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Comment by esharef | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but there are fewer merchants than over. 50% of e-commerce goes through 12 merchants. Consolidation is insane in digital commerce. So yes, we can buy many more products but through fewer and fewer merchants giving them huge power. Amaozn alone accounts for 30% of e-commerce

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Keep in mind that well over 50% of amazon merchandise sales are from 3rd party sellers - basically small businesses. A bunch of other big players have significant 3rd party marketplace models - eBay, Newegg, and more.

Sadly this means that there is a very big caveat emptor factor involved.

Ebay at least is up front about it, as it is basically an auction house for anyone.

But Amazon and Newegg is in a sense lending credibility to any fly by night reseller from who knows where.

When you buy from a big name store front you expect someone working at their supply end has assessed the product as worth the risk of stocking. But with the likes of Amazon, seemingly anyone can start offering products through them.

Consider for example a recent story here on HN about a USB charger that had a damaged transformer. It was giving out straight 240V (European model) to the USB end.

Generally reviews are meant to solve this problem - both internal amazon metrics (which vendors are punished for severely if they are bad) and external customer metrics.

Nope those don't work anymore.

Amazon lends it's credibility by vouching for their third party sellers though. If you have a problem with something, Amazon customer support will make you whole again.

Newegg does what you mentioned though. They're basically putting you into a wild-west type situation where the merchant can do anything they want to you and newegg will just remind you that you have no protection when working with a newegg merchant.

>But Amazon and Newegg is in a sense lending credibility to any fly by night reseller from who knows where.

On the flip side, Amazon and Newegg also handle the transaction processing and anti-fraud, which has a lot of value.

Isn't that just a temporary thing and the end results of Amazon's platform is either manufacturers selling directly to consumers or selling to Amazon ? What value does a 3rd party create in such world ?

I am ok with this, as a consumer and user of these sites. You know how annoying it would be to have different logins for every dinky little product I want to buy?

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