I don't see what first-sale doctrine has to do with this: Amazon is a private (publicly-held) company and is free to disallow certain products from being sold on its site.
First-sale doctrine means you're free to take your used Nintendo cartridges and set up a table on the sidewalk (subject to local laws about street sellers of course) and sell them to passers-by. Amazon doesn't have to provide you a venue for selling them.
Personally, I don't understand why anyone would want to sell older Nintendo gear on Amazon anyway. This is exactly what eBay is for. eBay's fees are probably a little lower too.
I am confident that the reason I gave is an accurate answer to the question I gave it in response to, for at least a very large share of sellers. Note that you can do something for a given reason regardless of whether that reason is true.
However, the fact that it's possible to run a business doing nothing but selling things on Amazon that you buy on eBay when an order comes in strongly suggests that the customers really are on Amazon and not on eBay.
Interesting. I've long suspected the dropship arbitrageurs had existed on Amazon for a while, but I thought they had long since become unprofitable, or at least this Amazon to eBay channel had. Could you go into more detail about this? I'm sorta curious about how big the market is.
It’s fairly common. I sell a lot on eBay and get maybe an order a week with a message of “do not include invoice, item is a gift” which is dumb since we all know they’r drop shipping. I love it, never have a problem with those buyers. But I do include thank you cards in them with my eBay stores.
Assuming Nintendo pressured Amazon by threatening to remove its first party sales from Amazon it's likely that this would be tortious interference with a contract. However since most of the third party sellers are selling a high volume of bootlegs like the article says it's unlikely they would sue for fear of a counter-claim of copyright infringement. Also the cost to sue probably outweighs the value of theses "businesses".
Most sellers are just arbitragers and scammers. Yes, most. They add zero value. They leech money away from manufacturers and brands and the people that actually make things. They lie to get discounts then redirect shipments to Amazon FBA. They sell used, damaged, and counterfeit goods as new. And when a customer complains they say, “Contact the manufacturer.” They create new listings on existing items and say shit like “special edition” and “limited edition” to confuse customers and win the buy box when no such variant exists. They lower the price and jack up the shipping cost to confuse people. They are a disease.
Brands hate third party sellers and so do customers. Most people don’t even realize how Amazon works or who they are buying from.
There are some sellers that are scammers, and there are some brands that are scumbags and will lie and commit wire fraud (which is a crime, although unlikely to be prosecuted when it's a big company doing it to a small one) to get rid of legitimate sellers they don't like.
The ones that are suing are not the ones doing shady things, presumably. If you were selling counterfeits, why would you sue and waste money when the truth will inevitably come out?
I've personally seen many brands falsely swear that goods were counterfeit to get rid of sellers they didn't like, even though the sellers were fully compliant with the law.
Not some, most. The vast majority of 3P sellers are garbage.
Counterfeiting is just a small piece of the overall problem.
Sellers will sue because that’s all they can do. If you’ve built a revenue stream off of selling someone else stuff under the radar you don’t actually have a defendable business or any skills. Might as well sue.
Brands need to do a better job too. Reality is, if you have a business today the best thing you can do is terminate all distribution and wholesale relationships you don’t control and wait for the 3P pipeline to dry up. It’s the only way to strangle out the sellers. But I sympathize with the business that can’t do that and are trying to stop the damage to their business.
The problem is many brands want to have it both ways. Give special discounts to some stores, but have it not affect any other channels. They want the freedom to price discriminate however they want with zero channel conflict, and this doesn't work. Some brands really want it to work and freely commit torts and crimes to keep it working until someone sues; since most of the victims here are small businesses very few have the ability to sue.
Nah, that’s not the problem. That’s just something you made up because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Brands want to have it such that brick and mortar retailers can still exist, so they create pricing models that allow for that additional discount.
3P sellers take advantage of this. They add no value, only take. It hurts brands, manufacturers, retailers and even consumers to a large degree. Now it’s even starting to hurt Amazon, which is why they are finally getting serious about it.
I personally can’t wait for the Amazon scamming business to dry up. I’ve even been to a few of the conferences and lord all mighty it’s really pretty sad what people think is a business these days.
You've been making stuff up throughout this conversation. I'm quite well informed; my information on brands comes both from direct experience as well as from talking to brand owners and others in the field.
>Brands want to have it such that brick and mortar retailers can still exist, so they create pricing models that allow for that additional discount.
But plenty of brands don't feel like buying back and destroying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of inventory. So they use cheaper alternatives, namely perjury to get rid of legitimate sellers.
>They add no value, only take. It hurts brands, manufacturers, retailers and even consumers to a large degree.
This is incorrect on most counts. For the most part this benefits retailers, which is why most retailers have liquidation programs to sell off their overstock in the first place. This benefits consumers as resold goods lead to lower prices. It does hurt some brands, as they can no longer channel stuff to pad revenues. But increased competition hurting companies and benefiting consumers with lower prices is generally considered a good thing, in economics.
I've been to many conferences and spoken at a couple. In my experience most conferences on Amazon selling are geared towards private label brands that add little value.
>But I sympathize with the business that can’t do that and are trying to stop the damage to their business.
If the way they're doing it is committing perjury (the infringement form requires you to swear under penalty of perjury), I don't have sympathy.
I agree that the correct way to handle distribution is cutting of suppliers. Like I said in the other comment, brands want it both ways. Wide distribution but restricted sales on Amazon.
We can flip this around. If as a brand, you've built a revenue stream that can't be sustained without commiting crimes you don't have a defendable business or any skills.
How so? If you can't survive without committing crimes you shouldn't be in business.
Some of these lawsuits are about brands that would not be viable without the blackhat tactics they use. See e.g. KDC Direct, LLC v. Ravage Holding, Inc, the defendant allegedly hijacked a product page then sent a false IP complaint to Amazon.
When it gets to the point where you can only sell your items in one or two places where no one ever goes to buy things you've effectively broken the right of first-sale.
We're not at that point yet, but Amazon's reach is unparalleled and we could easily end up in a situation where private companies, whose influence in our daily lives can dwarf that of our governments, are allowed to ignore the hard won rights we have leaving us in the same position we were in before we had them.
Most retailers wouldn't go near selling things from unknown, unapproved vendors/distributors. Most of the problems with Amazon involve allowing unvetted third parties to sell on their site.
You have the right to sell it, but Amazon also has the right not to allow you to sell it on their platform.
Every retailer has their own policies, I can't sell my used video games at Best Buy or Walmart either. The first sale doctrine doesn't force Amazon or any other retailer to operate as a flea market for unvetted sellers.
