"Let me be clear: If you do this, you're a fucking asshole."

I'd do it if i was at all or ever concerned with buying anything from Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, or any other crappy big-box store.

"while simultaneously using small businesses as unpaid showrooms"

What small businesses? You're talking about (generally) commodity devices and appliances. Sure, it can be used against small businesses, but for the most part, the brick & mortar stores these are going to be used at are chains, not knickknack shops.

Bullshit @1. This is unethical, brown-nosing greed. Anyone who does this is a fucking asshole.

What if we go do this at B&N? Are we still assholes?

Maybe if I got a 20% discount of the lowest price...I'd hit up Walmart and other places with shitty employee benefits.

@ 1 is mostly right, but having worked at independent retailers, I know it will be used against them as well. They're still the ones with the good selection, not Best Buy.

Oops, for some reason I read this is being for books only.

Repeating what #1 said, and adding - couldn't we intentionally use this to undermine even more ethically sketchy business, like Walmart et al?

Fly you fools

If Occupy had half the balls it claimed, or a semblance of focus on the principles in which it likes to stay wrapped, it would be gathering beanie-clad youth to shout at tax-shirking, momandpop-shafting, neighborhood-shop-diversity-destroying Amazon right over in SLU, not easy pointless targets like Port workers or Seattle Central or various abandoned buildings. Not that I would quit griping about Occupy if they did, but a begrudging tone of respect might creep into my remarks.

This seems pretty gross at face value. I feel awkward using a bathroom someplace I'm not already patronizing.

I'm sure this isn't Amazon's intent, but I wonder if there might be some trickle-down effect by getting people to enter a store who might not have. There's a marketing strategy where you sell a select few things at cost or below value to draw shoppers who then end up buying other shit, right? So it's possible this dick move won't be as starkly abusive as it seems if people who enter a shop to try something out then end up either wanting it immediately or buy other things.

I've been doing this with target and bestbuy since the amazon barcode app came out. I didn't realise people needed an incentive to save money.

What I do with Amazon is the reverse: I print out my friends' Amazon wishlists and walk into local independent retailers like Silver Platters or Third Place Books and buy the items in the shops. I don't pay Amazon extra for gift wrap and if I have a Chinook Book coupon with me, I save even more. My out-of-town friends have been amazed at how I manage to get "out of stock" items at 1/2 the Amazon price or less.

Are we obligated to provide Amazon with accurate pricing information? That intelligence they gather will be less valuable if there is a large amount of false data.

This isn't much different than when old electronics stores like Best Buy and Circuit City said you could bring in any other stores' ad and they would match the price. They just go the extra mile by offering a 5% savings. Competitive pricing is a TOTALLY NORMAL APPROACH to a capitalist business model. It's up to the customer to patronize local businesses. Amazon is in the business of making money. I don't think they've ever been unclear about it. You can't call a scorpion a dick for stinging you.

Part of the misconception here is that the only reason Amazon sells anything is price. And that traipsing out to a physical bookstore is unmitigated shopping nirvana.

Anyone who buys more than three books a year knows that the reason you don't bother with a brick and mortar store is that there's a 95% chance they don't have what you need in stock. Why would you make a trip there only on the off chance they have the book you want, just to turn around and go home empty handed, all for the chance to save five measly bucks?

And then of course the other main reason you shop online is that you don't want to dick around with driving all over town and dealing with crowds and wandering around stores guessing where they shelve their books. What online shopper, cozy in their jammies with their hot coco and their cats, says "You know what's missing from this experience? A trip to the bookstore to buy nothing!"

This amounts to nothing but another Paul Constant hissy fit, and more proof that they guy still doesn't understand why bookstores are dying. Local retailers need to be thinking about the real reason they're losing customers and not waste time on this distraction. The smart ones will realize that anybody who does take advantage of Amazon's promotion is going to mean increased foot traffic through local stores, and there's profit in impulse purchases if you seize the opportunity.

I can just imagine some of them will be paranoid enough to drive another nail in their own coffin and start chasing people with smart phones out of their stores.

This just in: comparison shopping is unethical? Go fuck yourself, Paul.

Every time I've ever used this feature—which, by the way, existed WAAAAAY before Flow; in fact, independent software developers made it in third-party apps (OH NO INDIE DEVELOPERS SUPPORTING THE MAN)—has been in a Best Buy or Fry's or something. If I'm in a local bookstore, it's to buy books there. Otherwise, I'd never set foot in one. It's not for the prices or selection, obviously.

