THE ROVING PECKER PRESENTS: "Bitch Got Caught!" By Dramatic Tea Houx!

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's is from Dramatic Tea Houx!

In today’s edition of Bitch Got Caught: The FTC is suing Amazon! Everyhor we know shops on Amazon. When you need socks, but you can’t be bothered to run to Walmart or Target, you open your Amazon app and order yourself some socks. Because avoiding people, am I right? But there's a side of Amazon that the public doesn't really get to see, and that’s Third Party Sellers and Vendors who sell to Amazon wholesale. Most goods purchased on Amazon are supplied by Third Party Sellers or wholesale vendors. The FTCs allegations are that Amazon prevents sellers from offering discounts on their goods on other platforms, such as Walmart.com, Target.com and other lesser-known platforms. Rude!

As someone who has been in the e-commerce industry for more than a decade, I say, “We done been knew.” It’s no secret in the industry that if you offer the same product on Amazon and Walmart, you must keep them priced exactly the same or Amazon will “suppress” your product on their site. Again, rude! Believe me when I tell you that I’d rather have a Backyard BBQ with Armie Hammer than try to get one of those errors resolved, because damn.

Of course, Amazon alleges that all of this is a big ol’ misunderstanding and the FTC is a bunch of olds who don’t understand how their totally innocent bot-scraping of other sites is encouraging competition, not suppressing it. The rest of us in the E-commerce space are rolling our eyes back so hard I’m confident we’ve got some sprained optic nerves. So not only does Amazon Union Bust, have one of the most dangerous workplaces in the nation, they’re now attempting to gaslight the American people into believing that they’re doing what’s best for their vendors and sellers - and not looking after their profit margins. The whole business is as gross as Bezos cosplaying as Pitbull.

Get a load of the charges: “The FTC and states allege Amazon’s anticompetitive conduct occurs in two markets—the online superstore market that serves shoppers and the market for online marketplace services purchased by sellers. These tactics include:

"Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.

"Conditioning sellers’ ability to obtain “Prime” eligibility for their products—a virtual necessity for doing business on Amazon—on sellers using Amazon’s costly fulfillment service, which has made it substantially more expensive for sellers on Amazon to also offer their products on other platforms. This unlawful coercion has in turn limited competitors’ ability to effectively compete against Amazon.”

But wait there’s more, Billy Mays. And, yes, like Bezo's wee li'l tickle-stick, ain't nobody want that, especially when they're selling on Amazon's Ho Stroll: “Amazon’s illegal, exclusionary conduct makes it impossible for competitors to gain a foothold. With its amassed power across both the online superstore market and online marketplace services market, Amazon extracts enormous monopoly rents from everyone within its reach. 

“This includes degrading the customer experience by replacing relevant, organic search results with paid advertisements—and deliberately increasing junk ads that worsen search quality and frustrate both shoppers seeking products and sellers who are promised a return on their advertising purchase. (Also) biasing Amazon’s search results to preference Amazon’s own products over ones that Amazon knows are of better quality.

“Charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that currently have no choice but to rely on Amazon to stay in business. Combined, all of these fees force many sellers to pay close to 50% of their total revenues to Amazon. These fees harm not only sellers but also shoppers, who pay increased prices for thousands of products sold on or off Amazon."

Again, as someone who's been in the E-commerce industry for a while, we sip our tea and can confirm. Amazons’ rebuttal is the truth stretched as far as Lauren Sanchez lips:

“We’re proud of the low prices customers find when shopping in our store—we know customers have many options, and that competitive prices are essential if we want customers to choose us. We’ve also enabled third-party businesses to sell their products right alongside the products we sell ourselves, which provides opportunities for those businesses and an even better experience for customers.

“When setting prices for the products we sell ourselves, we try to match other retailers’ low prices—online and offline. All of the other businesses that sell in our store set their prices independently, but to help them increase sales and make our store more attractive to customers, we also invest in tools and education to help them offer competitive prices. Other retailers also use similar tools and practices to highlight competitive offers and provide customers value in their stores.”

No word yet from MacKenzie Scott, but given that she netted 38 billion when she divorced Bezos, I'll bet she's tee-hee-heeing a whole lot more than he is. We'll be watching to see how this develops further. Will the truth continue to stretch into oblivion? Or will Amazon be on the level, unlike Bezos' wonk eye?

Photo Credits: Instagram/Jeff Bezos, Getty Images, CampusCrier, Asa Mathat