> Until the second part of OP's story happens - which is the competitors die off and then Amazon jacks up the prices.

Whenever some disrupter comes into a market, you always see some people saying this "just you wait, they'll jack up the prices sky high any minute now!!" and it seems to happen rarely, if ever.

For example, there are plenty of small towns where Wal-mart was able to dominate and drive out small mom and pop retail shops. I've heard plenty of complaints about that, but I've never heard anyone say, "...and then after they drove out all the little shops, the prices went through the roof!!"

> Whenever some disrupter comes into a market, you always see some people saying this "just you wait, they'll jack up the prices sky high any minute now!!" and it seems to happen rarely, if ever.

It's happening at Amazon. When they started, their prices were often much cheaper than physical retail. Now they're about the same, and sometimes outrageously higher.

> For example, there are plenty of small towns where Wal-mart was able to dominate and drive out small mom and pop retail shops. I've heard plenty of complaints about that, but I've never heard anyone say, "...and then after they drove out all the little shops, the prices went through the roof!!"

I doubt Wal-Mart makes pricing decisions like that at the store level, so your example doesn't really hold up.

> It's happening at Amazon. When they started, their prices were often much cheaper than physical retail. Now they're about the same, and sometimes outrageously higher.

I'm curious if you have any examples. I have been very happy with Amazon. Even though every now and then I look up competitor's prices and selection Amazon is usually better at one or both. When they aren't it's not by a lot.

Many people in this thread have complaints about Amazon but my experience has been great so I'm wondering where the disconnect is coming from.

> I'm curious if you have any examples.

Different poster, but just this morning I was looking for a simple non-smart grounded switch with a physical on/off button in Canada.

Amazon has a couple I could find:

Belkin for $21: https://www.amazon.ca/Belkin-F7C016q-Conserve-Power-Switch/d...

Leviton for $14: https://www.amazon.ca/Leviton-1470-W-3-Wire-Grounded-Switch/...

Local Rona store has the Leviton for $5: https://www.rona.ca/en/plug-in-switch-125-v-white-01815677

> I'm curious if you have any examples. I have been very happy with Amazon. Even though every now and then I look up competitor's prices and selection Amazon is usually better at one or both. When they aren't it's not by a lot.

This is what did it for me:

https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Hue-Ambiance-Equivalent-Assis...

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Philips-Hue-White-Ambiance-A19-L...

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/philips-hue-white-ambiance-a19-...

All $29.99. A couple years ago I was buying a lot of these in ones and twos. I was also also having a lot of trouble with Amazon Logistics messing things up (and Amazon refusing to allow me to "deprioritize" them, so I could get my package through another carrier with fewer issues). That struggle lead me to take another look at local retail, and removed my illusions about Amazon's automatic superiority. The local stores have most of the same items, for the same price, and available more quickly without shipping delays. They also don't have the fake-review fueled counterfeit problems that Amazon has.

As I've learned more about shopping at local stores, my Amazon use has been reduced to items that are only available on it or that I don't know where to find elsewhere.

Fair enough, though according to camelcamelcamel the price of Phillips Hue has been lower at times on Amazon: https://camelcamelcamel.com/Philips-Hue-Ambiance-Equivalent-...

If their data is correct there were times when it was available for 10-20% off.

Having read more comments in this thread I'm starting to think that my experience has been different (for the better) because 80+% of the time I know what I'm looking for before I visit Amazon. I rely on Wirecutter and other websites for recommendations if I'm looking for something I know little about.

Another thing is that Amazon has almost everything. It's much simpler to buy a couple of books + nail clippers + socks (one of my recent purchases) from them than make separate orders elsewhere.

And unlike probably most of the posters here I'm from Europe and I haven't experience any unusual issues with shipping so maybe it's a real and more recent concern in the US.

Amazon offers the exact same product for the exact same cost, I don't see the problem. Do you have any examples where Amazon is selling a product for "outrageously higher"?

> Amazon offers the exact same product for the exact same cost, I don't see the problem.

It's not much of a problem, but not much of an advantage either.

So, the question I'm confronted with is: why pay the same for a worse experience? The Amazon route forces me to pay more (Prime) to get it within 2-5 days, or even more to get it faster. Then there are the AMZL_US delivery hassles on top of that. The Home Depot route costs me 25 cents of gas and a 20-40 min of time to get it now-now.

