Amazon Prime Membership telephone scam

Sun 5 Jul 2020, 15:39

Liz: I've no love for Amazon, but where on earth do you get this nonsense about its being a monopoly?

I know that's the fashionable theory every lazy journalist churns out daily. But the truth is that Amazon keeps most of its sales secret and even more of its data hidden among hundreds of meaningless numbers it churns out every quarter.

It does seem to sell about the same value of merchandise in the US every year as Walmart (which really, really, really isn't a monopoly). Outside the US? No-one has the faintest.

Third party research shows that in the UK - the West's most developed online market - its share of the three biggest consumer markets - automotive, clothing and groceries - is pathetic. Zero for automotive, less than 2% of groceries (Tesco's share is over ten times that) and in clothing it sells fewer clothes online than M&S, which also sells four times more clothes through its shops than it does online. 

Amazon may well dominate the UK market for ring-binders. But even in books, the business in which it started, its UK share is about the same as Tesco's in grocery: between a third and a quarter - and no longer growing. 

Outside the UK? Well it consistently loses a billion dollars a year in Europe (not because it's tax dodging, but because it's a useless retailer), it's all but pulled out of China (after throwing billions away), it's losing a fortune in India - and it operates nowhere outside North America, Western Europe, India, China, Brazil, Japan and Australia, and makes money from retailing only in North America. H&M and Zara each operate in over 90 countries. 

Is it completely incompetent? No: like many retailers (including Walmart) it seems to operate coherently in its home market: it's just the other 95% of the planet it's incapable of running a whelk stall or sweet shop in. And it makes a lot of money (actually: practically all its money) from Amazon Cloud

There's loads of good reasons for boycotting Amazon: but boycotting Amazon retail in the UK merely keeps Bezos rich, since he really does lose money on everything he sells here.

If you want to damage his wallet (IMHO, a thoroughly laudable mission) boycott Amazon Cloud. Before downloading any data, check where it's stored. 

Mind you, his share of that market is now way behind Microsoft's.