If people are willing spend time and effort/gas to go to a store just so they can save 5% on Amazon and wait for their product, the products they're shopping for had better be expensive to make the whole thing 'worth' it.
I can see this possibly hurting small local bookstores, toy stores and comic book shops, but most people that shop at those places have already made a conscious decision to pay slightly higher prices for someone curating their options.

Other local retail? Hard to imagine.

I just wanted to observe publicly that this is a two way street for most people- more than a few times I've gone ahead and picked up the item locally because it gets good reviews on Amazon. I've even looked up the reviews while IN THE STORE. Which is why it would be foolish for stores to care at all whether people consult their phones while shopping.

You know...

If amazon drives a bunch of foot traffic into stores, those stores have a chance to win over a customer that normally wouldn't visit.
Don't let these fancy apps distract you from what has always been the biggest war in retail, getting customer to come into the fucking store! Amazon has now decided to help you get people into the store. Don't fuck this up small businesses. Smile, answer questions, be helpful, earn some repeat customers. Prices are not your thing, so bulk up on the value you do have.

Also, have you used the app? You can just search for stuff on it, you don't have to actively scan something, you can just search for it. So, I'm pretty sure most will be smart enough to never visit the store in the first place to get their discount.

I wish we still had antitrust laws with teeth. This deserves to get Amazon sued for abusing market share.

This has already been happening plenty at retail stores; just minus the 5% bonus assholery; customer comes in, tries on a jacket, goes to the clerk with a smartphone and asks, 'can you match the price I can get online'?

It's all fine and good market forces and invisible hand and all that jazz as long as the internet retailer is charging sales tax. Otherwise, local retail gets to enjoy the role of being a free dressing room to cheapskates.

Or, if B&M stores were competitive, this could just be driving customers into their showrooms.

Of course 95% of the time they're not, so let's support their failing business model by pretending an alternative doesn't exist. Let's also stop looking through the big bundle of ads in the Sunday paper, which is basically just trading in insider information on competitors' pricing.

I just wish Paul would disclose that he owns Walmart stock. Or whatever the explanation is for being so pro out of state bug box retailer and anti local Internet retailer.

This is brilliant. So you want me to buy a product made in China from a *local* merchant rather than Amazon? Who cares, it was made in China anyway. The money's not staying local anyway. Buying local don't mean dick if the product itself isn't local.

@2: "Bullshit @1. This is unethical, brown-nosing greed. Anyone who does this is a fucking asshole."

Politely, and logically explain how, if you please.

@19: "I wish we still had antitrust laws with teeth. This deserves to get Amazon sued for abusing market share."

How is pricematch+ policy antitrust? BIG BOX BRICK AND MORTAR STORES DO THIS ALREADY.

The only difference is that they usually require printed adverts for the pricematch + 5 buck discounts.

@5: "having worked at independent retailers, I know it will be used against them as well. They're still the ones with the good selection, not Best Buy."

Right, and that sucks, but if independent retailers are selling the same off-the-shelf comodity items and basing their entire operation on price, they're doomed to fail anyway. You don't go to indie shops for cheap goods. You go for service, repairs, educated staff or some other sort of benefit.

Jesus christ, you could already do this (minus the 5% discount) with any web browser on a smartphone - it doesn't require an Amazon app so the existence of their app is irrelevant. By Paul's "logic", the internet and smartphones are the real dicks. Therefore, if you use a smartphone and the internet, you are a fucking asshole.

Amazon is competing against Walmart, Best Buy, etc., and it's all about TVs and electronics, not about saving 5% on a $15 book from your local indie store.

Constant's hatred of Amazon (which provides thousands of well-paying local jobs) and utter ignorance of the business world (as working as a bookstore clerk provided him with worldly experience) strikes again.

People have been paid for decades to do this. The job category is "comparison shopping". They go into stores and check prices (with actual paper and pen; no electronics needed) and give the marketing firm that employs them the data. Where was the outrage then?

@23: the origin of the merchandise may have been China, but stores employ actual people who live here.

Cheapskates, libertariantards, Amazon employees, and douchebags, you all need to realize that it is a straight up dick move. Try to spin it all you like but it doesn't change the intent of this which is to abuse the retailers. Amazon already enjoys some nice benefits over retail stores while lacking others like physical interaction with the products. That's been the balance all along. Abusing this the way Amazon intends is sleazy.

