I wanted to get printer photo paper for my printer, a Canon. I went to Walmart, They had nothing. Went to Target, they had one pack of photo paper and it was crazy expensive, so I went to micro center. That one was just as expensive. So finally I went back to Amazon, which I was trying to avoid, and saw the price 25 to 40% lower than anywhere I had been. Literally everything that I was looking for, I could find within seconds. Not even Best buy has even close to the amount of inventory or variety, even when you’re shopping online…
Therefore, I think Amazon has a literal monopoly in the tech industry right now, you’re literally forced to buy from them, because unless you have the money and financial fortitude to protest with your wallet, you’re going to be buying from them. There’s no other choice. They have so aggressively and dominantly taken over the supply chain market that no other tech company can currently compete with them in any aspect at all. You will be paying 40 to 50% more on everything by cutting out Amazon, and no one has the money for that anymore unless you’re upper middle class or above
You really think that in 2024 - a time when not even school children are expected to print out reports because everything is submitted digitally - the fact that photo printer paper not being ubiquitous reflects literally anything other than we’ve mostly moved past paper as a society?
I’m not saying reddit is better - it clearly is not - but ask yourselves why Lemmy is so absolutely shit at applying Occam’s Razor to their own biases?
Amazon is a place where you have to deal with fake items and getting fraudulent returns shipped to you as new. Your reward for this is maybe a 5% discount.
It sounds like you went to several physical stores and when their stock on hand was not sufficient you concluded your only option was Amazon. What about the rest of the internet?
I’ve been deeply hooked on Amazon for a long time and trying to wean myself off of it for a variety of reasons. The most helpful thing in this, I’ve found, is Apple Pay.
I happen to use an iPhone and Apple Pay is easy. It is increasingly accepted everywhere, making any online store a one-click purchase. Maybe for you it would be PayPal or Google Pay but whatever your preference is, these payment services have come a long way.
For years I was stuck on Amazon because of the convenience. I am not ashamed - convenience is a real benefit when life is busy. And I had everything set up on Amazon, and they had most things available in their search.
But Google Shopping also has almost everything in the world available and most or all the retailers there accept Apple Pay. So now I just do that. It works just as easily.
You can even search on Amazon and then take note of the name of the seller and search the internet for them and then buy direct. Most have websites because Amazon fees eat into their profits. They would rather sell direct. And easy payment services plus ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Square make it easier than ever.
Amazon is becoming a cesspool of Chinese scams these days. I am tempted to say that I still prefer Amazon because the returns are easy but the fact is that I have HAD to return a lot of things to Amazon because they were not what I thought I was buying or they were just absolute shit quality or arrived broken.
So the point remains: you have alternatives. Use them. If you want physical stores, that’s another matter entirely and I agree those are getting fewer and worse. But Amazon doesn’t always beat them on price. You should check every time and you might be surprised. I was in my local CVS and I saw they had the exact LED bulbs I needed to buy but I thought they’d be too expensive there so I checked Amazon on the spot. CVS beat them by a couple of dollars. So check every time!
It would help if you went to the right stores first. Try Office Max, Staples, Office Depot, etc.
Hell even Costco probably has photo paper
The only things I buy off Amazon are the niche items from stores that only exist in the top largest cities in the USA. It’s difficult to find fountain pen stuff elsewhere, and most of the stores have a front on Amazon.
I don’t know why people buy everyday stuff on Amazon. It’s usually more expensive and you have to wait for it.
My old roommate bought a single roll of aluminum foil from amazon one time and I still think about it.
I’m surprised there’s so few mentions of AWS in this thread. It’s a huge profit centre for the company and a large portion of the internet is now running off of it. AWS is basically the internet’s landlord now, and the profits generated from being the most popular cloud service provider globally are probably why they can afford to invest so heavily into their logistics infrastructure and retail that people are more familiar with.
AWS generates more than 50% of Amazon’s profit. Their retail side is peanuts, by comparison.
The retail side of their operations serves as basically a really big customer of AWS services.
The retail side is also just a huge ad for Amazon as a company. It’s what everyday consumers know even if it doesn’t provide a huge amount of profit. It creates name recognition.
I went to a conference this weekend, and it slowly dawned on me how every single one of the vendors was selling their app hosted on AWS. That’s all it is. Just different flavors of AWS.
Even if you dont interact with AWS directly, every business needs business services - you can bet that no matter what you’re buying or who you’re buying it from, some of your money is going directly to AWS marketplace.
Not to mention a lot of eggs in one basket. They’ve built in a lot more redundancies now yeah, but all it takes is a hit to AWS and a shitload of the internet is just DOA. Yeah you can argue about protections and data centers or whatever, but still. It’s one big nest in control of one company, no matter how well they guard it, it’s still a risk, technical, ethical, or whatever.
