Cloudtail to shut down on Amazon from May 2022

powervgx said:
I have no problem in getting zero discounts if this the condition for a fair and sustainable business. Even as a buyer sometimes we feel cheated when someone else buys the same product for far less. I believe that discounts should be an exception, nothing is free and we must learn to pay a fair price.
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It's a little more complex. They usually won't sell at a loss when it comes to the product. Products have huge margins to play with. So they will usually sell at a little more than there cost price. That would allow them to not break the laws when it comes to selling at a loss. It's the delivery charges where they will take a loss offering free shipping for products sold by themselves while charging other sellers an exorbitant amount as shipping charges.
Also it is good to have such a competition. Many of us may have used these online prices to make the local retailers reduce their prices. These local guys would happily charge us MRP if there wasn't such competition available. I live in a village/small town and here every shopkeeper sells at MRP whereas I would get 10-15% discount on the same items when I was living in Chandigarh and let's not even get into electronics.

Basically, both these entities need to be constantly in a tug-of-war for it to be best for the consumers.
 
rdst_1 said:
It's a little more complex. They usually won't sell at a loss when it comes to the product.
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Actually this has happened a lot in the past. Amazon, flipkart have sold products at loss to bleed the competition. It's good that both survived through that. Germany has a law against this very practice. India should have something similar, that will help for more startups to become a reality. Amazon vs flipkart, Ola vs Uber, Swiggy vs Zomato. A new startup with small funds can't survive in this bleeding game.
 
deusExMachina said:
Why are the online shopkeepers/sellers angry at Cloudtail?
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Because of this>
They manipulate prices of products they are selling. They penalize other sellers paying into exorbitant fees and they they subsidize their own products.

lockhrt999 said:
Amazon/fk charges exorbitant shipping charges to sellers. These shipping charges are double of standard industry rates. Amazon asks nearly Rs. 100 minimum to ship something across the country. But if I have to send same item through bluedart/fedex then they won't charge me more than Rs. 50. These exorbitant shipping fees are what subsidize soaps, shampoos etc. Amazon sells these items by penalizing the normal sellers.

Secondly, if you are very established seller in some niche, amazon is known to kill such sellers. They already have the data on what sells, they don't need to do any research. Sellers provide amazon with this invaluable data. Amazon will procure these same items and they will start competing you directly. They will indeed sale the products at loss so that you go out of business, then they have monopoly on that niche.
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One example, https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08ZZ1J9NV this sells for Rs. 99
Last time I checked, a seller would need to pay Rs. 110-130 alone in fees for this product. Forget profit, you're paying extra to lose money.
 
Is it a fair comparison to contrast Amazon shipping prices vs something like Bluedart? Amazon stores stuff in their warehouses around the country and ships quickly to the buyer as a result.

About the data based sales, yeah that's definitely a conflict of interest. They're letting the outsiders explore a market, risk free (to Amazon) and then pushing them out based on the data.
 
powervgx said:
Such practices must be stopped.
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Easier said than done. Govt can kick Amazon if it wants to, but the repercussion are quite high for India. Amazon has linkages within the country so a void from Amazon would leave small linkages in trouble(take Voda-Idea as example). Also, with govt selling everything, they are relying more and more on FDI to boost the economy. With FDI comes MIGA as India a WTO member. Modi's image as a business friendly icon takes a direct hit.
So the govt can't do much which directly impacts functioning of Amazon. Yes, anti-competitive laws are necessary for fair play, but if the Data Protection Bill experience is anything to go by, I don't see much scope (vested interests pulling the plugs).
If Govt stops Amazon, why wouldn't America or other countries take punitive action against Indian firms. Trump did the same and our IT sector got severely affected.
Also, how will govt defend it's action when it is doing the same against farmers by bringing Adani n others into agricultural foray through farm laws!! OR Jammu traders opposing Reliance entry into their domain.

As mentioned in previous page, the government's action is just an eyewash, to somehow please their trader vote bank. Govt cares zilch about them coz end of day ROKDA BOLTA HAI!
 
