they probably wouldn't be doing it, in face of the backlash.
Anecdotally, I am far from alone among my friends and family in perceiving that Amazon's quality, reliability and customer service have degraded sharply in recent years. It's not just the counterfeits issue. Their basic product organisation is terrible these days, and it's often difficult to figure out if I'm ordering the correct edition of something. They've also failed to deliver Christmas shopping by the guaranteed dates. They've sent many items out that were packaged in obviously absurd ways and arrived predictably damaged, and then had basic problems with their returns procedures causing customers a lot of hassle.
Perhaps more dangerous for Amazon, though, is that they are not always competitive on pricing with my local book and general stores any more. I can buy a new movie from Amazon and have it arrive tomorrow with perhaps a 5-10% chance that it's a bad copy and won't play. If I can buy the same movie for the same or less from my local store when I do my grocery shopping, and be guaranteed a proper UK product that I can see looks undamaged when I pick it off the shelf, which I can then enjoy watching this evening, what am I going to do? It's a similar story for buying books from a good local bookshop, and rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
A business that is large enough to generally not care any more. To not care about the fakes, the deliberately poor search that promotes crap every single time, the increasingly hostile policies, the increasingly hostile way things are offered. The promotion of horrible ideas like "global store" that will hold some indeterminate amount in anticipation of customs fees and intl delivery, but not let you exclude it from all search and choose local products only.
No business that felt customer reactions actually mattered would do the things you describe intentionally with the possible exception of pricing (and Amazon should be able to be cheapest most of the time).
These are all styles of doing business prior to a major readjustment. Tesco before the recession and before they lost a chunk of customers to Lidl and Aldi - half of whom will never go back as they discovered that Aldi are better than Tesco as well as cheaper.
Personally I already reached a point where Amazon are way down the list of choices to shop from.
Amazon's time will come, but right now they, or perhaps just Bezos - who knows, don't believe it will.
Yes, I think that sums it up nicely. History is full of big businesses that were invulnerable and could get away with anything, until they weren't and couldn't. History is also full of big businesses whose senior management seemed to be the last people in the world to realise when one situation was slowly but steadily turning into the other, often because they were focussed on short term plans and quarterly reports and somehow failed to see the wood for the trees.
Boss: Look, revenues are way up! Q4 last year was huge! Best. Christmas. Season. Ever.
Consultant: That's true, and congratulations. But be careful, the majority of your recent growth looks like it comes from segments outside your core online store business.
Boss: I know. Isn't that great? Our retail marketplace services are making twice what they brought in just a couple of years ago!
Consultant: That's also true, but it does seem the customer experience of your online store has been adversely affected because the marketplace aspect is confusing them and causing problems with poor quality control and fake products, and that online store still brings in the largest part of your revenues.
Boss: Experience, exshmerience! Look at our quarterly numbers. Our main online store is still growing.
Consultant: Well, yes, the main online store is still growing. However, it's been close to saturation in a lot of markets for a while. Part of that revenue growth is because you've been relying less on undercutting the competition and started pushing prices up. But that leaves you more vulnerable to competition again.
Boss: Well, it looks like our customers love us and they'll keep coming back anyway.
Consultant: Perhaps, but consumer shopping habits often change slowly. Brand loyalty is slow to build, and that goes for your competitors too. But it's built by good customer experiences, and sometimes lost all too quickly after bad ones.
Boss: As I said, experience, exshmerience. Look, revenues are way up! Q4 last year was huge!
But create a trillion dollar companies by "stealing" taxes (as Jeff Bezos did), and states notice, and there's one thing that unites Republicans and Democrats, Obamas Bushes and Trumps, and it's green. To put it another way, people managed to untangle all the knots and ... it happened. Lots of laws got changed, but the real breakthrough was here:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/states-will-be-able-to-cha...
Bezos essentially gave Americans a tax loophole for goods ordering and made it work, and took ~18% of what he gave them for his company (and about 4% for himself). He now has a trillion dollars. Americans have lots of stuff delivered to them.
But now, Amazon has the same problem mail-order has had for a very long time: it's just not cheap anymore, and so they cheat, underdeliver and overcharge, just like mail order has to do. It's trying to fix this, but the truth is that home delivery is just a lot more expensive than stores, and there is no fix.
