YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Amazon pushes up prices across the Internet

121 points sighborg 3 hours ago 91 comments

weird-eye-issue 1 hour ago | parent

A few years ago I looked at the finances of a company that sells on Amazon (FBA). It was pretty astounding the number of fees they charge. They were paying to show up in sponsored results which obviously increased the fees but from what I remember between all the fees roughly 50% of the sale price of their products was just going directly to Amazon.

amelius 1 hour ago | parent

The endgame of capitalism is a big corporation with a nested market which is completely regulated to death by that big corporation.

elmer2 1 hour ago | parent

Or we just go somewhere else that's cheaper, because capitalism means competition.

GrinningFool 1 hour ago | parent

Amazon's regulation often means sellers are blocked from selling the same items at a lower price elsewhere.

Intermernet 19 minutes ago | parent

Amazon often have no idea what vendors sell their products for elsewhere. It's often an empty threat that vendors are very happy to ignore. Also, many of those agreements are spurious in international law. Unless there's a bullet proof contract with actual teeth, vendors will sell anywhere they can.

Grombobulous 1 hour ago | parent

To steal Benn Jordan’s ideas, capitalism is replacing itself with leveragism.

You don’t buy things from Amazon because they’re the best store with the best prices, you buy them because they’re the only store that has their own massive scale delivery service that delivers more packages than FedEx or UPS (not combined, but Amazon still delivers more packages than either).

It’s not possible for another store to compete with that. There is no competition. Starting a competitor to Amazon would be more difficult and capital intensive than starting a new car or rocket company.

There is no other store that can get me the most obscure and random stuff in less than 24 hours. Walmart can’t do it, Costco can’t do it, Target can’t do it, Dollar General can’t do it.

andsoitis 1 hour ago | parent

> There is no other store that can get me the most obscure and random stuff in less than 24 hours.

Thats an edge case isn’t it?

Your example actually is in support of capitalism, because I can guarantee you that under some centralized government system this would not happen!

actionfromafar 1 hour ago | parent

But will you do what it takes to make sure that it could happen again?

Amazon itself is not going to be shy about changing the rules in its favor.

andsoitis 1 hour ago | parent

> But will you do what it takes to make sure that it could happen again?

I have no idea what this means.

Grombobulous 1 hour ago | parent

They’re saying that starting a competitor to Amazon is now impossible regardless of capital investment.

andsoitis 54 minutes ago | parent

> They’re saying that starting a competitor to Amazon is now impossible regardless of capital investment.

Competing in which market? Amazon is a conglomerate operating in e-commerce, retail, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, entertainment, and artificial intelligence.

ceejayoz 51 minutes ago | parent

That breadth is part of why competing is so tough.

andsoitis 44 minutes ago | parent

> That breadth is part of why competing is so tough.

I don't see it. In each of the industries they operate in, they face fierce competition. Many of those competitors also compete with Amazon across multiple of those industries plus others that Amazon does not compete in.

Competition is by definition tough. But I push back against the original thesis that Amazon has such leverage that it is impossible to compete with them (in all the cases, you're not just competing against them!)

Grombobulous 1 hour ago | parent

Who said anything about a centralized government system?

We aren’t comparing capitalism to that.

We are comparing a deeply broken antitrust regulatory environment that is ending capitalism, or ant least the free market competitive style of capitalism you are romanticizing, and replacing it with leveragism or legal cartels or whatever you want to call it.

Amazon is a failure of underregulated capitalism because it’s not possible for anyone to compete with them.

Amazon should have been required to split off AWS from Amazon years ago, and I’d say there’s a very good argument to be made that their fulfillment business constitutes a national monopoly. FedEx and UPS don’t actually provide the services that FBA does, which makes Amazon a monopoly.

andsoitis 52 minutes ago | parent

> Amazon is a failure of underregulated capitalism because it’s not possible for anyone to compete with them

What do you meany nobody can compete with Amazon? It happens all the time across the various markets they're in: e-commerce, retail, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, entertainment, and artificial intelligence.

