> 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.
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.
> 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).
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?
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.
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.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/201812230?...
Those listings get the Prime badge.
> 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)