Amazon's Monopoly of the tech industry is ruining the US economy

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Buttflapper@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

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

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MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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?

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SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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- GamingChairModel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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sumguyonline@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
My last post being unclear. Amazon has about as much a strangle hold on the tech sector as Walmart has on retail. They don’t. You get the product you paid for. AWS is no different.

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- CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  But the Walmart difference are brands and reduced quality in brand names. There are weird brands on Amazon but I’m not aware of any quality reductions when paying for known brands.
  
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  - Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Amazon has so many false brands and knock off shit it’s ridiculous. Hardly any of it works yet it has a 4.8 review. It’s like Temuat this point for so much of it.
    
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nieceandtows@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
If it’s sold and shipped by amazon, you should be able to price match it at bestbuy or target. I don’t know why walmart stopped price matching anybody.

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intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
So the way it’s ruining those markets is by making more goods available at lower prices?

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- UNY0N@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  It’s about how they do it. They achieve this not only by being incredibly efficient through exploiting thier employees, but also by systematically destroying competition, and using thier marketplace to unfairly favor thier own products.
  
  It’s techno-feudalism, here’s a great presentation/interview about it:
  
  youtu.be/X3FdIyNMaFY?feature=shared
  
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- JIMMERZ@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I think it’s worth noting that this is the effect of the free market behaving as designed, however no one has risen up to challenge Amazon enough along the way. So many retailers ignored e-commerce in the early days and went on with business as usual. Fast forward 20 years and Amazon has eaten into their market shares. A large retailer like WalMart absolutely has the ability to challenge Amazon by investing in the user experience and warehousing/delivery infrastructure. But often the old heads at these companies ignore improving the user experience in favor of making cuts. Amazon didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a steady growth in their business model over decades and the user experience is key to what made them so popular. It takes seconds to find what you want, for often times cheaper than the competition and in many cases the shipping is lower and faster.
  
  What would be difficult is for a start up company with little capital to try and take on these behemoths. Perhaps a coalition of large companies like Target, Best Buy, B&N, Kohl’s, etc. grouping together to create a large distribution network and app platform with a good user experience could compete.
  
  Just a thought.
  
  AWS is a whole other can of worms.
  
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scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It sounds like you went to several physical stores and when their stock on hand was not sufficient you co closed 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!

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01011@monero.town ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Brick and mortar will always be more expensive and there are always cheaper options than Target.

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- ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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sumguyonline@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Amazon most times has name brand stuff that isn’t electronics that you can have delivered very quickly. But seriously, any device, anything with an expiration, shoes, anything that might break in transit, off brand plastic crap, and any other of the useless items amazon carries, just buy a name brand directly from the manufacturers website. You will most likely get a tested product, and when something goes wrong you can talk directly to the manufacturer support. Not amazon. Also, purely anecdotal right now, but check your bank account for amazon purchase totals that don’t match you order history… I got 3 charges for $24~ in 3 days when I hadn’t ordered for a week, and now I have to fight thru automation to get it fixed.

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shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
You should offer printer paper on xmrbazaar.com

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