Amazon To Make Big Business Changes in EU Settlement (apnews.com) 15
Amazon will make major changes to its business practices to end competition probes in Europe by giving customers more visible choices when buying products and, for Prime members, more delivery options, European Union regulators said Tuesday. From a report: The EU's executive Commission said it accepted the legally binding commitments from Amazon to resolve two antitrust investigations. The deal allows the company to avoid a legal battle with the E.U.'s top antitrust watchdog that could have ended with potentially huge fines, worth up to 10% of annual worldwide revenue.
The agreement marks another advance by EU authorities as they clamp down on the power of Big Tech companies, and comes just a day after the Commission accused Facebook parent Meta of distorting competition in the classified ads business. "Today's decision sets the rules that Amazon will need to play by in the future instead of Amazon determining these rules for all players on its platform," the EU's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said at a press briefing in Brussels. "With these new rules, competing independent retailers, carriers and European customers will have more opportunities and choice." The agreement only applies to Amazon's business practices in Europe and will last for seven years. Amazon will have to make the promised changes by June.
The agreement marks another advance by EU authorities as they clamp down on the power of Big Tech companies, and comes just a day after the Commission accused Facebook parent Meta of distorting competition in the classified ads business. "Today's decision sets the rules that Amazon will need to play by in the future instead of Amazon determining these rules for all players on its platform," the EU's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said at a press briefing in Brussels. "With these new rules, competing independent retailers, carriers and European customers will have more opportunities and choice." The agreement only applies to Amazon's business practices in Europe and will last for seven years. Amazon will have to make the promised changes by June.
Does this really help? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this really help? or does it just make Amazon product pages more cluttered.
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You can already do this. The products are marked right now as to whether they ship Prime or something else.
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No you can't. Products are *marked*, they are not made optional.
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Vendor are free right now to offer their products with different shipping methods on Amazon. Click on the alternative vendors link and check out your options. Note that the vendors make these options available, not Amazon. So if your choice is not available complain to the vendor. A common, non-Prime option is direct shipment from China.
Another option would be for Amazon to implement separate loading for alternative delivery companies at their warehouses. Does this work now? Make a new Amazon account tha
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Vendor are free right now
Who gives a fuck what the vendor is free to do. I feel like you didn't read my post.
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No mention in any of the articles how using an alternative delivery service will impact returns. If a package is shipped on an alternative service, how are free returns at Amazon going to work? I suspect the alternative service is going to have to ship it back and you'll likely have to pay for that.
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No mention in any of the articles how using an alternative delivery service will impact returns. If a package is shipped on an alternative service, how are free returns at Amazon going to work?
Presumably the same way they worked for the past decade before Amazon started doing it's own shipping in many countries in the world. You get a return label and drop it in the postbox.
Translation: less competition, more cost (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazon already doesnâ(TM)t operate in some EU countries, it seems the only option is that they will reduce their reach even more and start leveraging third party delivery companies to set prices. This will inevitably increase cost to the end user as these companies will have their own delivery area with minimal to no competition.
Whatever you may think, the competition Amazon creates puts a significant pressure on price. The fact theyâ(TM)re more efficient than their competition should not be a bad
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The fact theyâ(TM)re more efficient than their competition should not be a bad thing,
It is if that efficiency is built on a foundation of abusive labor practices. I bet USPS and Royal Mail could bump up efficiency too if they started tracking their driver's piss breaks and put them on PIPs if the computer algorithm decided they urinated too long last Thursday.
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I wonder how they'll mark search results? (Score:2)