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And Breathe – Amazon Price Parity Going!

Take one big sigh of relief with the Christmas period upon us, some very welcome news for you…

The OFT welcomes Amazon’s decision to end its price parity policy, which restricts its sellers from offering lower prices on other online sales channels, across its Marketplace in the European Union from 30 August 2013.

A special thanks to John who sent the link over a few minutes ago, Amazon are ditching the horrific “price parity” rule for EU as of tomorrow (30th Aug). This is almost on par with Steve Ballmer announcing his retirement :)

You can read the full details here http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2013/60-13#.Uh9uoxbn0io%22

Do note that the Amazon price Parity rules are still going to be in effect in the USA though.

I don’t think anyone will miss it, will you?

8 replies
  1. Geoff
    Geoff says:

    Quite a relief for me – end result is I will add back 200 products to Amazon that I had removed due to low profit margins and will be increasing most of my prices by 15% (I pay the 28% Jewellery fee).

    For ebay I can now drop around 100 prices by 15-20% and add back about 100 items that would have been too expensive to sell when originally matched with Amazon.

    Reply
  2. Kieran Collings
    Kieran Collings says:

    I am glad to see it gone in the sense that Amazon get far too big for their boots, Amazon often believe they make the law of the land, they seem to disregard or fiddle UK and EU law, examples include this price parity policy, Tax dodging, inconsistencies with trademark infringements and randomly closing sellers accounts with no proper explanation.

    But forgetting Amazon’s lack of morals what about our morals as retailers/sellers, is it right to charge an Amazon customer more or less than an ebay customer for exactly the same product?

    Does it give the right image about your company and or brand if your prices are different between your own site, play, ebay and Amazon.

    Even if the price parity is now gone i will be running my own price parity between all the platforms i sell on, keeping my prices level across all channels if the product is identical, but at least i now have a choice and less fear of Amazon randomly knocking at my inbox telling me i have been a naughty boy!

    Kieran

    Reply
    • Matthew Ogborne
      Matthew Ogborne says:

      Howdy Bill,

      I haven’t heard anything about Amazon & price parity from the US :( However with the move in Europe I wouldn’t be surprised that the US follows suit sooner or later.

      Matt

      Reply
  3. Danny
    Danny says:

    On the whole it is a very good thing it is going, however I also feel there could be a slightly detrimental effect in that some cases the price parity ruling was keeping people from selling on Amazon due to margins.

    With it gone more sellers can enter Amazon and price higher than their website to cover the commission who otherwise wouldn’t have before.

    In our section there isn’t that much direct competition, we are quite lucky but this could bring more and more people and make it a much more crowded marketplace.

    Danny

    Reply
    • Matthew Ogborne
      Matthew Ogborne says:

      Howdy Danny,

      On the flip side, more sellers should equal more buyers, or one would hope! Although this is proven correct as by allowing third party sellers like yourselves to sell on Amazon, they have increased the product range and over the past few years Amazon have seen massive growth, but this growth has been through the 3rd party sellers. If I remember correctly, the stats for last year were 39% of all items sold on Amazon were by 3rd party merchants and grew loads :)

      Matt

      Reply

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