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Businesses The Courts United States

Amazon Steers Consumers To Higher-Priced Items, Lawsuit Claims (reuters.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Amazon has been sued in a proposed U.S. class action that accuses the online retailer of violating consumer protection law by steering shoppers to higher-priced items to earn extra fees. Filed this week in the Seattle federal court, the complaint cites the recent FTC antitrust case against Amazon. It alleges Amazon's algorithm for its "Buy Box" often shows higher-priced options over faster, cheaper alternatives. The suit says shoppers click Amazon's "Buy Now" button nearly 98% of the time, falsely believing its choices offer the best deal. Amazon created the algorithm to benefit third-party sellers that pay "hefty fees" for its Fulfillment By Amazon services, the suit alleges.
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Amazon Steers Consumers To Higher-Priced Items, Lawsuit Claims More

Amazon Steers Consumers To Higher-Priced Items, Lawsuit Claims

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  • then all retailers, everywhere, are guilty.

    This is standard practice in all forms of retail, everywhere, and always will be.

    I get hating on Amazon, there's a lot there to hate. But this is just stupid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      Upselling would be selling a better product at a higher price.
      This may be for steering people to higher priced sellers of the same product.

      • Upselling would be selling a better product at a higher price.

        Well... Something at a higher price or, more specifically, higher profit margin. /cynical

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Upselling would be selling a better product at a higher price.
        This may be for steering people to higher priced sellers of the same product.

        Or, since this is Amazon, it's more likely to be a "different" product, but both products are rebadged versions of the same actual hardware, just in a different cardboard box with a different name on it. In other words, the QULFIG widget might be cheaper than the WINPOJ widget, but they're both made by [insert Chinese manufacturer for hire here] to the exact same specs.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        No. Upselling is selling a more profitable product for the retailer to sell. Often, that's a better product as a higher price. But not always. Sometimes, it's a worse product at a higher price, and sometimes, it's a worse product at a lower price, but with a higher markup. Or a thousand other scenarios.

        Hope that clears it up for you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        The way I understand what's happening here is thus:

        * They're prioritizing the options with free shipping, which is "added value" for the customer.
        * They get a percentage cut of the purchase price of an item, not shipping
        * Either due to a seller program to "buy into" the "buy now" button inclusion, that's what gets defaulted to.

        Personally, when I've looked at this, and it's very rarely the case that the other options are significantly different in total cost. We're talking about cents to a couple dollars on

        • While this is probably for new items, it is false for used books. The substantial majority of listings for used books are Marketplace, not FBA--because FBA storage fees are too high for used books as most are very slow moving. So you might have a $30 FBA listing plus several Marketplace listings with some under $10--and they show the $30 FBA listing in the buy box.

    • well what's more shocking is that a billion dollar corporation was behaving in a potentially unethical manner, like really? I would not have seen that coming -- ever.

    • Seriously. Retailers [moneycrashers.com] do this [medium.com] in [shopify.com] stores too [scotscoop.com].

      This lawsuit and article should just be a news article, with the headline of "EXCLUSIVE! Amazon does what literally every successful retailer has been doing for 100 years, but in online format! Sears Roebuck rises from the dead and sues Amazon for copying their Sears Roebuck catalog strategy!"

      • Re:If upselling is illegal (Score:5, Informative)

        by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Friday February 09, 2024 @04:32PM (#64228308)

        I think you misunderstood the problem here.
        None of your links have anything to do with what Amazon is accused of in this lawsuit.

        Let me try and explain.

        Say you are looking for product ABC. It has 5 sellers offering you the exact same product, Same brand, same specs, identical in all BUT price.

        Seller 1 offers it for $15, plus $5 shipping;
        Seller 2 offers it for $10, plus $11 shipping;
        Seller 3 offers it for $25, free shipping;
        Seller 4 offers it for $19, free shipping;
        Seller 5 offers it for $5, plus $30 shipping.

        (this is a simplified version, not taking into account shipping speed and other factors)

        Now, what Amazon should do would be to list all products with all options, allowing you to sort in various ways and decide, by yourself, which option to pick.
        However, what Amazon does, instead, is pushing option #3 ($25, free shipping) because their cut of that price is higher. The other options are either hidden or made less visible through dark patterns, in this case slamming the "Buy Now" button next to option #3, tricking you into paying more for the same product that you could have paid otherwise.

        Amazon is, in this case, a bidding court, where sellers bid against each other to be promoted by Amazon and screw you, the customer, in the process, by extracting more money from you for the same product, available on the same platform, for less.

