Profiteering

It's not just the shop on Racecommon Road

Argos


Amazon


By the way these prices are current as of today, so no profiteering from Argos-good on 'em
I wish there was a name and shame site so after this is all over we can make an informed choice of who we'd want to give our business to.

 

Presumably that’s an Amazon marketplace vendor. Amazon hardly seem to sell anything themselves these days. Their site has basically become a fixed-price version of eBay.

 

Just had a quick look- it is a third party seller, but agree with the sentiment. Price gouging is disgusting.

Amazon should try and clamp down on this as much as they can. Perhaps they are, no idea?

I'm no website developer but im sure it could be feasible for the site to be alerted when prices on particular items suddenly rise by several hundred percent.

 

Just for clarity, that’s not an Amazon product.

obviously started writing before I’d read the above

 

Amazon will only intervene if there is a legal or health and safety risk to themselves.
As an example, if people are reported for selling chemicals in unsafe containers, they could be liable.

 

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/price-gouging-has-no-place-in-our-stores

 

That's not true. Amazon intervene all the time to maintain its integrity. Accounts receive warnings, suspension and deletion for a range of things that is so wide it's almost unbelievable. Same goes with individual products

 

That’s a new one in me, we have had many interactions with Amazon over the reselling of products at a higher inflated price and got nowhere until it was pointed out people were decanting things and selling in not fit for purpose containers.
They back tracked a little and said would stop these but not sealed units.
Having said that we still see decanted items sold.

 

As said to Titus over past 4 years we have had many many meetings with them.

 

I really can’t weigh Amazon up, though openly admit to being useless with technology.
But, recently, I had a £50 Amazon voucher to spend, so had a browse.
Dropped on a bargain North Face zip up jacket, £49.99. Bang on. Select size, sorted. Select colour, sorted. Add to basket - £129.99!!!
Ok, change colour, must only be grey that’s so cheap, so that’ll do for nowt. Edit basket, £139.99!!!
No single configuration of size or colour was £49.99 yet that was the advertised price.
So for that reason, t’old Geoff Bezos can go **** himself on the cream seats of his luxury yacht.

 

I am not singling Amazon out here, just highlighting that the practice is going on, and I fully agree that Amazon should have the technology to clampdown on this, the huge price gouging is happening on their site even though it is a third party seller.
It is the third party seller who should be highlighted as they will get away with it whilst they can.

Name and shame

 

It's not a necessity though so I can't see them getting that price. A couple of quid more and they may well have sold loads.

 

Amazon make most of their money these days through hosting computers and services on Amazon Web Services. The "shop" is still significant, but its relevance within the organization is shrinking year-on-year (normally).

 

People aren't being forced to buy it. It's not essential and someone can shop around for a better price. The worst for profiteering are the supermarkets with knocking off offers. Everyone is getting far less than usual for their money in their shopping trolley or basket. Store cards like nectar points not adding weekly offers, no 2 for 1 on products, restricting how many of a product you can get. It's been very noticeable how the big supermarkets are taking advantage of lockdown.

 

The shop income and profit is still growing very significantly, the aws profit is just growing at a greater speed, thus having more share of the company

 

Yeah, looks like I'd misremembered. AWS has gone from $7.9bn in 2015 to $9bn per quarter in 2019 (revenue), but profit is consistent around $2bn per quarter for the last year (but they are building new DCs as lightning speed).

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...weekly-shop-soars-7-coronavirus-lockdown.html

Supermarkets sneakily upping prices to take advantage of a national crisis.

 

First sentence of the article

The cost of a weekly shop has risen as much as £7 as supermarkets removed promotions to curb panic-buying in the initial phase of the pandemic.

 

Soars by £7?

Bit of an oxymoron.

 

My missus was googling on the effect of coronavirus on Croatia the other day as, for the moment, our holiday to Dubrovnik is still in the schedule for late June, although we expect to have to move it to next year.

One thing she noted of interest is that Croatia have apparently put into law that the selling of anything at a price higher than you were selling it on 31 January is illegal. Sounds like a good idea that.