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Amazon's Monopoly of the tech industry is ruining the US economy (self.technology)

submitted 2 months ago by Buttflapper to c/technology

221 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I wanted to get printer photo paper for my printer, a Canon. I went to Walmart, They had nothing. Went to Target, they had one pack of photo paper and it was crazy expensive, so I went to micro center. That one was just as expensive. So finally I went back to Amazon, which I was trying to avoid, and saw the price 25 to 40% lower than anywhere I had been. Literally everything that I was looking for, I could find within seconds. Not even Best buy has even close to the amount of inventory or variety, even when you're shopping online....

Therefore, I think Amazon has a literal monopoly in the tech industry right now, you're literally forced to buy from them, because unless you have the money and financial fortitude to protest with your wallet, you're going to be buying from them. There's no other choice. They have so aggressively and dominantly taken over the supply chain market that no other tech company can currently compete with them in any aspect at all. You will be paying 40 to 50% more on everything by cutting out Amazon, and no one has the money for that anymore unless you're upper middle class or above

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Microcenter price matches amazon, you could've bought it for the same price at microcenter. Also, you can try ebay, I've been buying more stuff from ebay and the experience is pretty good.

[–] puck2 9 points 2 months ago

1/2 the time on eBay (for new stuff) it's someone sending a gift package from Amazon and pocketing the difference.

[–] jj4211 6 points 2 months ago

I'll say one problem is that for a number of items, there's a technicality in the supply chain that exempts stuff from the price match. I don't know about Microcenter, but have seen it in other contexts.

For example "Oh, Amazon is selling a 120 pack, but we only carry 125 packs, so it's not equivalent". Or in the most egregious, "You have the price for model number 762LAZ, but we stock 762LWM", and you search and find out those two model numbers are absolutely identical, but "AZ" models come in a box with an Amazon logo printed on it.

[–] Buttflapper 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Micro center does that? Because I asked them about that and they said they will only do it for certain items. That's really strange honestly. I would also feel a little bit bad about it, because Amazon is clearly trying a loss leader strategy to mark down the product prices to ridiculous levels, I'm sure that would not help local small businesses if I can't afford it, so I wouldn't want to exploit that

[–] NRay7882 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Ive had different stores & managers give me different policies. One told me the items needed to be shipped and sold from Amazon. Another told me it was only for items that weren't on sale. Another told me I couldn't price match a part that was in a bundle purchase. But yes, they respect price match to almost every major competitor.

Best Buy does some price matching as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Same with most brick and mortar retailers. When in doubt, ask, and they'll probably say yes, they just need to confirm the price on their own device (so you're not manipulating images or whatever on your phone).