Amazon Japan Raided by JFTC

[Russell]

Sounds like the usual cartel-style price fixers just have their panties in a twist....

Pretty much this. If Amazon were a Japanese company this wouldn't be an issue.

You could be right.

That said, I do not like Amazon's predatory policies, and most of the time Amazon is not the cheapest anyway. I usually find better deals at Rakuten, or directly at the shop's web page, like Monotaro, Yodobashi, etc.

At the end of the day you can always just not sell on Amazon?

I don't sell anything on Amazon, but I get your point.

That said, they don't behave like gentlemen. I read about some suppliers selling some product well on Amazon, only for Amazon to make an own version of the product at a discounted price after they analyzed the sales of that supplier. It does not sound right, because they abuse their position as janitor of the sales site.

That sounds pretty messed up, you sure it was actually Amazon doing that though? I've seen numerous stories of Chinese companies analyzing trends and knocking off all kinds of things...forcing the original seller to constantly battle the knockoffs on Amazon. (They were trying to get Amazon to streamline the process of having the counterfeit/knockoff products removed)

According to the article I read a couple of years ago, it was Amazon itself. I do not know whether they ceased this practice, but it does show their state of mind.

[matsuki]

Indeed, if true, that is fucked. Usually store brands are just basically the same stuff, same manufacturer, rebranded at a lower price so it doesn't devalue the main brand.

The claims for the raid still sound as fucked though....if you sell on Amazon as a third party, they have no say over the pricing and such. If you sell directly to Amazon, that's when all the pressure comes to play but there is no Amazon mafia going around busting knee caps to force you to sell direct. The main motivation for selling direct is Amazon will buy the stuff form you ahead of time and promote their own backed listings above third party sellers.

[FG Lurker]

According to the article I read a couple of years ago, it was Amazon itself. I do not know whether they ceased this practice, but it does show their state of mind.

Amazon are ruthless. If there is a product on their platform that is very successful they will look into getting an Amazon-only or Amazon-branded version done. Selling on Amazon can be super profitable but if you're a little too successful it's like flying too close to the sun.

As far as the 3rd party knockoffs go, this is also a problem on Amazon. Let's say you design a new widget, a flying mousetrap. You get this built in China, get your branding in order, and get your own UPC/EAN/JAN stuff taken care of. Then you work with Amazon and get your flying mousetrap added to their catalog. Now, this is your product, no one else makes anything like it and certainly no one else can get exactly the same product with exactly the same UPC/EAN/JAN because you are the holder of those codes. However some Chinese seller notices that your flying mousetrap is doing very well on Amazon so they start making knock offs. They can certainly do this, and then they can get their own UPC/EAN/JAN stuff set up and get listed on Amazon as well. They don't do this though, they use your product's UPC/EAN/JAN and get added to your product listing in Amazon's catalog as a separate seller. Of course they massively undercut you on price and the quality of their version is garbage.

Because they are undercutting you on price they get the Amazon "buy box" and start siphoning off 80 to 90% of your sales. They're shipping directly from China using super slow shipping which pisses off customers. When the product finally does arrive the quality is shit. Unsurprisingly the negative reviews start piling in and since this is on your product's listing those reviews all apply to your product. Your Amazon search ranking tanks and your star rating as well.

Every time this happens you have to fight with Amazon to have the knockoff product removed from your listing. It can take weeks or even a couple of months to finally get the product removed. Sometimes Amazon declines to remove the product and then you have to manually appeal their decision. By the time the knockoff finally gets removed the Chinese seller has made a bunch of money and the damage is done to your search ranking and review stars. Amazon has no streamlined process to get these knockoffs removed and even quite large sellers can't get their custom products protected on Amazon to stop other 3rd parties from selling knockoffs. It's a super frustrating process.

[legion]

That's why you need to include poison darts that shoot into people's eyes when they try to reverse engineer your product.

[jingai]

Wow, that counterfeiting is awful. There are some items like SD cards I won't buy on Amazon because I don't trust that I'm going to get the real thing.

[FG Lurker]

Wow, that counterfeiting is awful. There are some items like SD cards I won't buy on Amazon because I don't trust that I'm going to get the real thing.

You can buy USB memory sticks and SD cards on Amazon but ONLY if you buy them from Amazon themselves and not from a 3rd party. The Amazon限定 models can be good deals.

[Thanatos' embalmed botfly]

Crucial Amazon FAQ here: https://spraguedawley.com/amazon-faq-cu ... help-desk/