Grombobulous 44 minutes ago | parent

How do I start a fulfillment business that can get a roll of toilet paper delivered to the doorstep of consumers nationwide inside of 24 hours and have that transaction be profitable?

How much investment money and customer volume do I need to make that business viable?

andsoitis 36 minutes ago | parent

> How do I start a fulfillment business that can get a roll of toilet paper delivered to the doorstep of consumers nationwide inside of 24 hours and have that transaction be profitable?

As with all successful businesses, you start small.

You figure out what's your edge. You are resourceful.

You don't compete with ANY competitor by trying to do 100% what they do out of the gate.

Pro-tip: selling (rather than producing) toilet paper is probably never a big business anyhow.

Grombobulous 18 minutes ago | parent

If all we are going to do is engage in vague inspirational idealism rather than using realistic boundaries to the discussion I fear the relevance to the subject at hand fades away.

> You don't compete with ANY competitor by trying to do 100% what they do out of the gate.

This idea bleeds into the definition of a monopoly. I can’t just make a mobile operating system like Apple and Google because I won’t have a competitive advantage. I can’t make my own Amazon competitor because their edge is that they deliver more packages than UPS or FedEx. I can’t compete with Google search because the web browser that comes with Android defaults Google on the home page.

JumpCrisscross 1 hour ago | parent

> no other store that can get me the most obscure and random stuff in less than 24 hours

Amazon has been dropping the ball pretty regularly on shipping recently.

bluGill 1 hour ago | parent

Any one store, but there are plenty of niche stores that compete for whatever thing you are looking for.

simoncion 40 minutes ago | parent

The comment is deleted now, but a user who shall remain nameless challenged folks to find a vendor that could get a "TPM module for an ASRock Rack motherboard" delivered to their house tomorrow.

Well, if you order within the next nine-ish hours and are willing to pay 29 USD for both next-day delivery and "Rush Processing", Newegg absolutely will deliver this item [0] to my door tomorrow. Maybe that's not the TPM module the user had in mind, but -if that's the case- the task being underspecified is not my problem. ;)

[0] <https://www.newegg.com/asrock-tpm2-s-other/p/N82E16816775003>

Grombobulous 39 minutes ago | parent

That was me. That is the correct module.

$29 for overnight shipping is more than the cost of one month of Prime by approximately double, which is an entire month of free expedited shipping, usually overnight and sometimes same-day.

Is anyone else remotely price competitive? I can find the module on eBay with free shipping but they quote me 3-10 day delivery.

piltdownman 19 minutes ago | parent

Amazon shipping and logistics are heavily subsidised by the social contract in Western Countries - it's not remotely a fair comparison even if these were removed based on Amazon's effective corporate income tax rates coming in as low as 1.4%.

In the US alone Amazon has received over $11 billion in cumulative taxpayer subsidies, and governments spend an average of nearly $43,000 per fulfillment center job created.

This is ramping up exponentially with regard to their data center rollout. In a single instance in rural Oregon, five AWS data centers will avoid $1 billion in property taxes.

This is completely aside from the qualitative damage done to traditional retail, shopping districts as a whole, SME innovation on consumer products, and distorting market competition beyond all recognition.

https://goodjobsfirst.org/amazon-tracker/

https://cictar.org/all-research/amazon

weird-eye-issue 1 hour ago | parent

Not to mention the sheer number of things that they offer unrelated to the commerce side of things

I don't even live in the US or shop on Amazon anymore but I still have a Prime subscription just in case something good is on Prime Video (this doesn't happen often...)

Actually I just remembered there were several things recently that I could not find locally and so I used international shipping from Amazon.com which turned out to be way cheaper than you would expect I think mostly due to the Prime subscription

Grombobulous 1 hour ago | parent

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NFt3KKBT00M

weird-eye-issue 26 minutes ago | parent

A similar scenario played out in my head recently when I needed to forward some of my mail internationally

tomwheeler 57 minutes ago | parent

> You don’t buy things from Amazon because they’re the best store with the best prices, you buy them because they’re the only store that has their own massive scale delivery service that delivers more packages than FedEx or UPS (not combined, but Amazon still delivers more packages than either).

