Honestly, when I heard bezos had covid I smirked a little (Edit: this appears to be false. Heard it from a friend whose brother works for Amazon and took it at face value. Thanks to u/Noxium51 for letting me know better. There’s nothing in the news that verifies it. The smirk part, however, is true and tbh I’m “mildly” disappointed with the truth)
Edit: if you can’t get past the paywall here’s the key para...
At its height about a decade ago, Pirate Trading LLC was selling more than $3.5 million a year of its Ravelli-brand camera tripods—one of its bestselling products—on Amazon, said owner Dalen Thomas.
In 2011, Amazon began launching its own versions of six of Pirate Trading’s top-selling tripods under its AmazonBasics label, he said. Mr. Thomas ordered one of the Amazon tripods and found it had the same components and shared Pirate Trading’s design. For its AmazonBasics products, Amazon used the same manufacturer that Pirate Trading had used.
Amazon priced one of its clone tripods below what Mr. Thomas paid his manufacturer to have Pirate Trading’s version made, he said. He determined it would be cheaper to buy Amazon’s versions, repackage and resell them than to buy and sell them on the terms he had been getting; he decided not to do that.
Amazon suspended Pirate Trading camera tripod models that competed with the AmazonBasics versions repeatedly, Mr. Thomas said, alleging his tripods had authenticity issues. Amazon rarely suspended the tripod models that didn’t compete with AmazonBasics versions, he said. In 2015, Amazon suspended all Ravelli products, he said, and even though the suspension ended, his company’s tripod business is now a fraction of the size it was. Mr. Thomas said he found being a seller on Amazon too risky and has largely pivoted to real-estate investing.
He did this to diapers.com at one point THE cheapest place to buy diapers. Amazon price matched every sku on diapers.com and under bid them. They did this for years until diapers.com went out of business. Within a month diapers prices shot up. It's how they operate. They are a terrible business that everyone, myself included loves to use. We need to regulate them!
digitalcoppersmith on December 23rd, 2020 at 05:25 UTC »
I think it’s from this recent wsj editorial
Honestly, when I heard bezos had covid I smirked a little (Edit: this appears to be false. Heard it from a friend whose brother works for Amazon and took it at face value. Thanks to u/Noxium51 for letting me know better. There’s nothing in the news that verifies it. The smirk part, however, is true and tbh I’m “mildly” disappointed with the truth)
Edit: if you can’t get past the paywall here’s the key para...
At its height about a decade ago, Pirate Trading LLC was selling more than $3.5 million a year of its Ravelli-brand camera tripods—one of its bestselling products—on Amazon, said owner Dalen Thomas.
In 2011, Amazon began launching its own versions of six of Pirate Trading’s top-selling tripods under its AmazonBasics label, he said. Mr. Thomas ordered one of the Amazon tripods and found it had the same components and shared Pirate Trading’s design. For its AmazonBasics products, Amazon used the same manufacturer that Pirate Trading had used.
Amazon priced one of its clone tripods below what Mr. Thomas paid his manufacturer to have Pirate Trading’s version made, he said. He determined it would be cheaper to buy Amazon’s versions, repackage and resell them than to buy and sell them on the terms he had been getting; he decided not to do that.
Amazon suspended Pirate Trading camera tripod models that competed with the AmazonBasics versions repeatedly, Mr. Thomas said, alleging his tripods had authenticity issues. Amazon rarely suspended the tripod models that didn’t compete with AmazonBasics versions, he said. In 2015, Amazon suspended all Ravelli products, he said, and even though the suspension ended, his company’s tripod business is now a fraction of the size it was. Mr. Thomas said he found being a seller on Amazon too risky and has largely pivoted to real-estate investing.
desexmachina on December 23rd, 2020 at 06:46 UTC »
Amazon does the exact same thing to its employees. The turnover in product managers is breathtaking
jgacks on December 23rd, 2020 at 07:58 UTC »
He did this to diapers.com at one point THE cheapest place to buy diapers. Amazon price matched every sku on diapers.com and under bid them. They did this for years until diapers.com went out of business. Within a month diapers prices shot up. It's how they operate. They are a terrible business that everyone, myself included loves to use. We need to regulate them!