powervgx said:
Govt should and must make a fair place for business. It is not about keeping shopkeepers happy. It is about a brand (Amazon) buying everything at cheap; and selling it even at a loss to get the market share and kill the competition. This is some serious anticompetitive shit. Same happened in USA with diapers dot com when they refused to sell their business to Amazon. Amazon started selling diapers at a loss, killed the website, bought it for much less and finally shut it down. Not only Amazon treats its seller poorly but Amazon kills its own sellers by selling popular products under 'Amazon basic' brand. This is something which needs to be banned ( ban janta party, are you listening?). Amazon basics is overpriced a lot of time and even inferior in quality while the real product sits somewhere in the dark. @lockhrt999 has given a great example how Amazon is involved in anticompetitive behaviour by subsidising its own products. Such practices must be stopped. I have no problem in getting zero discounts if this the condition for a fair and sustainable business. Even as a buyer sometimes we feel cheated when someone else buys the same product for far less. I believe that discounts should be an exception, nothing is free and we must learn to pay a fair price.
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say what you want but amazon put normal retailers in their place.before amazon retailers used to overprice and take the customers for a ride epecially lamington road crowd and the household items shops(utensils,crockery) amazon in india is more than a good thing in a free market competition is necessary and always healthy for the end user.
 
fastapifastdisks said:
say what you want but amazon put normal retailers in their place.before amazon retailers used to overprice and take the customers for a ride epecially lamington road crowd and the household items shops(utensils,crockery) amazon in india is more than a good thing in a free market competition is necessary and always healthy for the end user.
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This is so true to be honest. I remember the pre-Amazon days. A lot of sellers used to mark up the prices, you need to physically visit multiple places and haggle and then compare. The worst part was the attitude, it felt like a lot of shopkeepers didn't care if you bought or not.
 
deusExMachina said:
This is so true to be honest. I remember the pre-Amazon days. A lot of sellers used to mark up the prices, you need to physically visit multiple places and haggle and then compare. The worst part was the attitude, it felt like a lot of shopkeepers didn't care if you bought or not.
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Amazon has certainly has improved the life of the end consumer. But it is also trying to kill off competition from small retailers through unrealistic pricing and selling in-house knockoffs.

Few months ago, I had read an article about how small innovative businesses are put out of business by Amazon as they quickly make knockoffs of novelty products in China and then promote their own brand over the original ones in the search results.

We need a right balance where choice is available to the consumers and at the same time there is no under-cutting from Amazon itself and that is only possible by reducing Amazon's direct involvement as a seller.
 
fastapifastdisks said:
say what you want but amazon put normal retailers in their place.before amazon retailers used to overprice and take the customers for a ride epecially lamington road crowd and the household items shops(utensils,crockery) amazon in india is more than a good thing in a free market competition is necessary and always healthy for the end user.
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True. It was the same in the case of Auto/Taxi fares prior to entry of Call taxis and later Uber and Ola. Taxiforsure couldn't match Ola's deep pockets and sold it off to Ola to cut their losses.
Now every Ola/Uber cab driver keeps talking about how the aggregators take 20~30% commission and how they barely make ends meet since the earlier huge incentive days are long gone and customers have to live with surge pricing.
The problem with depending on the Govt to solve such issues are manyfold. It's a very slow and long drawn process where the end result would be obsolete by the time they implement it (Ex: Auto/Cab meter fare prices fixed when fuel cost is X but not revised for a fuel cost of 2X, resulting in drivers asking for Adhoc rates).
Govt has to please a lot of people including the party backers, lobbyists, vote banks, and so on.

Everyone wants to make or save as much money as possible so Brick and mortar retailers keep a hefty buffer and customers go to online for the cheapest rates they can get. When I was looking to buy a washing machine, there was a base difference of 4k between offline and amazon even before taking card discounts into account. These days it's not like these shops provide any additional service for the extra amount they are charging. Everything is company warranty and installation where you book it with the Brand's call center and get it done. Prior to online shopping and cab aggregators, most people didn't even have a baseline price to compare rates.

If the market becomes a monopoly or a duopoly it won't be long before the current win-win becomes a win-lose for customers.
 
dexterz said:
True. It was the same in the case of Auto/Taxi fares prior to entry of Call taxis and later Uber and Ola. Taxiforsure couldn't match Ola's deep pockets and sold it off to Ola to cut their losses.
Now every Ola/Uber cab driver keeps talking about how the aggregators take 20~30% commission and how they barely make ends meet since the earlier huge incentive days are long gone and customers have to live with surge pricing.
The problem with depending on the Govt to solve such issues are manyfold. It's a very slow and long drawn process where the end result would be obsolete by the time they implement it (Ex: Auto/Cab meter fare prices fixed when fuel cost is X but not revised for a fuel cost of 2X, resulting in drivers asking for Adhoc rates).
Govt has to please a lot of people including the party backers, lobbyists, vote banks, and so on.