One shit update is all it takes, just ask CrowdStrike and Microsoft
There are other online shops besides Amazon. I find an alternative for almost everything that I order and it’s not more expensive. And finding the right product inside Amazon is so exhausting nowadays that it’s not more work to compare different web shops.
Check Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox by Lina Khan (FTC). A very detailed review of how Amazon is a monopoly and how they dodge antitrust legislation.
That article has basically been validated over time. At the time it was written, the argument was that monopoly is bad for consumers even if it makes prices cheaper, and that consolidation of producer market power needs to be understood as consumer harm in itself, even if prices or services paradoxically become better for consumers.
It’s no longer a paradox today, though. Amazon has raised prices and reduced the quality of service by a considerable margin, and uses its market power to prevent the competition from undercutting them, rather than competing fairly on the merits.
You were looking for office supplies: did you check an office supply store?
Definitely would have been my first choice to look also, but do you think that staples or office max is going to have something cheaper than amazon?
It depends on the paper based on some quick searching, but I can pickup the paper from staples faster than Amazon will deliver it.
I’m thinking op isn’t the brightest tool on the short bus. Walmart has a far better market place/e-commerce platform than shitass Amazon. Same delivery windows of 1-3 says. Can order groceries that aren’t fuckin wierd marketplace seller with a garage packed with dented pallets of Nutella, wild rice and 5hr energy drinks lol. The groceries actually come from the store or the next nearest one. They basically already had the warehouse infrastructure. The dumped billions with a fuckin B last year just on developing and expanding on drone deliveries. Plus when your order gets fucked up from Walmart… YOU TALK TO A FUCKIN PERSON WHO ISNT HALF WAY ACCROSS THE PLANET WITH 3 PRELOADED REPLIES TO FIX EVERY PROBLEM. Fuuuuuuuuuck Amazon customer service. But also unless op was looking for the holy grail of printers I will bet my annual salary that Walmart’s online store had the exact printer they were looking for or one that is an exact copy but another brand. So dramatic to write this whole post up for such a dumb reason lol.
Edit: Also no person or brand selling on Amazon is exclusively selling on Amazon. If the printer wasn’t available anywhere it’s prolly a discontinued model or a fuck up by the mfg. Such a dumb post.
How did Walmart become the good guy in all this shit? What the ever living fuck is going on with capitalism?
I gave up on Amazon a while ago except for very niche things, and Walmart if great. Orde groceries, they tell me to come get them, dude loads them up in my car and tells me have a good day. It’s amazing. No extra charge, nothing. Don’t have to deal with any of the people of Walmart.
It’s hard to compete when you’re basically a warehouse and your market is the literal population of the internet.
Yeah, microcenter, even if it’s the only computer/electronics store for 100 miles, can still only hold so much, and they only reach people in/around their city at most. It’s not like people are crossing state lines to get to a computer store… Unless you live on the border of your state, I suppose.
Amazon has, at the very least, dozens of warehouses across the country that can deliver whatever it is you want with remarkable efficiency because postal/parcel services have been systematically improving over the past 50+ years.
I’m not saying I’m a fan of Amazon, but bluntly, is it really surprising, in the slightest, that Amazon can out price everyone else?
It’s not just the tech industry, it’s most industries. They have tons of inventory of everything.
I am fortunate to live in a country where amazon is not strong and we have aggregated search engines that over all the small shops, compete against Amazon on selection and cost, often beating it. I hope it stays this way.
That’s cool. EU?
Yes, Czechia. We can order from Amazon.de, but it’s not usually much better than the other options, and returns and support are much worse.
I recently wanted to get a pre-workout, I looked it up on Amazon and then I went to the company site to just order directly from there. It was like $10 cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping and subscribe & save.
It’s because Amazon requires the seller not undercut its Amazon store through other outlets, including their own website. If you are a seller and you want to take advantage of Amazon Prime, then you have to make sure your Amazon price is the cheapest price available on the internet.
OP, I dislike Amazon and there are definitely plenty of things to accuse them of, but you’re literally describing the opposite of a monopoly. Generally the problem with monopolies is that they don’t need to compete on price so they’ll over charge. You’re saying Amazon is a monopoly because they’re the cheapest option though. That doesn’t follow.
Again, to be clear, I dislike them and believe they’re worthy of criticism. I’m not trying to “defend Amazon” here.
You need to read The Amazon Anti-Trust Paradox by current FTC head Lina Khan. She argues that the consumer price oriented monopoly definition is old and outdated in the modern setting. Price is not a sufficient proxy for market competitiveness, and in fact, price is often used to kill competitiveness by undercutting new and innovative products.