Speak for yourself. Their delivery service is awful and I'd choose UPS 100% of the time instead if they gave me the choice.

It was Amazon's increasingly slow and unreliable deliveries that caused me to cancel Prime earlier this year, and I'm strongly motivated to shop elsewhere now because I know that the package will be delivered by someone other than Amazon's own service.

jurgenburgen 1 hour ago | parent

> because capitalism means competition.

I think you’re confusing a system of private ownership of capital (capitalism) with free markets.

Arkhaine_kupo 36 minutes ago | parent

Also somehow ignoring captured markets, natural monopolies, goverment granted monopolies, regulation capture and the myriad of other unsurmountable situations that "competition" cannot overcome

Geezus_42 52 minutes ago | parent

What competition?

sdevonoes 52 minutes ago | parent

This is not capitalism, it’s tech feudalism

TeMPOraL 21 minutes ago | parent

The endgame of free market was always plain and obvious: shittiest possible products at lowest possible price, and no one in the entire value chain having above-sustenance any margins.

cm2012 1 hour ago | parent

Logistics and shipping cost a lot. Amazon is one of the cheapest warehouses that you can use for this purpose.

shaunpud 1 hour ago | parent

Noticed a big surge in pricing on Amazon for mundane crap. End up checking eBay and AliExpress for the same and both always cheaper, and sometimes in multiple. Things like blow up pool toys, > $20 on Amazon, easily half and lower on the others, and really not even worth a dollar in the scheme of things.

elmer2 1 hour ago | parent

The fees for sellers on Amazon is ridiculous and definitely keeps these prices higher.

dleslie 1 hour ago | parent

I've stopped shopping on Amazon entirely, and the impact on my credit card bill has been substantial.

It's not simply that products are priced poorly, but it is also that they seem to be priced just at the threshold where the purchase remains sufficiently convenient not to shop locally or elsewhere online.

Because of their predatory practices it seems online prices are roughly identical for Western branded products at all online retailers. For Chinese brands, it's long been cheaper to use AliExpress but shipping isn't as fast and returns aren't as convenient.

But that's perception. I blocked Amazon and continued shopping as usual. The volume of my purchases is now through local retailers, and I'm buying roughly the same amount of stuff but I'm spending a great deal less.

sdcfgy 1 hour ago | parent

Yep. Amazon is almost no advantage here in the UK. I used to bulk buy stuff from them because it was cheaper than the supermarkets. That is no longer true. In fact it's 10-25% more expensive usually.

I really should just cancel my prime now.

Edit: just cancelled it!

gib444 54 minutes ago | parent

I'm no Amazon fan but very cheap next day is still an Amazon advantage, and a pretty big one. £9/mo vs £4-8 per delivery from other retailers

Unlike the US I believe in practice it's all but guaranteed next day too

sdcfgy 41 minutes ago | parent

I've just stopped buying a lot of stuff. I think the availability of the cheap delivery just made me buy things I didn't need for convenience.

renw0rp 44 minutes ago | parent

Yep, prime membership went quite a lot up; prices went up; delivery times got slower after COVID; now they are also saving on packaging, which means Royal mail brings me broken packages held by elastic bands...

sdcfgy 42 minutes ago | parent

Yeah the broken packages thing is getting terrible. I think about 1/4 of what I was ordering turns up damaged or broken.

piltdownman 25 minutes ago | parent

It's even worse in Ireland, particularly with the new import fees for non-EU goods - €7 + 23% VAT per item.

Amazon Germany/France/Spain won't ship a huge variety of items to Ireland and obviously won't have the same composition of goods as English speaking countries.

It's just about worth it for Prime Video and Deliveroo Silver, but the Irish Prime membership doesn't even support household or family sharing...

artisinal 1 hour ago | parent

The problem with AliExpress and other foreign retailers for us EU-ians is that you get €3 in duty per product category, then another €2 per package in processing fees (from November 2026), then you get VAT over the duty and with a bit of luck the final carrying company doesn't accept your IOSS paperwork and you have to pay the VAT, the duty, the VAT over the duty, the new processing fee and their handling fees (€5 to €50) again.

