[avhed]

Sorry , I forgot the r in restricting.
I noticed I cannot sell 2 of my Blu-rays on there (Leap Year & A Fork in the Road). It must be to keep the New Copy Market up.

 

[cfraser]

I have previously speculated about other things amazon has done to prevent competition to their new product prices. For instance, for some product, it is possible to buy from UK amazon and sell "used" at amazon.ca/.com for less than their "local" new price, even with amazon's IMO rather high fees.

I won't totally reiterate what I said before, but when you can buy something new from amazon in the UK for 1/4 or 1/3 the price amazon sells it for here, I think what could happen and what amazon could do are obvious... For some NEW product that ships outside the UK, where there is a massive market price difference, UK amazon unshrinks/opens it*; my speculation is so you can't easily sell it as "new" in a more expensive market. You will find that lots of amazon marketplace vendors (of the things *I'm* looking for) have stuff that is "new, no shrink"...I used to think that the stuff was really "lightly used" and they were exaggerating the condition, but now I have more insight to what some of it *could* be.

*Edit: not just to Canada/US, people from Germany/Denmark told me the same thing.

 

[ScaryBob]

Amazon.ca may have the Amazon name but they are nothing like the US retailer in practice. Amazon.ca restricts product availability severely. They also have much higher markups, close to full retail on most items except books. Amazon.com also restricts shipping to Canada on many items so they basically provide very little competition to the Canadian operation or other Canadian retailers. One good deal I found on Amazon.com was only available by express courier shipping so that eliminated any savings. I've found a few good CD and DVD deals on Amazon.ca but have found overpriced items just as often.

 

[cfraser]

^ True. Unlike US/UK amazons, amazon.ca doesn't even try to give you a good price on discs. Whenever they have a "good deal", it is almost always because another major Canadian retailer is selling at that price. IOW they sell at the highest prices the market will bear, not what you should expect from an online merchant IMO. I can assure you it wasn't always like this, amazon.ca used to have very good prices, but only back in the day when our $ was crap. You'd think our good $ would have made their prices even lower, but they went the opposite way... To be fair, amazon.com has been really lousy too in general this year, I've hardly bought anything from them. Over the ~15 years I've been buying from amazon, the vast majority of my purchases have moved from amazon.ca, then to .com, now to .uk. The .com prices would be a little more "reasonable" if their shipping prices were...

There are rare exceptions, real anomalies. The BSG BD set and The Wire DVD set are both at good prices in Canada. Two things (that I've noticed) out of thousands over several years isn't very much...I've seen better deals more consistently at FS even, and they give nothing away, so you know amazon.ca is pushing the price envelope. As you said, CDs and books can sometimes be a good deal at amazon.ca (with our extremely restricted other book purchasing choices here), but it's rare that CD prices even come close to their low price in the UK, BDs too but to a less drastic extent.

 

[ScaryBob]

There has been very little competition since Sam The Record Man went out of business and CD Plus stopped selling imports. I didn't even look at Amazon then because prices were better in Canada. UK prices have also shifted. 20 years ago the UK was more expensive than Canada. I noticed a big shift about the time that record companies were convicted of price fixing in the US. That's when prices started going down everywhere except Canada. The Canadian government basically doesn't care if consumers get gouged so our prices stayed where they were.

 

[cfraser]

The Canadian government basically doesn't care if consumers get gouged so our prices stayed where they were.

Funny you said that...I had a big harangue in yesterday's reply about that and our (from a practical perspective) total lack of consumer protection laws compared to other developed/economically-similar countries. But I deleted it...

The other thing is DVD and even CD sales in Canada remained very healthy compared to other markets. I think DVD sales were even *growing* here for a couple years when they were plummeting in the U.S. Probably has a lot to do with our more restricted/expensive downloading capability, plus we don't have a Netflix etc. I guessed they really reduced CD prices in the UK to make (illegal) downloading less attractive.

But back to the original topic, I am pretty sure amazon knows people are buying stuff in cheap markets and sellling it here. What probably galls them is it's from another amazon store market. Besides the obvious of watching/listening to something, maybe copying/ripping it, then passing it on as used within a few days of the product just being released...

 

[David Susilo]

I have some Monster M2000HD 8ft HDMI cables that I don't use from my installs (either they're too short or too long etc - but no longer have the box). Anybody here can shed some light how much Amazon.ca charges the sellers for each item? (posting fee, etc)

 

[avhed]

Amazon Marketplace is for media items only. Best place is Canuck Audio Mart. You can also sell at this site.