And surprise ! Walmart suddenly stopped losing against Amazon. Weird, no ? Well, no, not that weird at all.
Of course Amazon is constantly criticized for being an example of what's wrong with capitalism. Reality: government created Amazon through tax law. I'm not saying that's all there is to it, but it's close.
But yeah this is a silicon valley forum, and the idea that the founders of the US, and a good lawyer and a supreme court decision from 1992 were the real power behind one of the great silicon valley tech companies is just not going to be a great explanation in many people's opinions. Amazon just isn't a great technical accomplishment. It's an incredible financial engineering accomplishment.
Of course, this makes it very ironic that people like Bernie Sanders criticize Amazon, as Mr. Sanders is part of the institution that made it possible in the first place. If Bezos didn't build Amazon, someone else would have figured it out and built it (it took Bezos >6 years). However, if the Federal government would have taxed Amazon the way it taxes everything else, there would have been no Amazon. Any other companies that were created would never have been anywhere near the size Amazon grew to.
Note that the rise of China, the gearbest, jd, banggood ... rise is the result of a similar tax fuckup, this time at the united nations postal union. Or: China only works because they get to offload the cost of shipping on the taxpayers. And now Trump is
However, I strongly disagree with Trump's approach. I would prefer to see the opposite happen: that US companies get brought on a level playing field with China. If you can ship from Delaware to New York for 1.6$/kg, what would happen ? It'd be then end of Chinese exports to America, but without Americans having to give up what they gained in the past 10 years. I think there should be a lesson for our government in here. Namely, that financing the post office was one of the best decisions ever made in government, and that we should look into having 50% or so of the cost of shipping paid by the (ideally Federal) taxpayer, not just when shipping from China. Why ? Look what it's done to the economy !
You can add me to that list. I've had an Amazon account since 1998, and I'm at a point where I use it only as a measure of a last resort.
Nevertheless, Amazon revenue from retail business [1] over the past few years is way up, suggesting that our position seems to be a minority one.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/672747/amazons-consolida...
No, it is an outrageous claim. Let's be clear - these ASI guys are useful idiots.
Compare Jeff Bezos to Linus Torvalds. I am still waiting when ASI will call Linus "a greatest philantropist". He would absolutely deserve that. Instead, he gets called "asshole" by some people. C*suckery of these people is just insane.
Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town.
Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints about the 2-Day shipping never really being 2-Day shipping, the constant fakes that plague the Amazon inventory (with a seemingly blind-eye from Amazon itself on it), and so on.
These weren't really public goods introduced by Amazon, as plenty of stores handle the customer service side just fine in most cases, and the delivery stuff was mostly just investors subsidizing the costs for a time, which appears to no longer be a major focal point.
But to counter this trend: I am very, very happy that Amazon exists. It’s allowed me to discover and buy plenty of books that I otherwise would never read or sample. Not to mention dozens of everyday items I buy from them. Nail clippers, socks, alarm clock, router, resistance bands, headphones and many more I’m forgetting about.
It’s all under one roof, delivery is usually very fast (sometimes it’s just one day on two-day delivery; when there are some delays and it takes an extra day they always notify me by e-mail).
Amazon is great and I’m a more-than-satisfied consumer.
Many online retailers simply do not make efforts to deliver, quite apart from any cost consideration, and then they moan about Amazon.
In addition, it's also about creating trust. Buying something online requires more trust than buying from a store so convincing people that it's safe and that there won't be any issues with returns and refunds is a big part of getting people to place and order and to come back.
Amazon has "Amazon Lockers", which let me accept deliveries at a time convenient to me, with no human interaction. This is a real improvement over previous methods, and AFAIK no other retailer in my country has anything similar.
So, just like a post office box?
Not to mention that the raise of companies like Amazon and the "on demand" mentality is the one that forces people to not have more regular hours "convenient to them".
If you want to change those things start with changing the law, ending policies hurting the working class (limiting low skill migration would be the first step) and getting rid of ridiculous taxes like corporate income tax you claim Amazon dodged (while in fact it pays what the law requires it to pay).
Blaming the player for playing the game well while taking care of what they are legally obliged to do (shareholder value) is neither smart nor constructive.
No, it’s not. The corporation’s interests must align with the shareholders, but there’s no law that says short-term profit is the only legal goal. Companies can and have sacrificed in order to build the community.
