Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide

Re:Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program n... by bilbo0s on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @09:10PM (#30095255)

Well, I think people do trust amazon, they don't trust all the other companies on amazon. But unless I'm misunderstanding, this move means that people can't buy from amazon any longer. They have to buy everything from all the other vendors on amazon. The problem being, of course, that these other sellers may or may not scam you. (I'm not 100% about that interpretation of this move, but that's what it sounds like? Lawyers may want to chime in.)

So under these conditions, I would strongly urge people not to purchase from amazon's site, because it's gonna be essentially 100% potential scams. They should move to target or walmart. At least until those stores are also obliged to do the same thing. (Since they have the same fulfillment business models I'm assuming they'd be next? But they should be safe for now.) After the law gets to them too, people may want to limit online shopping only to small ticket items that won't cause too much disappointment if you get scammed. Because online shopping will become the wild west with every transaction being backed only by caveat emptor.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program n... by NavinF on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @10:34PM (#30095866)

Oh Amazon has been selling garbage for years, but only for “commodity” items that the average user can’t test for quality.

Example: All coin cells (regardless of brand/seller) on Amazon are fake. These cells last 2-4 months (long enough that most people won’t bother to contact support) when the same model from an electronics distributor like Mouser lasts ~8 years as advertised.

> people may want to limit online shopping only to small ticket items

Oddly enough, I’ve had much better luck with big ticket items on Amazon since they’re much harder to fake and because they get special treatment (brand registration) from Amazon. But for small stuff Amazon is just AliExpress with faster shipping.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program n... by kingcharles on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @10:58PM (#30096021)

I would guess that carries to other batteries as they are easy to fake and hard to detect.

A decent proportion of all the memory cards, flash drives and SSDs are fake on Amazon.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program n... by randomtwiddler on Thursday January 27, 2022 @05:28AM (#30098654)

Agreed on both batteries and SD cards. I would add Ethernet cables are crap off Amazon also. The specs offered are useless.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program n... by kingcharles on Friday January 28, 2022 @06:25PM (#30121912)

Thanks for the heads-up. I've always accepted that Ethernet cables do what they say on the wire, but now that you mention it, it seems ruthlessly easy to print whatever on the cable and give you something that will only transfer at a fraction of the bandwidth.

I'm slowly collecting a list of things that I need to buy only from genuine suppliers.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program n... by mypalmike on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @11:26PM (#30096202)

"this move means that people can't buy from amazon any longer. They have to buy everything from all the other vendors on amazon."

You did not read the article.

[ Parent | on HN ]