Yeah, I think this might only apply to select groups of “merchants”. I ain’t crazy about used car salesmen or concert ticket brokers but that doesn’t apply at the grocery store or bookseller.
Generally, high prices fix high prices and low prices fix low prices. If there is a shortage of food in a particular market and a seller in the market raises his prices to account for the higher demand, this higher price will attract more sellers from adjacent markets to enter and sell. This will result in competition and thus drive the price down. Same thing goes for gasoline during shortages, for plywood before a hurricane, etc. etc.
If prices didn’t fluctuate with market signals then in the examples there would be no incentive for additional sellers to enter the market where shortages exist. And you would have longer consistent shortages…(i.e. planned economies like the Soviet Union).
You know who else wanted to eliminate the middleman?
I think the OP is talking about people who buy stuff from retailers and then mark it up on Amazon or ebay. I personally know someone who does this to the point of renting a U-Haul truck for Black Friday shopping.
I can see the point of view of the pissed off parent who only wanted to buy a hugely discounted Wii at Target and some clown bought every one in the store. There are generally limits, but the people I know get the whole family together on Black Friday. And they do make an obscene amount of money reselling that stuff on Amazon and ebay.
How much are they willing to pay for the thousands of government workers that would be needed to enforce that?
They’re also waiting in the same line at 4AM, presumably. If they want to charge for their time, lack of sleep, and sore feet, fine with me. They may not be merchants, but they’re adding value. Grumpy Parent just wishes she knew ahead of time that she could buy her way out of the line, cause she’d have been all over that. That’s her real gripe. She’s not mad that someone made a buck; she’s mad that someone got a wii without having to stand in line.
Being a successful merchant is hard. It takes more number crunching and planning than most people want to bother with. I’m guessing that the complainers are mostly doing it as a form of entertainment and to make themselves feel better. You can smile and nod when they start in on it, if you like. If you want to poke them, you can ask what ligitimate costs can be added to retail prices. Transportation? Wages? Rent? Property taxes? You can also ask them what they buy directly from the producer. Hand crafted things are usually more expensive than retail.
Oh, and I used to love The Middleman.
The gripe I’m hearing from the examples above is not the moaning from the parent who stays in line when they could have shelled out $100 more and gotten it online later that day. If I buy something in the store, what do I care whether someone else bought it online for $500? I’ve already got what I came for.
No, the real issue is when you can’t get what you want. You stand in line for the Wii and it sells out before your turn. Or you log onto TicketMaster to get the concert ticket and find that every seat has already been scooped up in a pre-sale by StubHub.
Here, the issue isn’t “I got mine and someone else got theirs for more.” The issue is "I didn’t get mine because someone else, through luck or insider connections, got their first. And their sole intent was to jack up the price for the very people who tried to go through the official way of obtaining the item.
Enderw24 in the situations you describe the complaints shouldn’t be toward the parties (the OP’s merchants) that found a way to get in earlier to get the good items/tickets/etc. before others, the complaints should be against the store/concert promoter/etc. that made those items available to those parties in an earlier fashion than the general public. They are the ones promoting the supply and demand disruption.
Can’t I dislike both?
I think most people recognize the value of a grocer who supplies you with various foods. Heck, I can sort of see the argument in making plywood more valuable before a hurricane promotes merchants buying in more plywood or paying a premium to make sure it’s in stock before the storm.
But, in an example like ticket brokers, there’s no extra tickets to be shipped in. There’s a finite amount of tickets and a ticket for seat B20 bought from a broker is the same item as if I bought it from the box office. The broker adds no value to my purchase and exists purely to jack up the price so they can make a profit while providing no actual service in return. I don’t even buy the argument that now I can get a ticket I maybe couldn’t otherwise because the brokers buy up so much of the market that I never had a chance to get the ticket to begin with.
I list a widget on ebay for $50. You buy it. It comes to you directly from an Amazon fulfillment center. What? Amazon? Yes, you see, the widget I listed and you bought was never in my possession. I bought it on Amazon for $20 and simply had it shipped to your address.
How do you feel about that? Apparently this exact thing actually happens.
The four occupations go all the way back to Ancient China.