Brick and mortar retail will be dead in 10 years. What's going to happen with all those empty storefronts?

@ 5, right. You go there, take advantage of the advantages, then buy the crap from Amazon. I've seen it countless times, and it's a key component to the further erosion of independent business in America.

Reality check: most book and record stores can't survive if people aren't buying the big bestsellers and chart toppers from them. They can't afford to give big discounts, even if they pool resources.

It's a pure dick move.

I mostly agree with #14. I hate Internet shopping because I live in an apartment and I work for a living. So, if an Internet retailer ships via UPS or FedEx, I have to drive all the way down to fucking SODO to pick up my package. I, therefore, do everything I can to buy in a brick-and-mortar store before I even think about buying online. But easily half of the time when I'm looking for something that's not groceries or clothes, the store doesn't have what I want. So, I'm forced to buy online. And to get that free shipping, I'll throw a couple of extra things I probably could get from a brick-and-mortar store into my cart, and they lose even more of my business.

Also, for anything that's not electronics, books, DVDs, or CDs, Amazon's pricing is not competitive.

Free market economy - evolve or die. I'm totally going to do this. If you don't like it, lower your prices to compete for my money.

I shop on amz almost exclusively now for every day (non craft) things.

Amazon employs thousands of people in Seattle, and they each spend thousands of dollars within the local community every year, so supporting Amazon does definitely support Seattle's local economy.

If other companies cant think of inventive ways to be competitive they will fail, not amazon's fault.

Also, Amazon prime is the best thing that has ever happened to human beings on the planet in the entire history of earth.

I mean that. Best. Thing. EVER.

@31: "Brick and mortar retail will be dead in 10 years. What's going to happen with all those empty storefronts?"

Developers will still be getting multibillion dollar grants for megamalls from the various states for decades to come, long after the chain stores die and the last Orange Julius is poured.

@30: "Cheapskates, libertariantards, Amazon employees, and douchebags, you all need to realize that it is a straight up dick move."

I'm not any of the above, but I don't see how this is a "new" product or move. The products already exist, the discounts already exist for pricematching any of the brick & mortar stores, the only difference here (and not DICK MOVE difference) is the request that the customer provide price information from the source store.

@32: "right. You go there, take advantage of the advantages, then buy the crap from Amazon. I've seen it countless times, and it's a key component to the further erosion of independent business in America.

Reality check: most book and record stores can't survive if people aren't buying the big bestsellers and chart toppers from them. They can't afford to give big discounts, even if they pool resources."

What you're describing is a social problem and independent businesses will need to continue adapting to survive. Shaming and tut-tutting over generic, brand name goods is getting independent retailers nowhere.

Goddamnit, my comment never showed up. Try again.

@21, B&M stores can't compete because they have to pay for those Bs and that M. Those bricks are YOUR COMMUNITY. If @31 is correct, and storefronts are dead in ten years, then what will also be dead is life in this country. Storefronts are the absolute heart of what it means to be in a city. Otherwise you might as well move to Redmond, or a "gated community" in fucking Covington, now and get used to it, because that's where you will end up. Nowheresville.

This is how we are consuming ourselves, destroying our entire civilization to save three dollars on some piece of crap.

@14, I buy something north of a hundred books a year, and they fall into two categories: specialty items, like you describe, where I want a specific thing, and general browsing, where I just want something to read. For the former, yes, you're right, no local shop will ever be able to supply English books on Tottenham Hotspur or Australian books on Aboriginal art, but for general "get me through my lunch hour" reading, I buy at least half of my books from places like Wide World Books and Maps in Wallingford, where the selection is miniscule but exceptionally well-chosen and pertinent to my interests. If Amazon kills that shop it will have killed part of the soul of this city.

People who work and live in beige cubicles at Amazon or Microsoft look forward to a dead world of parking lots and no shops but I sure as hell don't.

@39

Yeah, what with the economy booming and unemployment in the low single digits, those schmucks in beige cubicles should have thought about the community before they turned down those 15 job offers from groovy local independent outfits. Since Amazon and Microsoft gave everyone 20% raises this year they have no excuse for this selfish bargain hunting.

Oh, wait. Which reality were we in again? The pretend one?

