** Amazon SuperSaver: no minimum spend **

yorksrabbit

Just about to complete a purchase on eBay for a map, thought I'd check the retail price first and then check with Amazon.

Both the eBay seller and Amazon are undercutting the retaiol by a couple of quid: great.

Below £5.

The eBay seller not unnaturally requires payment for post & packing.

I thought Amazon would as well -- after all, Super Saver used to require a minimum spend of £15, and then it dropped to £5.

But now I see there's no minimum spend at all on SuperSaver purchases.

So my map is now on its way to me from Amazon, rather than the eBay seller.

Question: how are eBay sellers going to be able to compete when Amazon is undercutting in this way?

(Second question: am I morally guilty of furthering the progress of a monopoly at the expense of smaller enterprises? I did it with Tesco's. Am I now doing it with Amazon????)

custardy

its not all rosy,Amazon have also raised some prices since dropping the £5 supersaver level ;0

wendym

You've probably seen this, but posts 20 onwards are interesting (and as an Amazon seller I too am not happy about the official MSE attitude)

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1968509

yorksrabbit

Wendym / custardy: aaagh, I hadn't seen that MSE news report at all, so had no knowledge of this latest development.

Thanks for the link to the thread and the posts, which I've now read. First thought: MSE is too easily carried away with simplistic judgments (and that news report with its reference to 'third-party sellers' is about as simplistic as it can get) and second, yes, I'm betting custardy is right: just wish I'd checked out the price of the map a couple of months ago, before some kind of smoke & mirrors trick which has seen the P&P charge vanish, but likely the item price go up to cover it.

As to Marketplace sellers: the sooner MSE starts researching first, talking after, the better. Seems to me -- I'm not a Marketplace seller, but have been happy to buy from them -- that some of those sellers have become just a little too competitive for Amazon itself so it's now going to stifle that which it first breathed life into.

From my experience as an eBay seller, it all seems strangely familiar.

Thanks again.