Comment by randycupertino
9 hours ago
I feel like they artificially made their prices super low for the last couple years and intentionally operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores. There were instances of their prices being lower than Walmart or other budget stores. The avocados were $0.25 each and carrots were half price of ones in Safeway, even ground beef was weirdly cheap. One time as a comparison I put the same items in my cart for Amazon fresh and Walmart and it was $21 at Amazon fresh and $36 at Walmart. WAY cheaper than Instacart too.
> operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores
Wouldn't surprise me. I know a guy who invented a device for truckers that became ubiquitous in truck stops across the US. This would've been like 2014.
He refused to sell on Amazon, so Amazon duped his product and sold it at something crazy, like half price, until he agreed to list (at which point they dropped their competing product)
Such tactics sound… illegal
Haven’t you heard? Laws don’t apply to companies
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Illegal in what way? They are not allowed to set prices lower than competitors or raise them at any time?
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The password is Melania...
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/07/when-billionaire-go...
https://pagesix.com/2026/01/27/hollywood/inside-melania-trum...
It has been their practice since forever. Look up the diapers.com case.
Did he have a patent?
I just looked it up - yes, and far in advance of the timeframe
This is (or was) a very small business. An office and a warehouse, basically.
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Do you want to go up against whatever patent portfolio AMZN has?
I'm not aware of any Amazon product lines or organizations that specializes in devices for truckers. Can you provide a listing?
Truckers are the biggest demo but it's sold under a generic category.
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There's no listing. The story is made up.
While the general premise is true (big company will try to rip off small company), Amazon doesn't have the magical power to get around patent law and the economic penalties are fairly harsh, which is why most companies don't do it. And no war chest of tech patents is going to get Amazon around a patent in the trucking industry because the inventor of the trucking gizmo couldn't care less about whether Amazon patented the right to make Alexa speak in tongues.
It's possible, and likely, that Alibaba vendors decided to rip off the product, but again...patent law is a useful tool for those who use it, and Amazon can be held liable for the sales of infringing products on its storefronts.
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> I feel like they artificially made their prices super low for the last couple years and intentionally operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition
iirc that's exactly what Amazon did to destroy diapers.com over a decade ago
Amazon did not destroy diapers.com.
Diapers.com aka Quidsi was already operating at a loss when it was acquired by Amazon. It's whole business model was using VC-funding to offer products below sustainable costs with the goal of eventually jacking up prices once they drove out smaller/local competitors. Amazon used its own business model against it by dropping prices even lower, knowing that the VC investors couldn't afford it.
Walmart passed on buying Quidsi when Walmart was thinking about launching its own e-commerce platform because the business model was unsustainable. Walmart decided they would rather spend several hundred millions building out their own platform then to buy an existing website with millions of customers.
Walmart bought out jet.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet.com
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This is basically the playbook of every "disruptive technology" startup or FAANG initiative of a similar stripe - set prices incredibly low to bleed out competition and gain market share, then raise them once you are in the dominant market position.
At a certain point it's not about technology anymore, but access to cheap finance. See also: Uber.
Uber is far better for me than the old taxi system.
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Nobody on this forum believes in startups or technology anymore.
Heck, Elon's ownership of SpaceX even got to me to not really care about space travel anymore, one of my biggest passions since I was 6. But I just can't root for whatever his vision of space faring society would look like.
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That's literally their MO. They've been doing that forever.
Walmart isn't a budget grocery store, though. Its prices are higher than actual grocery stores (like Safeway.) Also, everyone is WAY cheaper than Instacart.
>Walmart isn't a budget grocery store,
The answer to this is complex, it has any number of products that are cheaper than products of similar quality from any other store. Places like Safeway/Aldi typically beat on price on very generic items that may or may not have similar quality.
The biggest thing to watch for at Walmart is price discrimination dependent on location. Back in the days I used to shop with them (read made less money) picking a store in a poorer neighborhood could save $10 to $30 dollars on the same car of items.
I found Lowes (hardware) to be one of the worst about this. I lived in an area with 4 Lowes, and never shopped at my local one because of how much more expensive everything was, and never clearance. I'm not talking a couple dollars, in some cases 4x the price of one just 15 minutes away.
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Not in the areas of California I frequent. Walmart is usually the cheapest around here; heck, even Target beats Safeway on some items. On the other hand, Walmart is also usually the worst at stock rotation.
Walmart is certainly the cheapest in some rather remote cities, like Fargo, ND.