Personally I use Amazon as my "showroom" all the time. I use their convenient website to search for items then go buy them locally when possible. If I can only find it through Amazon I will link to the seller and buy direct from them instead of buying through Amazon.

LET ME BE CLEAR, I DO THIS!

I just saved $40 a product from Best Buy and it's great. Apparently the author of this article thinks you should just pretend as if you don't have this research power, purchase the product, go home, do your research, and if you find the price better at amazon THEN return it.

LET'S BE EXTRA CLEAR HERE: IF YOU WERE GOING TO NEVER BUY THE PRODUCT FROM THE RETAILER BECAUSE IT IS SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER, THEY LOSE ****NO**** MONEY THEY WOULDN'T HAVE LOST ANYWAYS.

So If I was NEVER,EVER,EVER going to buy the product from Best Buy (because it was cheaper), then I DO NOT DEPRIVE THE RETAILER ***ANY** REVENUE COMPARED TO THE WORLD WHERE I WOULD I DID THE RESEARCH LATER ON THE INTERNET, FOUND OUT IT WAS CHEAPER, AND RETURNED THE PRODUCT.

IN FACT you actually ***save*** the retailer money by not going through the hassle of dealing with the return.

SO LET'S BE CLEAR HERE: the author of this article is a FUCKING ASSHOLE for blaming people who are doing **NOTHING WRONG**, and the funny thing is that he is too stupid to look up the word 'counterfactual' and realize that he really is wrong.

LET ME BE CLEAR, I DO THIS!

I just saved $40 a product from Best Buy and it's great. Apparently the author of this article thinks you should just pretend as if you don't have this research power, purchase the product, go home, do your research, and if you find the price better at amazon THEN return it.

LET'S BE EXTRA CLEAR HERE: IF YOU WERE GOING TO NEVER BUY THE PRODUCT FROM THE RETAILER BECAUSE IT IS SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER, THEY LOSE ****NO**** MONEY THEY WOULDN'T HAVE LOST ANYWAYS.

So If I was NEVER,EVER,EVER going to buy the product from Best Buy (because it was cheaper), then I DO NOT DEPRIVE THE RETAILER ***ANY** REVENUE COMPARED TO THE WORLD WHERE I WOULD I DID THE RESEARCH LATER ON THE INTERNET, FOUND OUT IT WAS CHEAPER, AND RETURNED THE PRODUCT.

IN FACT you actually ***save*** the retailer money by not going through the hassle of dealing with the return.

SO LET'S BE CLEAR HERE: the author of this article is a FUCKING ASSHOLE for blaming people who are doing **NOTHING WRONG**, and the funny thing is that he is too stupid to look up the word 'counterfactual' and realize that he really is wrong.

I work in one of those apparently gonna be dead in ten years brick and mortar stores. I often read about my fellow Sloggers saying that we're "gouging" people, or "marking it up" because we don't sell at the same prices as Amazon. Well, Amazon sells BELOW our cost, on almost everything we carry. We were actually approached by Amazon to be a partner retailer. For our industry, they want 10% of all sales, which is often more than we make on the main items we sell. It's really hard to offer good customer service to make up that price difference when we spend half our day showing the goods to people who have no intention of buying from us. But we can't spot those people when they come in the door. We offer great customer service to everyone, then watch half of them walk out empty handed, after an hour and a half of an employee's time, because they can get it cheaper online. Where will they test the goods when our shop - the only one of its kind in Seattle, family owned for 80 years - is gone? Have fun using the showrooms at Best Buy, Target and Walmart.

The race to the bottom accelerates - this is how the rich get richer - but it will all eventually serf-destruct, because as a consumer driven economy depends on consumers having cash (or credit). The home mortgage ATMs have been closed for a few years now, wages are falling, government jobs contracting, a larger percentage of new hires enter a two tier pay and benefit system, and lowest price means everything. Amazon is the personification of capitalism taking advantage of every opportunity. Fact: Jeff Bezos is the 1% and very likely every commenter above is in the 99%.. So let's all party with our trappings of consumerism on the downward spiral and enjoy the warm glow of our virtual community we've helped build with our greed..

Amazon is on a role with their dick moves lately. If you can think of any others add them to the ongoing list at http://dkmvs.com. Eventually we might have to give them their own section!

Amazon is on a role with their dick moves lately. If you can think of any others add them to the ongoing list at http://dkmvs.com. Eventually we might have to give them their own section!