Everyone wants to make or save as much money as possible so Brick and mortar retailers keep a hefty buffer and customers go to online for the cheapest rates they can get. When I was looking to buy a washing machine, there was a base difference of 4k between offline and amazon even before taking card discounts into account. These days it's not like these shops provide any additional service for the extra amount they are charging. Everything is company warranty and installation where you book it with the Brand's call center and get it done. Prior to online shopping and cab aggregators, most people didn't even have a baseline price to compare rates.

If the market becomes a monopoly or a duopoly it won't be long before the current win-win becomes a win-lose for customers.
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laptops i went to couple of large by large i mean reliance digital size competing size retailers the difference was almost 15k in the model i wanted,only reliance again deep pockets was able to match the pricing near to amazon.Not even lamington road sellers were able to match amazon and fk pricing.
 
fastapifastdisks said:
laptops i went to couple of large by large i mean reliance digital size competing size retailers the difference was almost 15k in the model i wanted,only reliance again deep pockets was able to match the pricing near to amazon.Not even lamington road sellers were able to match amazon and fk pricing.
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The computer market sellers won't care about amazon pricing. They have their standard sales audience and I'm also not sure how ethical their Invoice/Tax practices are. It's the small stores that get affected. On the other hand, my aunt who stays in our native village wanted to replace her RO system. The local seller fleeced her for Rs.13000. The same costs around 4.5k~6k on Amazon.
Online shopping has made people more aware of rates so they can recognize when they are being taken for a ride. Half the niche products on amazon is from Aliexpress/chinese import. What costs 100's on amazon costs 10's on aliexpress.

Cloudtail closing won't be a big issue for Amazon since some other Indian partner will always be ready to partner up with them. For some unknown reason, it reminds me of East india company..
 
Price manipulation is one of many things. You guys have no idea how many scammy things amazon/fk have pulled off over the years.

1. Amazon/flipkart force the sellers to use shipping solution provided by themselves only. Technically Amazon allows you to use your own shipping but if you do that, they will demote your listing in the search result. You won't be able to sell much. And it's not like shipping is cheap or fast or even efficient with amazon/flipkart. Amazon/FK charge highest rate for shipping for on an average slowest shipping in India.

It's not just sellers, amazon is also forcing customers to take prime. Last time I placed orders, amazon gave me next day delivery if I had prime. As I didn't have it, the delivery time was 20 days. They are taking 20 days to ship from mumbai to pune. If you start walking from mumbai, it'll take you only a couple of days to deliver the product in pune.

In the old days, ebay used to match the market rate for shipping instead of forcing sellers to use ebay's shipping solution. Not just that, delivering next day was already a common thing even before the amazon. It was so common that nobody advertised it as it wasn't considered premium. It was considered as a right.


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These planes are not a joke.

Amazon's pipeline is highly optimised for 1 day or 2 day delivery. Prime is a default mode of operation, it's not special. Amazon takes extra efforts for non-prime shipments. They have to rent out warehouse where non-prime shipments spend the time as a detention. Prime is a scam.

2. Amazon/fk forces you into using their warehouse to store your products. You would assume, using their amazon's warehousing, their packaging must be expensive than your in house solution. Again, amazon/fk penalises sellers who aren't using amazon/fk warehouses by charging them more fees. Plus no 1-2 days delivery for you even though it's still easily possible. Your listing will again be demoted in the search result. They are creating monopolies in every sector.

3. Copyright is a joke on amazon. It doesn't value your registered trademark/brand like how flipkart, snapdeal do. You take efforts for listings of your own branded products, take professional photos, write pro description, do all the legwork and amazon simply lets other sellers to piggyback on your listing with their duplicate products diluting your brand with negative reviews. You can't do much apart from sending some legal notices.

4. They also manipulate review. These headphones caught my attention during the sale. Initially it had 600+ reviews and 4.3 ratings. For a cheap headphones, this is very commendable ratings. However, when I checked the reviews, I found 90% of them fake. Fake reviews is a common thing and these fake reviews services are used my many small scale sellers to boost the products. But it was surprising to see that this product is being sold by appario. The crazy part is next, on the first day of the sale, amazon removed many real reviews reviews/ratings and kept fake ones which increased rating to 4.8. One thing you should know about Indians, we don't rate anything this high. It's in our cultural thing. Forget these cheap headphones, forget even airpods pro but given the opportunity we won't even rate our gods 5/5. So considering, 4.8 rating is insane for an electronic item. A lot of people bought these at Rs. 599 looking at the reviews during the sale. Now new reviews are raining in from these disgruntled customers who found out these headphones are crap and feel cheated as these can't be returned. Rating is now slowly slipping because of the real negative reviews. Currently it's 4.4. Watch it in a week, it'll be lower than 4, unless they step up their fake reviews game.


fastapifastdisks said:
Not even lamington road sellers were able to match amazon and fk pricing.
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You at least had the lamington road. In Pune, we didn't have that many shops. I remember purchasing an HDD from 'Stech computers'. It was DOA, which was fine and I'm used to it. I went in next day to replace it, that guy started barking at me, he called me names, publically humiliated me (I was probably 18). He could have politely given me the address of seagate service center but he didn't. Until this incident, I have had done 50k+ business with him. But majboori dekho, I still had to give him more business afterwords. I had no option.
 
