Why is my competition so stupid?
By ladym33
@ladym33 (10978)
United States
April 15, 2012 5:24pm CST
I am getting really irritated with my competition for my business. I think in most businesses people would be thrilled to have stupid competitors. In my business having stupid competitors is damaging. I sell on line at Amazon.com. I have a bunch of cookbooks that I wanted to list today and when I went to list them I saw other sellers were selling this books for .01 to .50 each. These books weigh over three pounds. Amazon give us 2.65 for shipping. Amazon does not even pay us enough for the shipping of books that are over one pound which costs $2.89. A three pound book costs $3.73 to ship. So you guessed it these competitors of mine are giving the books away and they are actually paying over a dollar to send these books out to people. What kind of business is that where you lose money on sales? This makes me angry of course because now I have beautiful cookbooks that I can even bother listing because I am not about to pay to sell them. You would think there would be only one or two stupid people but there are often several so if you want to try and sell your book for at least a modest profit you can't. I guess I will be putting these lovely cookbooks in my garage sale at least maybe I can get a dollar for them. Sorry, I am just really frustrated right now. Next time you order a book that costs over a pound for a penny at Amazon know that you are buying from someone who is stupid. Don't feel guilty about it because they are stupid.
1 person likes this
8 responses
@peavey (16936)
• United States
15 Apr 12
I understand what you mean! I have tried to list books that should have sold for a fair price only to find someone else giving them away like that. I wonder if those people have such a high volume of sales that losing money on one or two doesn't matter? Still, it doesn't make sense when they could make at least a little.
1 person likes this
@nagatron123456 (888)
• Philippines
19 Apr 12
In my understanding both you and your competitor sell the same product but the difference is that, your competitor's price is much more cheaper compare to yours right? If this is the case, it is really frustrating because you can't sell the books now but don't lose hope, imagine the people all over the world who might need it. Let say, if you got 10 competitors in the amazon selling same product and out of 200,000 amazon users all over the world there are let say 200 or 100 people who need to buy it then amazon might run out of stocks. So try to remember the law of supply and demand, if the supply is less and the demand is high then the price doesn't matter, people will buy it.
1 person likes this
@ladym33 (10978)
• United States
20 Apr 12
Unfortunately they even sell the most popular books for .01. Books that people would gladly pay more for, they eventually lower ever single book ever to that low price. It makes it really hard to make a profit in this business. Not to mention they are paying money out of their own pockets to sell books, it is just crazy, they are ruining the whole industry and I really wish Amazon would stop allowing this.
@ladym33 (10978)
• United States
16 Apr 12
A pretty good idea except shipping is so high now it would raise the shipping price and it would be hard to recover. I do have some books that I save to send customers as an apology for a mistake. Of course that is a loss but it is better to take that kind of loss then to have an angry customer who gives you a bad rating. I can write those off on my taxes as well. It doesn't happen a lot I make maybe 2 mistakes like that a year.
@Citizen_Stuart (2016)
•
16 Apr 12
I've often been puzzled by these ultra low prices you seen on Amazon. Like you, I can't see any sense to it, unless it's big dealers just wanting to clear surplus stock out of their warehouses no matter what the cost. Whatever, have you looked into whether you might be able to sell these books on Ebay for a decent price?
1 person likes this
@Nameless_ (1180)
• Australia
16 Apr 12
It's the first time I've ever heard anything about it, but I think they would be able to know if they are selling books at a loss.
Perhaps they got the books from elsewhere or are selling at such low prices because it is part of a package and they give the book away for free as they are selling something else?
It would be nice to look into that.
1 person likes this
@Professor2010 (20156)
• India
16 Jun 12
Here in my city you can see people on road side who sell second hand i mean used book, they are original cost 1/10th of the price; if you bargain, some have new books selling at very low price, but they are pirated copies printed on low quality paper, the binding is poor too..
Professor ‘Bhuwan’. .
Cheers have a lucky day ahead.
@hmkoct5 (2065)
• United States
20 Apr 12
Sounds like you are pretty upset about this. I can understand why. I don't understand why people would want to pay others to buy things from them. I know that sometimes I just want to get rid of things so I sell them for a lower price, but I would never be dumb enough to actually pay someone to buy from me. I always tack on a bit of extra money to cover the shipping. It definitely isn't cheap!
@Aja103654 (5644)
• Philippines
16 Apr 12
I honestly don't know how amazon works so I am basing this response of mine from the things I can understand.
Maybe your competitors were solely trying to get rid of those books and that making more money is not really their goal.