Anyone who sees them acting suboptomally for the short term can buy in, pressure for more short term interests and lobby to get their way then jump off before it collapses with their gains. Even without that scheming continuous gains are demanded generally.
You can if the society and law demands that. E.g. throw them a few huge fines for using bad labor practices (e.g. workers not allowed to go to the toilet when they need to, firing pregnant women, other kinds of discrimination) and let's see what happens.
Otherwise they have no incentive to pay their employees a competitive wage.
Without competitive wages you have no free market, you just have a corporate welfare state, where the cost of paying workers is taken from the workers themselves thru taxation. That's basically what some UBI shills want. They want state taxation and welfare to replace the onus of corporations to pay competitive wages to employees.
No enterprise-size company should get any tax break, period. Only small companies or enterprises that can show they had a bad run (and e.g. might otherwise need to close).
Add to that a rule that if they then just go and take their offices/factories abroad (where they get a big tax break) they get hit with the equivalent savings in import tax is they want to sell in the domestic market.
Combine that with tiny or no tax for individuals (like it has been before the 20th century and is still in several places).
"Why dont we get rid of the foxes, we have the power to do that"
No, no, that seems like a silly idea, status quo is the best.
No it isn't.
Have you counted the lives and communities it destroyed (e.g. closing local alternatives and smaller chains)? The environmental cost from such large scale delivery of every possible BS? The externalities (including accumulated power to single person who contracts for the military industrial complex and runs newspapers)?
It's not possible to similarly conveniently quantify concern about counterfeit, but if you think they genuinely do not care about it then I don't even know what to say. Even from a purely greed centered point of view, counterfeits hurt mid to longterm revenue.
[1] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
No level of pay can make up for being treated like shit.
Regarding the counterfeits, Amazon loves to say how they're dealing with the issue, but the examples just keep piling up. And of course their childish behavior around Chromecast and Youtube.
Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
If you're a delivery driver, your job options are extremely limited. You can deliver fast food, or deliver for companies like Amazon. It's either that, or starve.
Plenty of shitty companies are successful. They just need to. be more convenient than their competitors.
> Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
Not yet.
Here in Germany the bookshops mainly feature fear mongering books and are mostly in German. Then there is a tiny section of english books (which often happen to be better then the German books displayed).
Maybe this dos not apply to all German book shops but I feel like they haven't gotten with the times yet.
Bookshops in the US, however, tend to be way different than you're describing and instead are pretty much just a repository for dumping books. Most (unsurprisingly) double up on the dream and also become coffee houses, and they also try to act as an arts hub for the community, doing like talks, workshops, etc.
So that's mostly what people are commenting on I would assume.
There are a few exceptions - in London there are some niche booksellers, and most university cities have a bookshop that stocks textbooks, but it's generally true.
This cascades as I then provide value for people that buy my later inventions.
Sure I can use digikey, but it takes 7-9 days to get parts for a reasonable price.
While Amazon has gotten worse in the last few years, they still have crushed the established standards for shipping.
What competition?
Outside of Amazon, Amazon has helped to set new standards for online commerce (free shipping, fast shipping, no/few questions customer service). When you see Zappos (now Amazon), Jet, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and Ebay all mimicking aspects of the Amazon shopping experience, you're also seeing increased competition. It also has effects on brick and mortar commerce that are beneficial for consumers. Some stores match Amazon prices in the walk-in stores.
It has absolutely taken margin out of the retail industry, making it harder on retailers, but so long as they don't fail in droves, margin leaving the industry is money that's being returned to consumers, at least in part.
of course, this is really an argument for ubiquitous online retail rather than amazon in particular, but it was a good point in their favour. (sadly, it seems to be being built by exploiting workers, which is why i cannot take any claims of philanthropy seriously.)
I have a lot of sympathy for people in this situation and think they should be re-trained, but I wouldn't hold back progress.
Well, it's either good or it's bad. It seems you think it's the latter and I think you're wrong. All the merchants whose businesses have been transformed for the better would disagree. Those merchants' customers would disagree as well.
"Quite frankly Bezos's greatest act of philanthropy is Amazon itself," he argues.
"Lower prices, more choice and competition have delivered billions for Bezos and billions worth for the hundreds of millions of customers he serves." "
I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good.
Pretty sure all the people who worked in book shops don't think so.