https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/REDAC...

Amazon has been openly doing this for years. They scrape other competitor websites, even though it’s against their terms of service, and if you sell for less elsewhere they find out and punish you. It’s blatantly anti competitive.

> Amazon, vendor [...] fixed prices on [...] This is also an example of Breaking the Price Match, but here, Amazon [...] The plan was memorialized in an email from [...] In other words [...] In response, Amazon insisted on [...] The plan was realized [...] The result of Amazon, [...] price fixing agreement was to increase the retail prices

I don't know how you could even understand what's being alleged without seeing the unredacted version.

Walmart and Pepsi engaged in a blatant decade-long price fixing scheme designed to raised prices and punish small local competitors and were sued for it by Lina Khan's FTC, but - surprise - the case was thrown out the minute Trump took office.

1. Average American spends THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR year at Amazon. That’s staggering.

2. As of now the trial is not scheduled to begin until January 2027 (although the discussed injunction is meant to address that). I believe the length of time required to get a decision in court is the single biggest impediment to justice being served. It usually waters down the final judgment, makes costs prohibitive for plaintiffs, and allows perpetrators to continue benefiting from illegal behavior indefinitely. In some cases, the defendant can be elected President in the interim eliminating any chance of facing a court decision.

It was effectively a way to get an excess commission out of amazon if you printed through their printing arm, Createspace/KDP. Not sure if this worked the same for non print on demand books but if you printed through createspace you could set a higher list price and get royalties that were about 100% of the actual sale price.

No idea if the same mechanic is in play with the FBA rules but it seems very plausible to me that the largest impact is has is closing exploits like this.

That doesn't mean it doesn't also entrench market position, raise a few prices at the margin etc but it's very easy to miss the potential for gaming rules, legally, unless you're actively in the system. If an incentive is there the market incentive will be to use it.

I just go to Walmart now. And Walmart is no choir boy either but at least I can see what I'm buying.

First, this is not new. It's been stated policy for years.

Second, manufacturers get around it in a clever way. They always list their items on their own site at the same price as at Amazon... but then magically almost always seem to have a 20% or 25%-off sitewide coupon available, whether it's for first-time customers, or "spinning the wheel" that pops up, etc.

So I don't know how much this is really raising actual prices in the end.

Otherwise, I'm not sure how to feel about it, because pricing contracts are common on both ends. Manufacturers frequently only sell to retailers who promise they won't charge less than the MSRP, and large retailers similarly often require "most-favored-nation" pricing, so they can always claim they have the lowest prices. If you want to end these practices, then it's only fair to have a law prohibiting it across the board, rather than singling out Amazon.

Received several orders that were returned items, with broken open packaging and sometimes the item was something else entirely, purely put there for weight by whoever returned it.

When I went to return some things at a major Amazon distribution center, the return area was closed for the week for some sort of construction or renovation, with no indication of that anywhere on the site. The only messaging was a piece of paper in the window once you got there.

At another separate major distribution center, the return area was a small room with pieces of paper taped to a door with an arrow pointing to the Amazon lockers where the returns are accepted.

Orders are now often so delayed that it makes the Prime subscription pointless. Have had multiple orders over the past year that didn't ship for 3 or 4 days.

Amazon listings are almost half Sponsored listings now, and there are unrelated ads on the side of listings.

Half of the listings are some random made-up brand name, like XIJGNU, which is just a Chinese seller selling low-quality products, and when the reviews get bad enough, they re-list the product under another made-up brand name.

Fake reviews were already rampant before LLMs, but now reviews are effectively useless because they are so easy to fake.