U.S. House panel calls on Amazon's Bezos to testify on third-party sellers

[alp227]

Source: Reuters

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Friday called on Amazon.com < AMZN.O> founder Jeff Bezos to testify to the panel about allegations that the online retailer uses data from its own third-party sellers to create competing products.

In a letter to Bezos signed by Democratic and Republican members of the panel, the lawmakers referred to an April 23 Wall Street Journal story about Amazon, saying, “If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements Amazon made to the committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious.”

A spokesman for Amazon said the company had no immediate comment.

At issue are statements by Amazon’s associate general counsel, Nate Sutton, who denied under oath last July and in written testimony that Amazon used sensitive business information from independent sellers on its platform to develop products for Amazon to sell.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-congress-antitrust/u-s-house-panel-calls-on-amazons-bezos-to-testify-on-third-party-sellers-idUSKBN22D5PN

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Who would have seen Jerry Nadler and Matt Gaetz uniting for a common cause? Both representatives signed this letter to Amazon.

[rockfordfile]

1. This is why the Washington post is being fox news lite

[alp227]

2. The Post has always had excellent reporting especially towards Trump,

but for balance's sake they always retain Republican advocates like Marc Thiessen (former GW Bush speechwriter) and Jennifer Rubin on the opinion section.

[leftieNanner]

4. Marc Thiessen is a lunatic

His column shows up in my Sunday paper and what he writes is crazy. I try to read him, but don't usually get very far before I'm hollering at him.

I frequently read many of the other more "conservative" columnists (Kathleen Parker, for example) and I appreciate their thoughtful remarks. Not Thiessen though.

[leftieNanner]

3. This is actually true

Amazon does this every day. My sister in law has an Amazon based business and she has been screwed by them time and again. If she ever has a product that rises up in popularity, Amazon will go to the manufacturer and do their best to cut her out. They have also been known to "lose" a whole pallet full of products, pay the third party seller for the pallet and then go out and under cut her.

I refuse to buy anything from Amazon.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Commerce law was developed before the internet

Back when there were walls between manufacturers and retailers, wholesale prices, distributor prices, retail prices, reseller prices.

All the information is too widely known now for it to be kept secret.

I think that due to the nature of the internet, free markets are a myth more than ever. There's visibility, traffic, SEO. If 3 people see your product, do you have a competitive market? If search engines exclude you, are you participating in a fair, free marketplace?

[matt819]

6. Third party sellers are generally screwed

I was an Amazon merchant for a couple of years.

Some observations.

-- Merchants can't possibly compete against Amazon. Amazon can lowball into pennies of profit, and that's without using any unique data analysis from the various merchants offering the same products. They can order in the hundreds or even thousands and get discounts from suppliers I can't possibly get. And they can keep their profits per item low because they are selling millions of products and can adjust pricing on an given, or given range, of products so that they make more on some stuff - even sell at a loss - and make it up elsewhere. Most merchants can't.

-- And then there's shipping. Their contracts with all the shipping services, together with the billions coming in from Prime members (including me), allow them to offer free shipping. Most merchants can't.

--Then there are the fees. Pro accounts cost $39.99 per month, and there are selling fees on products. So, even if Amazon stopped selling products that are offered by third party merchants, the race to the bottom on pricing, together with the fees, makes the whole thing untenable. Add in various paid apps that reportedly help third party merchants, along with advertising, and the problems are further exacerbated.

-- And then there's the competition with my own wholesalers. They will always have product, and they can undercut their own retailers. Amazon is just another channel to them, retailers be damned.

-- Then there's what to me was always an opaque process by which you never really got the full amount you were due because they held back an amount to cover returns and such.

-- Oh, and just because you've sold on Amazon, that doesn't translate to either more sales on your own website or more sales on your own website of products and servcies not offered on Amazon.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I wasn't doing it right. Maybe I should have become a drop shipper of tens of thousands of plastic sunglasses or rubberized hair ties and make pennies for stupendous volumes.

I'm not really blaming Amazon for any of this. To paraphrase the buffoon in the WH, when you're a trillion dollar company, you can get away with it. And, as a consumer, I'm pleased as can be and don't really care if I'm buying from Amazon or a third party merchant. Not my problem as long as I can get a delivery of a box of #2 pencils over night for $1.50 (or something like that).