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dexterz said:
The computer market sellers won't care about amazon pricing. They have their standard sales audience and I'm also not sure how ethical their Invoice/Tax practices are. It's the small stores that get affected. On the other hand, my aunt who stays in our native village wanted to replace her RO system. The local seller fleeced her for Rs.13000. The same costs around 4.5k~6k on Amazon.
Online shopping has made people more aware of rates so they can recognize when they are being taken for a ride. Half the niche products on amazon is from Aliexpress/chinese import. What costs 100's on amazon costs 10's on aliexpress.

Cloudtail closing won't be a big issue for Amazon since some other Indian partner will always be ready to partner up with them. For some unknown reason, it reminds me of East india company..
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lamington road computer sellers are absolutes scum,minus primeabgb and certain trustable people. i tried buying a laptop from a shop called laptop station bro was selling open box stuff,renewed stuff etc.Ebay though for small items was the real king walmart ****ing killed it. I have stopped giving my business to flipkart ever since.
lockhrt999 said:
You at least had the lamington road. In Pune, we didn't have that many shops. I remember purchasing an HDD from 'Stech computers'. It was DOA, which was fine and I'm used to it. I went in next day to replace it, that guy started barking at me, he called me names, publically humiliated me (I was probably 18). He could have politely given me the address of seagate service center but he didn't. Until this incident, I have had done 50k+ business with him. But majboori dekho, I still had to give him more business afterwords. I had no option.
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lamington road is quite far from most of mumbai suburbs where 90% pop lives. there is a store in thane called variety infotech i was in the same situation with them they sell second ka mall or some sort of doa products i have had this problem with them and multiple people in thane have had the same yet they have no other option atleast didnt have before but now with amazon things have become much better.
 
But its truth

Thats what amazon is doing with presto and solimo

They are slowly killing competition
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lockhrt999 said:
4. They also manipulate review. These headphones caught my attention during the sale. Initially it had 600+ reviews and 4.3 ratings. For a cheap headphones, this is very commendable ratings. However, when I checked the reviews, I found 90% of them fake. Fake reviews is a common thing and these fake reviews services are used my many small scale sellers to boost the products. But it was surprising to see that this product is being sold by appario. The crazy part is next, on the first day of the sale, amazon removed many real reviews reviews/ratings and kept fake ones which increased rating to 4.8. One thing you should know about Indians, we don't rate anything this high. It's in our cultural thing. Forget these cheap headphones, forget even airpods pro but given the opportunity we won't even rate our gods 5/5. So considering, 4.8 rating is insane for an electronic item. A lot of people bought these at Rs. 599 looking at the reviews during the sale. Now new reviews are raining in from these disgruntled customers who found out these headphones are crap and feel cheated as these can't be returned. Rating is now slowly slipping because of the real negative reviews. Currently it's 4.4. Watch it in a week, it'll be lower than 4, unless they step up their fake reviews game.
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Rating being too high because of fake reviews are true everywhere. Only plus that amazon had done was to remove reviews made by people who didnt purchase ( which wasnt the case earlier).
Some sellers offer free vouchers for 5 star rating but dont think appario would do that. I was once offered for a product for which i would have given 5 star otherwise but reduced one star just for this.
 
jiith77 said:
Some sellers offer free vouchers for 5 star rating but dont think appario would do that.
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It's a tactic used by many sellers but these aren't fake reviews. Fake reviews are services provided by some firms. They order your product and leave neat positive feedback, then return the product to the sellers through other means.

www.livemint.com

Amazon sellers are buying fake reviews for ₹1,200 each, reveals report

The testers buy the products so that the reviews they post get classified as 'Amazon Verified Purchases'.Amazon said it was committed to protecting the integrity of reviews and had spent 300 million pound in 2018 to protect customers from fraud
www.livemint.com www.livemint.com

Edit: Just checked many pTron, Tukzer products have fake reviews. All being sold by appario.
 
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