I sound agree price isn’t always the best factor to determine a monopoly.
Walmart use to go into a town, sell everything cheap and drive everything else out of business.
It’s one of the many reason I hate Walmart.
Growing up we have a cool downtown area. It wasn’t big but had a bunch of small stores. They all closed within a year of Walmart.
I avoid Walmart for this reason as well as quite a few others. I think I’ve bought about 3 items from them in the past 5-6 years and typically because they have something others don’t that i need that same day (the store is about a mile from my house.)
Wal-Mart does a lot of things I don’t agree with. Their labor practices along with their sourcing and many other things make them the last place I will shop.
I agree. Price is important in a classic “free market” where people compete to sell goods and services for cheaper and whoever does it best makes a profit and grows, etc, etc.
This ain’t a classic free market. We frequently see companies become market leaders without ever earning a profit. That’s not a classic free market.
Succeeding as a company because you make customers happy sounds nice, but the most powerful companies today succeed by gaining favor from those already in power (venture capitalists, etc), and the customers are just a bargaining chip to be tossed around on the bargaining tables of the wealthy.
That’s a good point. Especially when we see so many things where there are exactly two companies competing.
Many monopolies form by first using a dominant market position to sell at a price no competitor can afford to match. Choice has already been removed before the “competition” folds or pulls out of the market. The consequences don’t happen overnight; you feel the squeeze before the “true” monopoly emerges. Amazon isn’t going to sell at a cheaper price once their competitors go out of business out of the kindness of their hearts.
Further, high consumer price is just one form monopoly power takes. Reduced labor power, wages, and worse working conditions are other important concerns, in addition to removing product variety and innovation incentive.
That’s a fair point. Bring loss leader can be a stepping stone on the path to being a “real” monopoly.
Amazon literally did this with diapers.com that led to them acquiring the company and shutting it down. I’m sure they’ve done it in hundreds of other product spaces as well.
OP didn’t say it, but Amazon also forces agreements with sellers not to list same items cheaper elsewhere online which is monopolistic.
I get the nuance you are communicating though.
“A monopoly is a market structure with a single seller or producer that assumes a dominant position in an industry or a sector. Monopolies are discouraged in free-market economies because they stifle competition, limit consumer substitutes, and thus, limit consumer choice.” ~investopedia
Nothing about needing to jack prices up. I’d say Amazon fits the description perfectly
Just because they are the cheapest option doesn’t mean they aren’t a monopoly. They clearly have the most inventory. One store having all of the inventory of everything and being the leader for selling products of any kind, is a pretty big problem.
If they can put others out of business (pretty sure they have put smaller stores out of business in the past), they can become an even bigger monopoly.
I am no economist, but don’t you think this behaviour of Amazon leads to “carrot and stick” and at that point it is basically a monopoly right?
Brick and mortar will always be more expensive and there are always cheaper options than Target. I used to love Fry’s but they are no more.
It depends on the product, but brick and mortar is superior to Amazon in some cases now. It’s mostly just things that are easy to ship that Amazon is cheap for.
Microcenter price matches amazon, you could’ve bought it for the same price at microcenter. Also, you can try ebay, I’ve been buying more stuff from ebay and the experience is pretty good.
I’ll say one problem is that for a number of items, there’s a technicality in the supply chain that exempts stuff from the price match. I don’t know about Microcenter, but have seen it in other contexts.
For example “Oh, Amazon is selling a 120 pack, but we only carry 125 packs, so it’s not equivalent”. Or in the most egregious, “You have the price for model number 762LAZ, but we stock 762LWM”, and you search and find out those two model numbers are absolutely identical, but “AZ” models come in a box with an Amazon logo printed on it.
1/2 the time on eBay (for new stuff) it’s someone sending a gift package from Amazon and pocketing the difference.
Micro center does that? Because I asked them about that and they said they will only do it for certain items. That’s really strange honestly. I would also feel a little bit bad about it, because Amazon is clearly trying a loss leader strategy to mark down the product prices to ridiculous levels, I’m sure that would not help local small businesses if I can’t afford it, so I wouldn’t want to exploit that
Ive had different stores & managers give me different policies. One told me the items needed to be shipped and sold from Amazon. Another told me it was only for items that weren’t on sale. Another told me I couldn’t price match a part that was in a bundle purchase. But yes, they respect price match to almost every major competitor.
Best Buy does some price matching as well.
Same with most brick and mortar retailers. When in doubt, ask, and they’ll probably say yes, they just need to confirm the price on their own device (so you’re not manipulating images or whatever on your phone).
