"I was going back through a lot of my orders and saw they came from Amazon sellers, and now I wonder if they were doing the same thing," she said. (The seller, "Mott Gifts," did not respond to a request for comment sent through Amazon’s messaging service.)īut Bryant said she had previously trusted that Amazon’s prices were always competitive, so she wasn’t as diligent in price-checking as she otherwise might have been. She ended up paying double the price of Walmart for a pack of paper towels. Bryant, a longtime friend of mine who first alerted me to the activity, said she takes responsibility for not comparing prices before hitting the Buy button on Amazon. We have no idea which manufacturer they used to ship the item."Īnother San Francisco resident, Ariel Bryant, had the same reaction as Lelong when a delivery recently showed up in a Walmart box. In case an item is back ordered at time of shipment, we place order with our vendors. "We utilize the services of more than 20 warehouses throughout the country and they decide from where the item will ship. The Amazon seller Lelong bought from, called "Order Me," claimed ignorance in a message to Recode. "Now that I know, I have my eyes more open."Īn Amazon spokesman pointed me to a policy for Amazon sellers that prohibits "purchasing products from another online retailer and having that retailer ship directly to customers." Those sellers who fail to comply with this rule can have their selling privileges suspended or revoked, it said. "I feel a bit cheated, which I don’t love," Lelong, who places several Amazon orders a week, told Recode in an interview. And it can be disappointing for loyal Amazon customers who trust that Amazon usually has the best price, or something close to it.
#Walmart dragonbox software#
It isn’t new, but it has become more popular as big shopping destinations like Amazon onboard more individual sellers, and software tools pop up to automate the activity. Lelong had been a victim of retail arbitrage - the practice of buying a product at one price from one retailer and reselling it on another shopping website for a profit. This Amazon seller then had the detergent shipped directly from Sam’s Club to Lelong’s home. How did that happen? An online merchant had bought the detergent on for one price, and sold it to her through for several dollars more. Lelong hadn’t placed an order from Sam’s Club, but she eventually realized that the bottle of detergent inside the box was something she had recently ordered on.
When San Francisco resident Catherine Lelong recently received a delivery from Sam’s Club, she was confused: She didn’t remember having placed an order with the membership club.
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