Mashimo 1 hour ago | parent

VAT should be done by AliExpress now, at least that is how I understood it.

Sadly it's only limited items, but you can also filter for just items that they have in their EU warehouse.

I recently bought some stuff (Ps2 controller etc) and it was still cheaper including shipping and duty then to order it in EU. Package was checked by customs.

artisinal 51 minutes ago | parent

VAT is included in the listed price with AliExpress. The various EU duties and processing fees get added at checkout.

AliExpress has a fairly integrated shipping pipeline but the problem with smaller retailers is that you can pay VAT at check-out through IOSS, but the shipping company doesn't accept the paperwork and you have to pay VAT (and all other duties/fees) again to the shipping company. Happens a lot with packages from non-Chinese Asia (Japan, Thailand, Malaysia).

is_true 51 minutes ago | parent

Same problem here. In my country at least, the handling fees for the local shipping are around USD10, you can avoid those using a courier but that shipping method is much more expensive.

kotaKat 1 hour ago | parent

Frustrating thing is when I then buy the small crap on eBay and then it shows up days later in an Amazon package.

A_Duck 1 hour ago | parent

Amazon Fair Price Policy doesn't apply in the UK and EU (it's illegal)

The EU are currently running an investigation into how this affects market dynamics, which will be interesting to see

63stack 1 hour ago | parent

Every time I read something like this I think "wow the US so fucked".

numbsafari 56 minutes ago | parent

Try having a discussion with anyone here in the US about not using Amazon. The free market is a myth.

inanutshellus 36 minutes ago | parent

Isn't "free market capitalism" is doing its job here, rewarding the best player of the game into brand-godhood?

More to the point - is it not government oversight that appears incapable of leveling the playing field for others?

That said - the only "others" we seem capable of getting is other governments' Amazons. So. Devil you know?

Xelbair 27 minutes ago | parent

>Isn't "free market capitalism" is doing its job here, rewarding the best player of the game into brand-godhood?

only if you think free market == unrestrained market

as monopoly is antithesis to capitalism itself, whose main principle is competition.

tosapple 35 minutes ago | parent

the free market has been a myth since they scheduled marijuana.

god gave us all plants to use.

they will fear monger rather than publish medical reasoning.

bix6 32 minutes ago | parent

I’ll bite, what’s the reasonable alternative to Amazon?

intended 29 minutes ago | parent

Competition.

bix6 26 minutes ago | parent

Helpful thanks.

Intermernet 26 minutes ago | parent

Buying online direct from the manufacturer? Almost everyone sells direct. Use Amazon to find the seller and then contact them directly.

TFNA 23 minutes ago | parent

What is you want to buy simple Chinese plastic stuff (e.g. someone elsewhere mentioned zip ties)? The manufacturer is somewhere in China with a minimum order of 10,000, so no, you can't go to them. Amazon is often the cheapest source for this, cheaper than any local retail.

wat10000 19 minutes ago | parent

I don’t understand the question. The reasonable alternative is to not use them and buy stuff elsewhere. There’s a million places to buy stuff. I haven’t ordered anything from Amazon in months.

quacked 16 minutes ago | parent

I'm in the US and I gave up Amazon two years ago, and I haven't noticed any decrease in my quality of life.

gpt5 43 minutes ago | parent

This is actually a good point. The policy described in the article doesn't apply in the EU, but it's not like Amazon is cheaper in the EU.

Also, it is common to see in the US competitors with lower prices than Amazon (e.g. I frequently see brand name products on Microcenter cheaper than Amazon), not to mention that it doesn't apply to sites like eBay. So you've got to wonder if it actually has a strong effect on pricing across the internet.

mgrunwald_ 8 minutes ago | parent

It's absolutely insane that this is legal in the US.