        I hope that clarifies the matter.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          That is exactly what all businesses do - encourage customers to buy what is more profitable for the business.

          That is what all businesses have always done, and always will do, if they want to stay in business.

          • That is exactly what all businesses do - encourage customers to buy what is more profitable for the business.

            You forgot to add "within the confines of the law".
            If you thing the above behavior is fine, then let me present a potential scenario.

            Product ABC is sold by company X and company Y.
            Company X places it on Amazon for $30 and pays Amazon $5 for their intermediary service, getting $25 in the end.
            Company Y engages Amazon and says "I'll pay you $15 to promote ME, instead of company X", and places it on Amazon for $45. Amazon prominently displays the product for $45, with a big yellow "BUY NOW" button next to it, b

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by taustin ( 171655 )

              It's still what every retailer does, every day, and has for a hundred years and more.

              You can masturbate as furiously as you want over the fact that Amazon is doing it, but that doesn't change that it's not so much standard business practice, but a fundamental property of all retail.

              All you'll accomplish is to run out of lotion. You'll still be full of shit.

            • Your condescending nonsense is being modded up, which is sad because your ignorance is what's driving this.

              DO you know how retailers work, like grocery stores? Vons, ALbertsons, WalMart, Target etc, they own only the shelf space. Producers of products pay for shelf space. The stores and the retailers know that shelf location drives sales, making it accessible for customers to buy. The producers of products pay more money for better shelf space , and as a result get more sales than competing products

              • Dude. How can you be so dense?

                It's NOT about DIFFERENT products.
                It's NOT about COMPETING products.
                It's about the SAME product, with the SAME brand, sold by TWO OR MORE different sellers.

                Have you ever seen the same product with 3 different prices at WalMart?

                Jesus wept! You can't comprehend this simple thing, it blows my mind.

    • Amazon claims to be the marketplace, not a retailer. They are quite explicit about disclaiming the responsibilities of a retailer.

      As such, a different set of standards apply. Legal standards.

      But this lawsuit seems poorly though out. The "Buy Box" was never based on just best price -it was supposed to represent the best overall deal: factoring in sale price, shipping cost, shipping speed, shipping method, and seller reputation(feedback, recent actions, overall rating, response time, etc.)

      I used to sell vi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        Amazon claims to be the marketplace, not a retailer.

        Congratulations, you've just said the stupidest thing so far in this discussion.

        The marketplace is the retailer, dumbass.

        (And the law clearly recognizes that, since Amazon is the one that takes your money. Their lawyers may try to bullshit their way out of it, but they'll lose because that's as stupid as this lawsuit.)

  • Would you sue the grocery store for putting the name-brand chips at the front of the aisle, and the store-brand chips at the back?
    If you just want the lowest price, you have to pay attention. The retailer has no duty to do that work for you.

    • This is like the surveillance stuff. Sure, we historically did the same thing in meatspace with no problem.
      But when we do it every time to everybody everywhere without human oversight, it takes on a different character.

      "Quantity has a quality all its own." As a renowned defender of civil liberties once observed.

    • Would you sue the grocery store for putting the name-brand chips at the front of the aisle, and the store-brand chips at the back? If you just want the lowest price, you have to pay attention. The retailer has no duty to do that work for you.

      Or simply rearranging things so you have to re-find what you want. From a quick Google search:

      Rearranging items is reportedly a common tactic used by companies to ensure customers spend as much time as possible in stores, and ultimately find more products to buy.

    • I think the big problem is that they actively make it as hard as possible to figure out what the best unit price is.

      In my local grocery store, for example, the pricing of every class of item is in different units. Sometimes it's dollars per net weight, cents per ounce, cents per item in a multi-item package, pesos per half-item, ... all right next to each other.

      They make it so you have to do math for a couple minutes per item to get the best price for items that have no other differentiators...and the
      • 'you have to do math for a couple minutes per item'

        Ah, our modern education system at work.
        • There's actually laws about this in several states, here's a page with some info about that U.S. Retail Pricing Laws and Regulations by State [nist.gov]. I happen to live in a state that doesn't have any Uniform Pricing Laws, and the prices displayed sure do reflect that.

