I disagree with you here. I live in Poland which has a very popular e-commerce website known as Allegro.pl - it's very similar to Amazon. It has its own version of Prime which is known as Allegro Smart which provides benefits such as free shipping and easy returns. A seller that wants to make their products have Smart badge don't have to use Allegro's own delivery method (Allegro One). The requirements for a Smart badge are as follows:

- have at least 5 positive reviews

- at least 98% rating (if their deliveries are slow, they shouldn't expect a high rating from customers)

- passing Allegro transaction identifier to a delivery service

- they have to provide at least one of the following parcel delivery services as a delivery method: Poczta Polska (which is owned by government), DPD or UPS

Amazon forces third-party sellers to use Fulfilment by Amazon in order to have Prime badge, something that a very similar service doesn't do.

While I'm not sure this ruling is good, your argument is making it a bit too easy. Amazon does not naturally "provide better service" that others can't.

> free shipping for Prime customers

could be offered by sellers using other fulfillment too

> fast and reliable shippings

Not something only Amazon logistics are capable of

> easy returns

Not something only Amazon logistics are capable of (at least here in Germany, they just give you a label to put it in the normal postal system, as do most retailers)

> a networks of lockers so you don't have to wait for the package at home

That one is tricky. Although I guess the market dominance argument could still be used to say "well, your problem to figure out how to solve that, it's not absolutely impossible to let others ship stuff to those too"

For the first three, the pro-Amazon argument is of course that if third-parties do parts of it, Amazon has a hard time ensuring and monitoring quality of service, which is a problem for a "premium" product that's supposedly all about that - and which is popular because of a reputation to delivering on that, and it's unfairly harsh to go after that.

(The obvious fix of course would be for Amazon to not do fulfillment for third parties in Italy - if they are not in that market, they can't be accused of distorting it. If that'd be better overall for customers and sellers though? The theory behind the competition law says yes, at least short-term many might disagree)

> > fast and reliable shippings

> Not something only Amazon logistics are capable of

Yet something Amazon logistics consistently does better than others. It is not uncommon for non-FBA sellers to ship directly from China and evem if they ship from Europe they are practically never as fast as Amazon.

> > easy returns

> Not something only Amazon logistics are capable of (at least here in Germany, they just give you a label to put it in the normal postal system, as do most retailers)

Others may be capable of but will they? With Amazon logistics its just a couple of clicks and then you get a QR code to show when you drop of you package at your local post office - no need to even print anything yourself anymore. Sometimes they will just refund without requiring a return at all. And you can rely on getting the refund within a reasonable amount of time without having to haunt the seller about the status. With some random seller who knows what you will get - and you certainly won't know that until you have to go through with it.

I'm not saying Amazon shold not receive fines. But for now I keep using Amazon desite all their problems because, as a buyer, you do get a better, and equally important, consistent service when it comes to fulfilment.

> The obvious fix of course would be for Amazon to not do fulfillment for third parties in Italy

I wish they would do that everywhere. There are other platforms where you can connect with random sellers if Amazon does not have what you want in their warehouses.

> Yet something Amazon logistics consistently does better than others.

Anecdotal, I have numerous counterpoints here in Germany. Zalando in my experience performs way better, and also Otto.

> Others may be capable of but will they?

Yes.

The comparison here is not Amazon vs Zalando, it's Amazon vs the typical marketplace seller, which is either an italian small business or a chinese seller or european dropshipper shipping directly from China.

>> a networks of lockers so you don't have to wait for the package at home

> That one is tricky. Although I guess the market dominance argument could still be used to say "well, your problem to figure out how to solve that, it's not absolutely impossible to let others ship stuff to those too"

Poste Italiane (the national postal service) has those kind of lockers as well AFAIK, plus offices in every town where you can collect the packages (OK, that's probably not an advantage given how slow they are and the big queues you have to do each time).

Right, but there is a point to "it says Amazon Prime" == "you can have it shipped to a Prime locker". And just like to get something in a Poste Italiane locker you need to ship it with them (I heavily assume), that needs to involve Amazon logistics somehow, whereas everything else doesn't.

This actually makes me wonder about something I've noticed in Germany: Amazon has a DHL locker on file as my shipping address. But for third-party stuff not via FBA it's not available (at least usually), as Amazon doesn't know if the shipper will use DHL. Can a seller explicitly declare "yes, I'll ship that to DHL lockers" when setting up the product with Amazon, or are they excluded from that too?

But the Amazon locker point you are making it's perfectly in line with this fine: if Amazon would let other ships Amazon packages (and Amazon packages only) to those lockers, it would be clearly a sign they are not abusing their dominance in one market (online sales) to drive another market (logistics/last-mile delivery). Full disclosure: I work for a last-mile delivery company even thou in this case is not direct competence.

Sure it does not naturally provide a better service, but does the better service this come from its dominance position or dominance is a consequence of that?

I mean marketplace vendors could offer the same level of service customer expect from the Prime label products and Prime would lose its competitive advantage.

> I mean marketplace vendors could offer the same level of service customer expect from the Prime label products

If they do, they don't get special highlighting of that on the marketplace though, that's the point of the complaint. Having "Amazon Prime" on a listing is a distinction between you and an arbitrary other third-party seller who doesn't care, if your third-party fulfillment can match or beat Amazon Prime in service quality you don't get any indication of that on the listing.

Amazon offers “seller fulfilled Prime” to vendors on its platform who commit to meeting (and prove they can meet) the requirements of Prime.

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/201812230?...

Those listings get the Prime badge.

Interesting! Do you know if that's available in Italy (the page says " This article applies to selling in: United States", but that doesn't necessarily mean there is an equivalent elsewhere)? because that sounds like it would be the solution here...

No idea; it’s only a few years old here in the US.

You work under the impression that Italian laws, and the justice system that enacts them, are a set of coherent and logical measures defined to make life better for consumers and businesses.

As an Italian, let me assure you that it's a naive assumption. The country literally invented civil litigation 2000 years ago, they can go on arguing pretty much forever if they want to.

more than 2000 years ago, cicero was litigating long before jesus came along :)

... But isn't this FBA <> free Prime shipping relation the point that the CMA of Italy believes to be problematic?

I understand the CMA's point from a markets perspective: why would / could the relation between the customer and a different seller impact the prices of shipping for a different seller on the same platform? Prime is primarily a transaction between the customer and Amazon [the shop], for cheaper products and free shipping for their products; allowing it to impact the customer<>seller relationship of third parties could be considered illegal bundling.

The 3rd party seller opts into this bundling as a benefit to offer their customers, though, right? No one is forcing seller X to use FBA or Amazon’s platform at all; they’re doing it because customers prefer it now that they see what’s possible.

To me (in the US), Prime was magical when it first rolled out. It lowered the friction and raised my expectations for online commerce in general. When other players followed suit, my life got even better. Now, someone charging $20 to get me a package “maybe next week; you’ll get it when you get it” is wildly uncompetitive rather than being the accepted standard.

"Marketplace products have longer and unreliable shippings"

Thats not your decision, or amazon's. The end customer should be deciding what service is better

FBA only exists because market dominance makes FBA style shipping arrangements profitable. Without Amazon's scale and marketplace dominance, that shipping and pricing doesn't work.

Market dominance exists because they offer a better service to the customer. It's not like Amazon has always existed in Italy and always had a dominance position. They gathered their position because they offer a better experience and people are willing to pay a premium for that.

Isn't it the opposite? They have so much money from other markets, that they can take over a new market suffering losses for years, but pushing out everyone else.