UK's biggest trade union takes aim at Amazon over 'price gouging' allegations

Unite – the UK's largest trade union, with some 1.4 million members – has accused Amazon of inflating prices for items such as hand sanitiser and other health products during the pandemic. Working with competition lawyers Preiskel & Co LLP, Unite has submitted a formal complaint to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) …

[tiggity]

Not sure about Amazon prices as did my COVID shops in the high street, but "bricks & mortar" shops I visited were charging a lot for sanitizer, disposable gloves etc. during the early days of COVID especially. Whether gouging was by the shops or the suppliers (doing classic ramp up prices when demand outstrips supply) I have no idea.

A housebound (due to health reasons) relative of mine did tell me that stuff she used to buy on Amazon (disposable gloves) was for a while unavailable as all the stocks of brands she normally purchased were reserved for NHS purchase only. She did say there were some gloves available (I'm guessing they were 3rd part sellers, affiliates, whatever the Amazon terminology is) and they were lots more expensive than her normal ones... She basically went through her order history, found that all gloves she had in her history were NHS only and so then searched Amazon for alternatives.

[Anonymous Coward]

Profiteering by retailer. Masks when they first appeared were £4 for 5 (crap basic ones). Same manufacturer, they are now £1.50. I assume they were always cheaper than £1.50. This isn't just small stores it was all the big supermarkets.

[Anonymous Coward]

"reserved for NHS purchase only"

... someone I know had an operation the week before the lockdown and when the hospital discharged them they said they had been unable to get enough paracetemol/ibuprofen supplies so instead of the usual discharge supplies of pain killers they were asked to look for shops with stock themselves. (Prior to this the Hospital had apologised that they'd removed the uusual hand sanitizers, for use by visitors, at the end of each bed as they'd had too many case of people visiting relatives and eitehr decanting the contents into their own bottles or simply walking off with them.

[anothercynic]

Indeed. Most of the stuff I found was sold by third-party sellers, not Amazon (I always checked who the seller was). Amazon itself was flogging all these weird-name Chinese brands instead. Yes, Carex was expensive, but again, that was because of supply and demand.

If the union wants to shout at people taking the mickey, they should also take eBay to task over the ripoff merchants on there! There were quite a few people who reported auctions on there for rip-off pricing. Hand sanitiser wipes that usually sell for a quid a pack were going for a tenner (a quid a wipe effectively).

So, yeah... Unite is going for an easy target here. As per the usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

As Amazon is mostly a marketplace for others how can they be to blamed for the prices they set?

[Shalghar]

Your answer is in your question.

Amazon does not and has never let any of the marketers set a truly free price. So they can be blamed for the prices they influence or let happen = "set".

As finegrained and fast as anything on personal watchlists, wishlists and "maybe buy later" lists react, as differently as pricings for the very same items are when looking at the item from a prime account, a mere mortal account or without trackers and not logged in, amazon has quite an unhealthy and instantaneous control over any price on their platform, be it for own products or for "external" ones.

Control is responsibility - or culpability, depending on what happened or was let happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Your answer is in your question.

Of course and I have seen the pricing algorithms (as in I know of them) however you still need the seller to set a base price.

[Shalghar]

"free" market or some old fashioned decency ?

As long as the self made "protective" masks were the appointed mandatory masquerade in germany, prices for available particle and dust filters were around 3-4 euros for a 5 pack. We use ffp3 masks - albeit with exhaust valve so the humidity of your breathing does not collect in the filter material - when grinding fine dust materials so we can track the price fluctuations due to panicdemic and political hysteria quite well in this aspect.

Concerning the last change to the now mandatory ffp 2 dust filters without breathing valves that are less performing when filtering particles and moist up much sooner, those have been appointed politically (and filling the pockets of several politicians) and their price had inflated to up to 5 euros per mask in the beginning of the new masquerade season. Prices have fallen to almost pre-panicdemic level depending on supplier but amazon is clearly not the one and only culprit.

Other "hygiene" products like hand sanitizers, real sanitizer (hospital grade stuff like kodan forte for example), fake and real germ killer cleaning products have also seen price "fluctuations" whenever the next slice of mass hysteria was started. Also, not only amazon to blame, some of this ripoff pricing even hit the shelves of discounters.

The pricing tide turned after china churned out masks and other corona gadgettery at even higher volumes. While some false advertising was made on how good companies struggled to provide for the suffering populace in need of the politically enforced items, the "made in" stamp reveals who is the real manufacturer.

Too bad it does not reveal who else profits on the way.... Nor how much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "free" market or some old fashioned decency ?

Everyone says that "you must wear a mask not because it protects you but because it protects others" .... not sure how a "exhaust valve" that allows the moisture to escape fits in with this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "free" market or some old fashioned decency ?

From the note "when grinding fine dust materials", I think Shalghar was talking about routine purchases for work purposes, both before and during COVID, rather than buying for COVID protection.

[Shalghar]

Re: "free" market or some old fashioned decency ?

I was referring to our bookkeeping on related products. Normally the work masks with exhaust valves are a little bit more expensive. FFP3 also absorbs far smaller particles than FFP2.

The propaganda of "protecting others" can only hold water for short periods of wearing still dry and fresh masks. Afterwards you literally breathe through your personal facial petri dish with whatever swirls around the air.

As the mandatory masquerade in germany has mutated from self made whateverstuff which was good enough for around a year over antibacterial masks (referring to package print) to the actual low quality dust filters, the enforced paperbags can only offer protection against coughing out or exhaling massively. As there are no active components in either direction, whatever is caught, stays (alive) and accumulates the longer people wear, moisten and warm their "protective" gear.

