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3a it shows up in an Amazon box delivered by an Amazon truck.
Or you go to their site and they just direct you to Amazon – and not because they’re lazy, to sell on Amazon you need to agree that you won’t offer the product cheaper than Amazon anywhere else, including on your own site.
And, that’s even assuming you can go to the manufacturer’s site. Often instead you’ll just get a facebook page, or maybe not even that.
I hate when I go to a manufacturers site and navigate to “products,” filter the list and find what I want, and on the product page it gives a description, no “add to cart” button but a “buy on amazon” button.
Like. FFUUUUCCCKKKKKKK.
[image of a computer leaving a broken window of a high-rise building]
Yeah. Especially if it’s a very specific version of a product you want, and they just link to their “amazon store”, which has terrible search filters, or doesn’t have that model available.
It’s not just that they give a big cut of their sales to Amazon, it’s that often the manufacturer puts a lot of effort into having different versions of their product with different features. But, then it’s dumped on Amazon. Amazon’s search is “helpful” and gives you similar products and then uses their “recommended” ranking to put products they make more money from at the top.
That one can be easily fixed by writing to them and complaining.
I mean not selling via Amazon theoretically too, but the company might not want to play with logistics, so it might be much harder.
Yall don’t even try. Make up all the excuses you want. I see how little the majority give a fuck about giving money to bezos or whoever if a product of consumption is right there within your grasp.
What the hell you talking about? The person you’re responding to is correctly pointing out that Amazon has some awfully anti-competition rules and a lot of their sellers can not legally sell for less than they do on Amazon, even though Amazon gets a cut. No one is “making excuses,” and no one is happy about it, it’s just a reality.
If I didn’t try, how would I know that many manufacturers only have Amazon stores?
Or that even if you order directly from their site, the order is still fulfilled by Amazon. My partner actually don’t try any more because we’ve recently given up after trying for too long, paying more, and still ending up giving money to Amazon.
Don’t fucking blame us for billionaires rigging the system.
Same thing happens on ebay
Honestly I’ve mostly been finding items cheaper on Amazon either because you’d have to pay for shipping on it, or because they just entirely neglect their website since nobody uses it.
Also that only really applies to “real” brands, not the gibberish named brands. Those companies only exist to use Amazons brand registry for better SEO and probably don’t even have a website. AINOPE is not a “real” company, they just slap their name on whitelabel products. Of course the first random one I picked does have one, but it is more expensive than amazon.
At least with AINOPE or GJHUIRAJ or MBHJOILJRE you can go to Ali Express and get it more directly from China, often for half the price.
Yeah but you’re almost definitely not getting that within the 2-8 days the OP quotes, compare that to being able to get shit within hours in some cases through Amazon and it’s curtains
Unless you don’t need your curtains right away and wouldn’t mind waiting a few extra days/weeks to get them much cheaper.
I tried Aliexpress before, and they blocked my account for no reason and their support wanted a ton of my banking information then never resolved the problem
That sucks. I’ve never had any issues. Are you sure you weren’t scammed? Being asked for banking information seems very odd.
Yes, you can also see on Reddit that it’s a common occurrence
Step 6: Product comes shipped in an Amazon box using Amazon couriers :facepalm:
At least you tried
happened to me a few times too 😅 I guess it’s not worth for a company to have multiple different shipping procedures if most of their orders are via Amazon anyway
If Amazon’s algorithms detect that a seller is offering the same item cheaper elsewhere (including on the seller’s own e-commerce site, then Amazon will immediately strip the listing of the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons. The algorithm will also hide or suppress the listing from search results. And for repeated or severe violations (especially related to price-gouging), Amazon may suspend or terminate selling privileges completely for sellers selling cheaper off site. And they call this “Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy”. F- Amazon.
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A few sources around, here’s one from https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2024/03/13/understanding-amazons-alleged-anticompetitive-practice:
the FTC claims Amazon punishes third-party sellers for offering lower prices on other websites.[2]
Select Competitor – Featured Offer Disqualification (SC-FOD).[6] SC-FOD is an algorithm that prevents a seller from “winning the Buy Box” if it finds that the seller sells that product for less on a Select Competitor’s website.[7]
References for 2, 6, 7:
[2] Complaint at 85, FTC v. Amazon, W.D. Wash. Case No. 2:23-cv-01495-JHC (Nov. 2, 2023).
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This is one of the main reasons why many indie shops are doing so many coupons these days. Price obfuscation is not only a marketing strategy but also a genuine safety one.
2b. Company thinks their online store is a boutique and sell the stuff for 50% more than Amazon
Somehow it happens even more often with small businesses. My city is small and irrelevant, so when I saw a book with the history of it, I wanted to buy it. On Amazon it was sold for 15% off, on marketplace directly by the publisher + free shipping. So I went to buy it on the publisher website and… MSRP + need to pay shipping
This publisher was doing a war price against itself. A small niche book where you’re the only one to sell it. Why would you need to discount this heavily on Amazon?
Numbers:
On Amazon: 13€ + shipping paid by the seller (+customer has free returns in one month). They can’t have more than 50 cents of profit for each copy sold
On their own website: 15€+5€ shipping (+customer needs to pay 7€ to return it within 2 weeks). Healthy profit for each copy sold.
