You can stop buying from Amazon whenever you choose to. There are online alternatives to every product they sell. You don't need to be part of it. Whatever excuse you give is wrong.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply.
Yes, buying from alternative websites is the bare minimum and the bar is so low it's underground. But that's beside the point: Amazon is price fixing across the internet.
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I've tried, but some companies only sell their products on Amazon, even when going to the products website, they link back to Amazon when you click the Buy Now button.
I buy things on eBay sometimes and it's shipped by Amazon with a gift receipt lol
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I’ve pointed out Valve doing basically the same thing; games can’t be priced lower than Steam on competing game storefronts (not Steam key resellers), or Valve will threaten to delist your game. Which would be essentially kill it. And they obviously do this to protect their chunky store fee.
But personal loyalty goes a long way.
I’m trying to reframe the perspective here, not drag into an argument about Valve. A whole lot of people feel good about finding “deals” on Amazon, about Amazon services that have helped them, and especially about the value and convenience the whole platform provides. It’s easy for Lemmy to hate on Amazon, but for the average person, I think this is a harder sell than most of us realize. They’ll dismiss it as the “market working” or California sensationalism or, more likely, just filter it out as noise in their feed, just like most PC gamers would when they read something bad about Valve.
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Easy solution: don't use Amazon.
You lived without it before. You can do it again.
That's like saying the simple solution to global warming is for people to not burn fossil fuels. It ignores the conditions that led to this becoming a problem in the first place; and it ignores the power of entrenched industry to protect their own interest.
What we need is political reform. so that the bodies that are supposed regulate industry and serve the public are empowered to make the necessary reforms. Lina Kahn was doing just that (before Trump got elected again in 2024)
I'm not trying to diminish the importance and role of personal accountability and individual action, but as a solution to affect meaningful change it falls well short.
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This is why you shouldn’t buy US
Quickest solution? Stop buying from Amazon. I quit cold turkey and the sky does not fall. I still buy what I need. I am sometimes saved from buying stuff that I don't really need but was easily available. Just stop buying from them. They are the evil capitalism that everyone complains about.
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Meanwhile in Canada, if something falls into a niche good luck finding it in person. It's getting beyond frustrating trying to buy in person to avoid Amazon, then finding out that nowhere carries it and having to order from Amazon anyway.
That's what we get when Canada is a handful of monopolies in a trenchcoat instead of a country.
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Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites
This is and has been part of Amazon's contract to be listed on their site since the beginning. They are not even remotely the only one doing this. It's an industry norm in digital storefronts. Valve has also been sued for this several times. I don't know why we're acting like this is a recent discovery.
We need to just ban this practice, because as long as they're allowed to, they will.
Valve states you can’t sell a steam key in another platform for cheaper than in steam, not that you can’t sell your game anywhere else at a lower price. That’s slightly different than here. Not defending it just saying that it is actually different than here.
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