And then there are those unable to acquire the sufficient amount of fresh paperbags for each day who reuse their stinkypoo for weeks so the rules are optically obeyed....

Such situations are of course worsened if some greedy manufacturer or seller ramps up the prices to extortion level.

And if one gets through with such manners, every other follows.

/bitter sarcasm

Too bad more than 20 hospitals were closed in the last year and even worse that Sana hospital company just sacked around 1000 "corona heroes" in germany. Arent we all lucky that everyone else "protects others" so the massively reduced capacities of "our" healthcare are not overloaded ?

[Boris the Cockroach]

It wasn't just Amazon

£5 for a roll of low grade toilet paper at the height of that shortage....(self induced shortage by stupid people that is)

But there were plenty of copies of The Sun to go round and being covered in shit instead of full of shit improved the paper no ends..

[Shalghar]

Re: It wasn't just Amazon

Well at least the content did not change much....

[Danny 2]

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

£100 markup for a thermometer? How much blame lies with the seller and how much with the buyer?

I'm waiting on an Amazon delivery after swearing I'd never use them again, because you just can't buy a 'butterfly in a jar' in the UK. I mentioned I was disappointed to watch "World's Most Evil Killers" because due to my eyesight I was expecting "World's Most Evil Kittens". I just saw "My Cat From Hell", and it explained why one cat bullies another and how to stop that. One thing they did was buy the cat a butterfly in a jar, an electronic toy with a butterfly that flies if you tap the jar. I bought one for Miko in the hope it will distract her from bullying Jet.

Miko is a killing machine, three pigeons, three wee birds this year alone. Jet, well, not a hunter, barely a cat. I saw a butterfly land on his snout and he went to bite it but it just fluttered away. Birds land next to him to feed. All of nature disrespects him and there are no cat self-defence courses.

A butterfly in a jar is a perfect analogy for my life. From the 1970s sitcom 'Bread' to Locked In Syndrome. My cousin in law's brother killed himself after working for Amazon due to their awful employment practices, whereas I'd kill myself before working there. Here's drinking to a faulty O Ring when Bezos goes into space.

[Shalghar]

Re: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

" How much blame lies with the seller and how much with the buyer?"

As the mandatory masquerade as well as other corona gadgets are politically and juristically enforced, the buyer has not much choice. Play along the panicdemic tune or be fined, "quarantined", lockdown terrorized and whatever sick minds may still come up with "for protection".

In case of your infrared thermometer, most larger companies had to buy them to check the temperature of anyone entering. Not sure how effective that is in midsummer or harsh winter though, when the measured body parts (faces) are exposed to the environment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Screwed by the Bezos Slimball?

Just like what they do with their workers.

Raise prices, cut wages... Profit.

BAU for them then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Screwed by the Bezos Slimball?

But they've created 175,000 jobs in the UK, their TV ads says so..

They're probably just a few of the many shop workers from the many retailers they've put out of business... Debenhams had over 200 stores at their peak

[Tom 7]

Re: Screwed by the Bezos Slimball?

But they've created 175,000 jobs in the UK, their TV ads says so.

No they've employed a few people and contracted others so that 175000 people are working for them where in excess of 200000 or so jobs have gone as result.

[Paul Herber]

respect for ...

a union exec whose statement is not :

blah blah blah ... my members ... blah blah blah

[Just an old bloke]

Not only Amazon causing problems. Google contributed.

As is normal with every supply problem, prices rise and suppliers take advantage of this, doesn’t make it right, it’s a fact of life.

The one that surprised me was Google. Our company sells dust masks, goggles and other safety stuff, not medical but some pretty high spec stuff. This is not the main line of business but a bolt on to complement the some the hazardous stuff sold. We’ve seen shipping this for at least 20 years. As soon as the profiteering hit, Google dumped this part of our shopping feed and our mask products stooped showing on search results. According to Google, this was because we were profiteering from a crisis. And no, we hadn’t e praised prices.

I wonder how many other companies experienced this.

[big_D]

No place for price gouging?

But if it happens, hey, well, if we don't notice it...

Logitech webcams went from around 50€ - 80€ to over 500€ in some instances, if they were available at all. The same for headsets, we were buying them and each new order was a lesser model for more than the previous higher end model.

We just didn't buy any webcams for our users for the first 6 months. But headsets were, unfortunately, a necessity.

[My-Handle]

Re: No place for price gouging?

Yep, we had a similar problem. When our users were sent away from the office, each needed a headset. Our company's stock disappeared in an hour, our normal supplier was out of stock, so departments were left to buy what they needed from retail. Except all the standard-quality headsets had also sold out across the board.

I was one of the last to leave the office and work from home. The only headset that my manager could get for me was a rather nice Corsair gaming headset :D

[big_D]

Re: No place for price gouging?

I had to suffer with my Sony WH series noise cancelling BT headphones and the built-in mic on my laptop.

[My-Handle]

Re: No place for price gouging?

In all fairness, I did try a cheap desktop mike and my own set of headphones. It became very clear very quickly to my manager and colleagues that it was not a long-term solution.

Maybe it had something to do with me running an HP Proliant DL385 G7 server as my main desktop machine at home. That thing is quite... vocal :D

[codejunky]

So?

"Unite – the UK's largest trade union, with some 1.4 million members – has accused Amazon of inflating prices for items such as hand sanitiser and other health products during the pandemic."

And that is why we are glad the world isnt run by trade unions. Items not typically bought by many is suddenly in vast demand. These just so happen to be items being reserved by professional services e.g. hospitals which requires suppliers to up production quickly.

Would Unite have preferred that these items were just out of stock everywhere? How else do they think supply would have been ramped up?