You need to be an anti-bezos activist to choose the second option, though.
Somehow it happens even more often with small businesses
“Somehow”… amazon forcing all sellers on their platform to give them the best price or risk being delisted
What if 2a is slightly more than amazon and no free shipping?
Or free shipping on orders $40+, but everything is $39.95.
2.a.i.) find out they don’t have an actual shop, they just send you to Amazon
While I support the intent, I’ve personally found that:
- Half the time the company either doesn’t exist off Amazon or uses Amazon for their order fulfillment.
- See #1
- Price frequently ends up being mostly the same. I’m not sure if this is due to something that Amazon forces on companies, so they may have no choice.
- Shipping ends up being expensive and is definitely not in 2 days, more like 6-10.
- Spot on and perhaps still worth it for this reason alone.
I just try to buy what I can locally and avoid the larger companies that are all pretty disgusting. While Bezos is definitely the richest and most evil, make no mistake that the other companies would be in his place in a heartbeat if they could.
Yeah, I was going to say the advice in the meme in kind of dumb. I can order the same product on Amazon or the website of the product, but on Amazon returns are super easy, shipping is overnight, and I am not dealing with some weird 3rd party payment system.
Now if the product is made locally at a small business, and is similarly priced, then absolutely, that’s my preferred way to do things.
Yes, I don’t ever shop with Amazon, but they use their massive anti-competitive scale to be the most convenient option.
I simply reject that convenience, because fuck Amazon. Fuck billionaires. Fuck executives. And fuck shills.
I’ll just pay $10 more and wait an extra week for my toaster. This is nothing compared to shopping in the 90s.
Or - as a Canadian - they DO have an online store but it doesn’t ship here :-(
I do this a lot because often the company website has more product selection than what is soleld on Amazon. So, it is a net win for shoppers. Bonus! Sometimes the company’s prices are slightly lower than Amazon (even without the code).
Pretty much my experience too, however I have bought directly from brand or reseller sites that either use Shopify checkout or Amazon Logistics for shipping anyway. Sellers need to choose to boycott certain companies at P.O.S., or at least offer an option.
Maddeningly I’ve run into brands whose ‘online store’ is just a link to their Amazon page. But most of the time this is a good strategy.
Is there a browser extension that does this automatically? There should be.
Think this is as close as we got so far. Usual precautions of new random companies on the internet and installing their addons applies.
Apparently you attract more flies with vinegar than than honey
That’s epic actually
Came here to say this. Let Amazon provide the search and reviews. We can use that but spend our money elsewhere.
At the most basic level could get the store name via the current Amazon page and then open a new tab with a search.
But ideally it would actually provide a like to their own web store. Not sure how that part would work technically.
and reviews.
Not really any more. Unless you mean 3 reviews and totally-for-realsies-trustworthy AI slop summary.
I thought i was ordering a product directly from a company and avoiding Amazon. The thing was delivered in an Amazon package
One big antitrust issue with Amazon is that they require vendors to use their fulfillment services in order to get the best terms on being listed on Amazon: prime shipping, etc.
That deal for shipping/fulfillment itself isn’t too bad, even if they charge a pretty high price to sellers for the service, because the seller is actually getting something valuable in return, and it’s hard for Amazon to promise fast shipping not in their control.
But the FTC lawsuit a while back alleged that Amazon does more than that. They downgrade the search results of anyone who isn’t a paying advertiser, so they’re squeezing sellers in more ways than one. And worse, part of the contract for fulfillment is a prohibition on competing with Amazon’s listed price.
So if you’re selling something that you need $30 to earn a profit, and it costs you 40% to list on Amazon, you’ll need to list it at $50 on Amazon in order to make your profit, and you’ve hamstrung yourself from selling that same thing for $30 on your own site and turning the same profit by cutting Amazon out. That’s what’s anticompetitive and harms the consumer, even when that consumer intentionally avoids Amazon and goes straight to the seller’s own site.
Sometimes.
I was getting something I wanted and their website just referred me back to buying from Amazon. I emailed them because I was curious as to why. It was a pretty niche thing to buy. The guy emailed me back saying that the sales through Amazon keeping his listing towards the top of their algorithm made him more than if he sold direct and his Amazon listing would drop down lower in the search because so many people just go to Amazon.
In other words, Amazon is a cancer trap, and as long as most people go straight there to buy shit, sellers have to sell as much as they can on there.
Last time I did this I ordered from the companies website actually paid a couple dollars more and it shipped from an Amazon warehouse.
I bought a tamagotchi from ebay and it came in an amazon bag 😭😭
Most of it is just Temu slop…
So just buy it off Temu for half the price.
Then you’re just giving money to temu brand bezos
…
Did you just realize how goods and services are exchanged?
Literally anytime you buy something, that person gets money…
Oh, yes, that person is totally objecting to trading money for goods, and not that fact that Temu is owned by Colin Huang, the richest person in China.
Well, that’s not true…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2026/03/10/the-10-richest-chinese-billionaires-2026/
But yes, any large corporation is owned by an oligarch.
Again…
Obviously
Apparently dated - there were headlines last year that he became the richest, bow he’s #5.
But the point is that saying you’re not going to buy from Amazon to avoid giving money to Bezos, and then buying instead from Temu is pretty dumb.
