Submitted 1 year ago by ooli@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
It’s generally not illegal to raise your prices or set your prices at what your competitors are charging. There are variety of factors that influence a price of an item.
The issue is that the FTC is alleging that the algorithm artificially boosted prices and keeping the prices that high when competitors matched the price.
While it’s not outright collusion on price fixing, it does reek of using monopolistic practices to fatten the bottom line.
And yet, no one says anything when landlords use the same basic tools to price fix rents.
I really can’t believe its legal to charge more or less based on a customers location, or probably other data about us. This seems like such a fucking problem.
Really, it's super legal. If you buy a textbook in America or you buy the same textbook in India, the price difference can be 90%, and I recall the publishers legally going after people for having the gall of buying the cheaper textbooks.
I am also certain that any retailers competing with Amazon – at least those of sufficient size – have their own data scientists banging away on optimizing pricing too.
According to the Journal, Nessie would inflate prices and monitor whether other retailers, like Target, would follow suit. If the competing retailers maintained the lower price, the algorithm would automatically revert Amazon’s to its normal price.
Isn’t this how retail pricing always works?
Only issue is the automated fashion in which it’s done. It means they can easily push prices up and up and up to extract every last penny they can from buyers.
Greed is no longer something that you have to work at, if you have a desire to fuck people over you’re just a button away from doing it.
At the scale of Amazon, it’s much less reasonable.
Most people don’t know how retail pricing works, so when they read an article like this, they’re shocked and offended
Meanwhile secret algorithm: price *= 1.1
Ive bought through amazon three times in my life. Each time i regretted my purchase because the absolute lowest quality shit arrived. Why the fuck would anyone buy anything from there?
Because you bought from shit sellers, amazon is just the marketplace
For me, it’s simply that there’s stuff I can’t find without driving 4h to another city, and even then only maybe.
Is Amazon really your only internet retailer, or have you just not bothered looking for alternatives?
Another city hasn’t discovered post services yet?
If the items were shit, why didn’t you return them?
Because you have like 3 weeks to decide you want to keep that purchase or not for a full refund
Oh yes, i forgot how well amaozn treats its drivers and that the cars produce no emissions so we can just test buy everything
Because it’s convenient when I often can’t get out, it has a good return policy, and your experience is radically different from my own. Mainly that last bit.
It used to be decent, but in recent years it’s basically become wish.com with better logistics.
Scamazon
How would this be enforced? Also, can we rely on the FTC to do their job quickly and effectively when we’re just now hearing about something that’s reported to have ended four years ago?
Verge is back publishing bullshit.. like in good old times. "Secret algorithm". So prices have been raised and? No one told us... yeah... wow.. is it unusual? They used a tool to do that and it was secret. And wallmart publishes their IT on Github? Prices usually grow, if they can't or goods sell bad, they need to reduce them again. That's how market works.
Of course… That’s their whole business model
It’s literally anyone’s business model in a capitalistic market, it’s hilarious that people are shocked and offended
It's still shocking and offensive to be confronted with the truth of something you already knew.
Everyone knows that the rich would happily stab you in the face for your pocket change, but actually seeing rich people commission sophisticated software designed to do just that is still confronting.
Is it the scale of sales that matters? Like if I make an Etsy shop and set my prices based on competitors, is that illegal?
No, you’re doing capitalism just like Amazon and everyone else.
Secret or standard?
Is this really a surprise?
I’m shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!
An items worth is what someone is willing to pay. It’s kind of the whole point of capitalism. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
This just in: technology company uses technology to run their company. Shocking!
NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hasn’t the travel, cruise and holiday industry been doing this for decades now?
EditsHisComments@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Most companies that sell products do this in some form. The only thing that’s secret about it is the particular process and code, since that’s confidential company info.
A few years ago I remember speaking with a Walmart manager about this sort of thing, and they mentioned how their site would receive price updates after their volume, revenue, staffing, supply chain logistics to their site, etc., were analyzed. Admittedly, I don’t know if they had real analysts or machine learning, or a mix of the two (likely both, since it was 5 or 6 years ago).
A key point to this is that most businesses selling things buy most of their products from suppliers, who have their own pricing mechanisms - which causes downstream businesses to adjust accordingly.
phx@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We’ll see it down to the minute in B&M storefronts soon as well. The local Superstore and Walmart already have digital price tags on shelves. Milk could go up $0.50/L between the time you grab it off the shelf and then finish shopping to hit the checkout.
A bunch of people buying cookies? Oh, better raise that price by $1.50/box