MisterMunchkin 1 hour ago | parent

But to put it into perspective, a retail shop would also expect to take at least 50% of the sale price. Often much more.

clivedup 46 minutes ago | parent

I expect retail shops to have larger overheads than online stores.

When Amazon's policies unfairly push up prices across the Internet, it deprives us from competition pushing prices down, and having a better idea of what online overheads are.

trombuance 1 hour ago | parent

Amazon searches for anything that isn't a known brand such as Apple & co turn out >90% Chinese products of highly questionable quality for me these days. And you can buy those cheaper by going straight to the source. The sole point of their retail business seems to be providing a support for the inevitable issues with these sellers, but I suspect that increasingly customers won't think it justifies the massive premium they're paying for what's essentially Taobao with an American address.

Geezus_42 56 minutes ago | parent

They really are no different than Temu or Aliexpress at this point.

bad_haircut72 38 minutes ago | parent

Theres also no moral reason to support Amazon, they give nothing back to the society their buyers live in, much like the chinese suppliers. Might aswell just go with the cheapest.

walrus01 30 minutes ago | parent

You mean you don't want to buy the finest grade $59.95 blender for your kitchen from LONCEVON or ARVAGGCCY or ADVWUXITEKPRO ?

The tricky part now is identifying the individual CN vendors which are not yet well known in the English marketplace, that are also known to make good quality things (and generally they're not cheap), I'll use Sofirn flashlights and headlamps as an example. Mostly not sold via Amazon.

IgorPartola 26 minutes ago | parent

Those flashlight are amazing and amazing value. I would also include in this Triangle Labs and MKS offerings for 3D printer parts.

scotty79 26 minutes ago | parent

What's wrong with those? For established industrial designs small difference in better quality control is never worth overpaying few times for something.

IgorPartola 28 minutes ago | parent

There are some differences.

Temu’s UI is unusable. You are constantly presented with roulette wheels for coupons you can’t dismiss. Its dark patterns have dark patterns. AliExpress is only mildly better in that you can dismiss stuff.

Both T and A still have listings for things that will likely result in you getting something entirely different. This usually applies to more expensive and physically larger items. You might order a greenhouse and get a photo of one or a schematic of one. And I don’t mean that the description will make it clear.

Both have a pattern where they might list let’s say an MP3 player which costs $30 but the price on the listing will be $3 because one of the product variants is just the case.

Amazon has comparatively reliable shipping and it’s included with the price on a majority of products if you have a Prime membership. While Temu and AliExpress do have US-based shipping they still don’t guarantee when the thing will arrive and if you are looking at these products the price difference basically disappears.

I am not defending Amazon by any means, but purely on usability it wins hands down.

Telemakhos 23 minutes ago | parent

I don’t understand the quality complaints. I’m actively looking for Chinese-branded products now because the quality is amazing. I’ve switched to Hongdian fountain pens, I recently bought an espresso maker stamped with an unpronounceable string of consonants, and I buy Chinese sportcoats that fit perfectly, have no label, and cost what I used to pay for clothes in the early 2000’s. Some clothing manufacturers on Amazon even email me for exact measurements, so I get a tailored fit straight from China. I get knockoff printer ink that lasts months longer than HP’s overpriced junk. The Chinese had quality issues twenty years ago, but today their products are top notch.

Folcon 10 minutes ago | parent

I do wonder whether you're comparing two different versions of chinese products?

IE, you're seeing and buying things they're selling directly, so they need to manage quality control, vs what is being sold on amazon, potentially a 3rd party seller who's cutting corners to make a nicer margin?

glitchc 6 minutes ago | parent

Hongdian's primary retail front in the west is through Amazon.

Mashimo 1 hour ago | parent

Could you sell a box of 10x Item A on amazon, and a box of 15x Item A on your own website for cheaper per unit? Without triggering the amazon Fair Pricing Policy?