Are you saying that people buy things on ebay for $50 when they’re available on Amazon for $20? That would be nervy, and jerkish, but not illegal. Unless you have a cite, I’m going to guess that it doesn’t happen often. When I google ‘widget’, Amazon is usually at the top of the page. They do consignments, too, so you can google antique widgets and get sent to Amazon.
Shady leaks are despicable, but I’m not going to be upset about luck. If I stand in a line in Stockton and was far enough back that they ran out here, but someone else stood in a line in Sacramento and got one, because the store ordered more, then good on them. They can re-sell it if they like. So can everyone who was ahead of me in line.
I have no idea what ticket brokers are allowed to do or what value they may add or claim to add - other than knowing that hawking is illegal many places. So I’ll stay out of that bit.
The bit that I find most objectionable is the markups - if they bought a bunch of tickets for, say, £70 each and then sold them on for £90 then I wouldn’t mind so much. I’d almost prefer that if it meant I didn’t have to do the ‘sit clicking refresh on a severely overloaded website for half an hour’ thing every time tickets are released for a concert. But no - they’ll buy the tickets for £70 and then immediately resell them for £150 or more. That means, for little or no effort, they’re getting way more money per ticket than anyone else in the supply chain - including the band that I’m paying to see in the first place. :mad:
If you can sell for $50 something that is freely available elsewhere for $20, then good luck to you. If the buyer can’t be bothered to do a little bit of shopping around first (seriously, it takes as long as it takes to type the product name into google), then that’s their problem.
Having said that, are you sure about this? Have you actually done it yourself? Don’t forget, Amazon does offer warehousing and fulfillment services for products that aren’t even selling on Amazon - it’s not unheard of for ebay stuff to arrive in Amazon packaging, I’ve had a couple of those myself.
No one was railing against “merchants”, that was my term for what they were bitching about because well it is true.
Should I have used sellers?
This^
Maybe I should have said do people find markup distasteful.
Yes, I think you should have used the word seller. When I read the word merchant, it implied to me someone (or a company) on a larger scale, such as a grocery store, etc.
So when I read your first post, I was bewildered because I had never heard people displaying the attitude you described.
After I read your following posts, it became clear you meant a seller. To me, that connotes a person reselling items not procured from a producer (typically). A seller implies to me someone that sells stuff on eBay. A seller is someone more related to a scalper (which resell tickets only). Now I understand the disdain you are talking about.
Most people I know do not hold disdain for the occasional seller - the one selling an obvious one time item (a purse from last season). Most people do tend to loathe sellers that jack up the price on items such as “that year’s hot toy”.
It was also common in the UK for a while, at least that’s what I’ve read. As in “so-and-so’s father was in trade” followed by shock horror.
But I’ve never run across this attitude in the US, whether it’s to the guy who owns a hardware store or a woman who owns a chain of stores.
Well, now, asking if people find high markup by resellers on websites distasteful, that’s a different question you’re asking.
I have not done this, but I’ve heard of it. All I could find online was some people talking about it on other message boards and this ebay policyon “drop shopping,” which is apparently what it’s called when you list other people’s Amazon items on ebay and ship directly to the buyer. And ebay is cool with it, of course.
When I worked in real estate, I actually heard people say “Well, if it would help me to get an apartment, I don’t see why you can’t waive your fee.” Right, like we don’t have to maintain an office and pay our bills. We should work for nothing for you.
A merchant has to maintain the building, buy merchandise and pay employees.
Some people look upon anyone who has stuff they want who is not freely distributing said stuff at cost as The Man. The Man is rich–see how he has a whole case of widgets?–and is using that fact to take advantage of and exploit others, who can only afford one widget each, by “overcharging.” Sure, they could have bought that whole case of widgets and thus paid less per widget, but they don’t have the capital to invest. They could borrow the money for a case from The Man, but then he’d steal extra money from them in the form of interest. Thanks to The Man being a greedy jerk, they will never be able to do anything but squeak by, because they have to pay so much extra per widget, buying them one at a time, while The Man gets richer with each widget sale, thus profiting from their poverty. This makes the widget-buyers bitter and angry–if only The Man would quit being such a jerk and share, everyone could have widgets at cost and the poor could catch up, which is what they would do if they had the cash to buy a case of widgets, but they don’t and never will, thanks to The Man, which is why you can be certain anyone who has more than you is a greedy jerk.