> Do you have any examples where Amazon is selling a product for "outrageously higher"?

Not offhand, but I specifically recall seeing outrageously higher prices for some grocery/drugstore type items. Stuff like a $2 item selling for $6.

A lot of this is coming from the supreme court allowing companies to enforce Minimum Advertised Prices for items, and to require high prices. Amazon largely doesn't want to play the "see the price in your cart" game, and so, the price is what the manufacturer says, unless it's during a specifically authorized sale.

Before the MAP ruling, manufacturers could not ban resellers based on pricing, and you saw a lot more Internet discounting on products that the manufacturer saw as "premier" items, that they didn't want reputationally-impacted by low sale prices.

Yeah, in some of the branded Cosmetics you will be Amazon plus 4 or 5 other sellers all at the MAP. Brands where they have banned the grey market so it is all authorized sellers having the follow the MAP to keep their deal.

I've seen this happen too. And have some insight from the seller side:

6 companies might sell the same product at varying prices, some of them uploading 1000s of items they have dropshopping for, but no real inventory. 1 or 2 may legitimately sell the product at a manually entered price that's competitive - when those sellers sell out, the others who dropship at cost+100% show up as the default seller.

The big dropshippers make their profit off infrequent, high margin sales that can be auto fulfilled when legitimate sellers run out of inventory.

I live in the sprawl of Houston. If I need things from a couple of local stores that close in early evening, it may take longer for me to get by the stores for pickup than to have items shipped from Amazon even if everything I want is in stock. Ordering online for store pickup helps.

The troubles don't show themselves on the consumer side, they show up on the labor side. Monopsony makes it hard to find competing job offers when all the competing stores have been closed.

Oh, that's a good point. I've often thought that the reason unions are so important is that employers bargain collectively by default because, well, companies are groups of people, not individuals.

On the other hand, IIRC studies show that larger companies pay more than smaller ones, and I think there have even been suggestions that this explains some of the GDP per capita differences between developed nations, that some have more large companies that are then more productive due to economies of scale and specialization.

I can't speak to mom and pop shops in small towns. I think while the concept is the same, this would be more along the lines of the town opening it's own discount store and putting the mom and pops out of business.

But I can attest to 2 products I've ordered yearly for the past 3 years, increase in price about 10% each year. The diversity of competing products has decreased substantially.

I think the problem (for consumers) is usually the lower selection. Walmart focuses on the best sellers in any category, and the "long tail" that specialty stores can provide goes away.

(Well, that and the problem that Walmart sometimes drives out all the mom and pop shops and then closes the Walmart a few years later, leaving the town with nothing but the next closest Walmart 30 miles away.)

Redbox has done this. I mean, they're still cheaper than Blockbuster ever was for a "new release" movie. But they have just about doubled their price.

Instead, Walmart's quality went down the toilet.

I don't think this is accurate even for the brands you listed. spigen and anker are consistently the most recommended brand even by relatively tech illiterate youtubers. they've built up some trust with me and I've only owned one spigen phone case for my nexus 6P - if I see someone complaining about a generic powerbank/case I recommend anker/spigen respectively and tell them to check out whatever content creator(youtuber or tech site) they trust to see a review of it

I just have a hard time picturing the dystopian world where everyone walks around with figurative chains around their neck, working lifetimes of drudgery, because we let Amazon finally get monopoly power in all the stuff they sell and we have to pay double for our pens, notepads, backpacks and soap. And not a single company is popping up to reap the profits of selling a comparable item at a price that by construction of this scenario could be well below Amazon's but well above the cost of production.

The second part of the theory has been the hammer dropping for 15 years.

Amazon makes no money in retail to drive out competitors and when that day finally happens! Just you wait! The prices! I'm still waiting. The ride has been beneficial so far.

The stock market has priced in those future increases in the present day inflated stock price. That's a pretty decent indication.

The stock market isn't psychic. They believe all sorts of irrational things and are perfectly capable of being turkeys who vote for Thanksgiving. Price raising on commodities hasn't worked out all that well in general. While the network effect helps it isn't omnipotent. People are already returning to brick and mortar for better prices.

Companies don't jack up prices anymore. They lower their costs (ie reduce labor). It ends up inore profit and doesn't set off alarms at the FTC, which looks for harm to the consumer. Monopsony has been shown to reduce wages[1].

[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/000312241876244...