          It's not the math per se that pisses me off, it's the clear intent to cause confusion. The unit prices I see aren't there for me to pick the best price per unit, they are there to make particular items look more attractive than they should be, if I

        • This has nothing to do with education or knowledge (well, OK, almost nothing), but with time and availability.
          I assume the GP says "per item" and means "per purchased item".
          Say I want to buy a bottle of milk. If there are 15 different bottles available, each with its own pricing, I have to calculate a common denominator for each. Given non-standardized labels and non-standardized prices per unit, it could easily take 2 minutes to figure out which one is the best to buy.
          Since I used milk as an example, my lo

  • Most of the time I've clicked for other options to compare (mostly looking for Sold by Amazon rather than some random company), the lower prices do not include free shipping. Once you add on the shipping cost, there is no advantage to not using the default buy option. When there are lower prices (including shipping), the shipping time is often a week or more longer. The algorithm has been the best option most of the time for me (with the exception of my preference for known sellers)

    Amazon is motivated to

  • Nearly 98% "Buy Now"? (Score:3)

    by Mononymous ( 6156676 ) on Friday February 09, 2024 @04:08PM (#64228256)

    I've had my Amazon account for over 20 years. I buy a lot of things through them.
    Never have I ever used the "Buy Now" button, but it shows up on every product page, not a higher-priced subset.
    So I don't know what "falsely believing its choices offer the best deal" could refer to.

    And what's the "Buy Box"? The thing labeled "Results" when you do a search?
    The "Sort" dropdown menu on the upper right makes it clear that the default order is "Featured", not in order of price.
    Plus the "Buy Now" button doesn't even show up there.

    • Some people won't be happy until anything Amazon is too directly embedded in bubbles down to the absolute bottom. Same for anything that's a knockoff, a rebadge, or of inexact origin. Also, products that are inferior to another brand's product in the head of the observer. And... and... and...

      My objections rise when I search for a very specific model of something, and I see four "alternatives" ahead of the exact match. But that's also mostly where my objections end.

      The "buy it now" button does not strike me

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      The problem isn't in the search results, it's on the product pages. The "Buy Box" is the box on the right of a product listing with the add to card and buy now buttons. The issue the lawsuit is bring up is that the price/seller listed there isn't always the cheapest and/or fastest shipping option available for that item. If you scroll down under the buy box, there is usually another box with "New & Used (##) from $xx.xx" box and if you click on it, you see all the offers for that item. Essentially the l

    • The "buy box" is where it says "add to cart". It's the default seller, but you can scroll down to "other sellers on amazon" or "New (x) from" to find other options.

    • The "Buy Box" is Amazon's term for what you will get if you click the "Buy Now" button.

      It is the featured item/seller combination selected by Amazon's algorithm as the best deal for the product described on the page.
      -It is not supposed to be the best price, but the best overall deal (based on: price, shipping cost, delivery times, seller reliability, etc.)

      • After I read this, I tried, for the first time in my life, clicking the "Buy Now" button. You're the only one who got it right.
        That is clearly the "Buy Box".
        Through years of reading about Amazon's "1-click patent" I had always assumed that clicking "Buy Now" would just create a new order--in a single click. That's why I've never clicked it. I wonder what message I missed that 98% of Amazon shoppers got.
        What I haven't been able to find yet is a Buy Box with further purchase options you can scroll down to. I

  • The fact that Amazon forces their way to the top of every product search result is just shitty. I go out of my way to not buy from them, but often I am bludgeoned into submission.

    Question: How exactly does Amazon get to the top every search? Is the method documented? Is it well known? I could make some guesses but I’d like to hear how its done from people in the know. Thanks.

  • And this isn't a problem.
  • What makes Amazon susceptible to antitrust here is that they did not always do this. When they had to compete with retailers, they had to offer low prices. Now that they have put most retailers out of business, they can start shafting the customers. This is a major pilar of Doctorow's enshitification of the internet process. The only reason Amazon gets away with this is that it has killed off enough retailers to put itself in this commanding position. As such, it is abuse of power, a question of trust.

    I n

  • "Get your shit today if you get $25 in the cart!". Get more than $25 in the cart. Go to check out. Get your shit tomorrow!

    That's to say nothing of the shift sanding of promised delivery dates. I've seen them fluctuate by literally MONTHS.

  • I used to be a seller, and the "buy now" box is more than just the "lowest price". Otherwise, customers would be complaining about 20 other things.

    To be featured there (trying to remember), you not only need to offer a good price, but should offer a good service, fast shipping times, low returns, and so on. I would assume this is a weighted sum of all these considerations, hence slightly higher price, but much better service vs. slightly worse shipping times but much lower price could balance out, and so on

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