Krasnol 52 minutes ago | parent

Maybe the time has come to stop cheering for quasi-monopolies as some success story. They hurt everybody besides their shareholders.

diamondDrill 47 minutes ago | parent

boycott, but nobody does

port3000 36 minutes ago | parent

Stopped using Amazon a while ago because I want to support smaller (and less controversial) businesses. But recently I went back there to look for a phone protector as for some reason that's the only time Amazon has been cheaper for something.

I was amazed at how janky the app experience was having been away for a couple of years. It felt a really dated and ad-bloated experience. Considering Amazon pioneered so many advances in e-commerce, I was surprised I don't miss it at all.

tedggh 29 minutes ago | parent

I use Amazon to buy cheap stuff like zip ties, printing paper and ink and some cleaning products. Almost every single major purchase I go directly to the manufacturer website or a specialized store. For example, I would never buy photography gear on Amazon. I go to Adorama or BH. For my favorite brands in say hiking or running gear I go to REI or RunningWarehouse or visit my local brick and mortar store. Amazon has truly become the convenience store for me, my average purchase is under $10. Almost everyone today offer free or inexpensive quick shipping and easy returns. They also have better customer service.

sourthyme 25 minutes ago | parent

This is true for even mid range purchases. I was debating pre-ordering a game from Nintendo's website or Amazon and ended up chosing Amazon because of the return policy and how fast it gets delivered.

jlmorton 23 minutes ago | parent

Well, according to TFA, you're still paying an Amazon tax, which is itself similar to the Visa tax, which apparently we all pay even if we use cash to purchase directly from manufacturers (so long as the manufacturer also sells their product on Amazon).

glitchc 9 minutes ago | parent

> Almost every single major purchase I go directly to the manufacturer website or a specialized store.

Let's take an example: If a Brother printer is full price from Staples, Best Buy and the Brother website, but $50 off on Amazon, why would I not order on Amazon and save myself $50? As it is, Best Buy and Staples are also operating marketplaces when buying online.

> Almost everyone today offer free or inexpensive quick shipping and easy returns. They also have better customer service.

I beg to differ. I bought a GPU from a local store that turned out not to be compatible with my workstation. Returning it was a huge hassle, I paid a 15% restocking fee. The next time I ordered a GPU, I went through Amazon. When it too didn't work, they took it back, no questions asked, full funds returned.

bemtevi 27 minutes ago | parent

I try to avoid Amazon as much as possible. 95% of the products are throwaway junk brands. It's tiring to shop there. I think Amazon is a great example of why competition, while good in most cases, has its limits when the information asymmetry due to overwhelming and opaque choices. I wish those junk, throwaway brands were banned...

beloch 19 minutes ago | parent

I've been boycotting Amazon since early 2025. It's not hard once you get reacquainted with things taking several days or weeks to arrive. Plan a little and it all works out. The delay in gratification may even help you avoid impulse purchases.

The notion that, if more people did this, prices might come down everywhere only stiffens my resolve.

akudha 14 minutes ago | parent

I understand logistics is an insanely hard problem, but can't sellers create a co-op? Not on Amazon's scale, but start on a much smaller scale (gotta start somewhere). Maybe at a city level - if a bunch of sellers in Chicago (for example) rent a warehouse and serve only within Chicago, it is worth a try, no? Or is this a stupid question?

I remember hearing about a Uber like app (I might have seen it on More Perfect Union channel, I think). So I guess at least some people are thinking along the same lines, maybe?

As an individual, I guess the only thing I can do is shop as little as possible on Amazon (which I am already doing). Not sure what else I can do to help

dzonga 8 minutes ago | parent

classic aggregation theory to create a monopoly.

the only way to prevent such things from happening is e-commerce is spread across non-platform channels but independent ones e.g woo commerce etc where a seller runs and hosts their own shop, then maybe go to semi-platforms such as shopify etc that don't aggregate everything on one storefront.

because sellers are reliant on amazon bringing in shoppers, unlike say woo commerce & shopify - then yeah amazon feels rightly so that they need to take 50% margins on a seller's item.

the same thing plays out everywhere where some producer is reliant on someone bringing in the buyers - uber, Spotify, apple App Store.