Brands upset Buy For Me is featuring their products on Amazon without permission

Most manufacturers have restrictions on where retailers can sell their product for exactly this reason. The fact that Amazon is doing this is just going to result in a lot of unnecessary billable hours.

Another reason they do not allow it is because if something is popular Amazon will make their own private label version.

Completely irresponsible behavior.

> Through “Buy For Me,” customers were placing orders for Chua’s products on Amazon.com to be fulfilled through Chua’s Shopify account. Chua’s products have since been removed — she contacted Amazon at [email protected] to opt out, per the company’s FAQ page for sellers — but Chua said other small online merchants like herself could be unknowingly opted into Amazon’s “Buy For Me” program.

It seems pretty likely that no one would even know that this exists in order to opt out of this until at least some purchases have been made. This isn't even "opting out" in the traditional (and already user-hostile) way of doing something by default that's orthogonal to what the user signed up for; it's a lot closer to the whole "shadow profile" thing Facebook does where the account exists without anyone signing up in the first place.

Is this like when food delivery places started offering fake web sites for local restaurants without their permission?

This seems like the same play.

Wouldn't this be violating copyrights left and right? Presumably most of these listings have pictures and I'd be surprised if Amazon were asking permission to reproduce them. Would the same apply to item descriptions...?

I am a bit confused here. First this reminded my of the traditional news sites trying to opt out of Google search, but with the very big difference that unlike Google's users never consuming the original site adds or subscriptions, in this case it is still your product sale, just through a new channel.

And yes. I do see how it can be a slippery slope leading to dependence on (paid) Amazon ranking and being roped into their (exploitative) ecosystem.

I can also see how this could cut into franchise or exclusive territory deals, or how this can disrupt your marketing campaigns.

But in the end, is this really different from people selling your products, new or used, on eBay? And would the actions needed to stop this maybe be worse than the actual disease?

I can see both sides. Not sure which eay I lean.

Could someone explain to me - for the seller what's the downside? Isn't this just more sales? Isn't that positive?

Odd story. If you strip out the "Amazon" and "AI" stuff, the core seems to be that there's a tech company offering a service called Buy For Me which crawls various merchants who operate their own storefronts, lists the products they find for Buy For Me's users, and have a button the users can press which...buys the product.

Which is a little odd, and the value is questionable, but fundamentally seems...fine? You're a merchant, you're selling pencils on the internet, people are buying your pencils from you. And historically the way this might have been built would be something like a desktop application that users install, and which then goes and loads websites, displays them, fills in payment info, etc. Which of course is exactly what the web browser does already.

And all of the complaints about how it should be opt-in also feel odd. If you install WooCommerce and put a storefront up on the public internet, you've pretty obviously opted in to "selling your products on the internet". You don't need to tell Firefox that it's okay for people to use it to buy your stuff!

Of course, this isn't a desktop app, it's agentic AI run by Amazon, which certainly makes it feel different, but I'm not entirely sure how different it should make our analysis.

But also, the story raises a bunch of interesting questions and then doesn't answer any of them:

> Chua also received at least several orders for products that were either out of stock or no longer existed on her website.

How exactly did this happen? The story is that the orders are being placed through the normal storefront, right? So how exactly?

Or:

> Gorin sells wholesale through a password-protected section of her website, where retailers must submit resale or exemption certificates so orders are properly exempted from sales tax. She said she was still able to complete a “Buy for Me” purchase of a product pulled from her wholesale site despite never opting into the program — a scenario that could expose her business to tax liability if individual shoppers were able to place tax-exempt orders. Gorin also worries that surfacing wholesale pricing could undermine profit margins, allow competitors to undercut her prices or bypass minimum order requirements designed to keep wholesale sales viable.

That's just begging for an explanation. Is Amazon is somehow using stolen credentials to obtain price information? Or is Goren mistaken and the info isn't password protected at all? (And if not, why not?)

I'd also be interested in unpacking a bit more the legal and contractual implications of agreements like Mochi Kids has signed. The brand apparently doesn't allow its products on Amazon, and doesn't allow partners like Mochi Kids to sell on Amazon, but...Michi Kids isn't? Mechanically someone is buying the products at retail and effectively relisting them. Which...I dunno, feels legal? Is any agreement actually being violated here? Does the brand have a course of action? Does Mochi Kids have an actual legal obligation to opt out? Does Amazon have a legal obligation to let vendors opt out? Is Amazon legally buying anything from Mochi Kids, or is the customer the person using Amazon? Given the payment info being used is the customer's, I'm not sure Amazon has a commercial relationship with the brand or the vendor?

And so on. It feels like too much of the story is being carried by it being about Amazon and AI, which means the author felt fine just glossing over the details.

This is like inverse drop shipping.

Bet these merchants already agreed to this by signing up for Amazon MCF with Shopify.

Evil amazon dont list my products but pls still fulfill my orders.

Remember when AI was supposed to cure cancer?

It is scumbags expanding on their nasty ways. Now watch the vampires at Amazon extend their undercut-and-absorb techniques on every single web shop, whether the operators like it or not.

Didn’t Amazon send a cease and desist to someone for doing almost the same thing? I think they had some kind of browser plug-in that could shop for you on Amazon.

When Amazon can buy stuff on your own website thats out of stock for wholesale prices without your knowledge, it's time to get your shit together. Your shop software is at least misconfigured.

When you really lose trust from your partners because officially announced things Amazon does, like adding your products to their shop system, then your partners have no trust in you at all.

When you don't want that Amazon sells your products, cancel the orders you get from them. Add a link to the real shop and a explaination why to the cancel mail.

It could all be so easy. And this are just the things everyone could do. Delivering doubled prices to AI crawlers would be a advanced thing.

Given that the feature this replaces/competes with was called "Shop Direct"...

I'm really sad this one couldn't be "Slop Direct"

What a bunch of BS. Once I buy a product I can resell it elsewhere. That's how ownership works. I do not need "permission" for this, beyond that guaranteed by the legal system, and exceptions such as export restrictions notwithstanding. There is a term for this that currently eludes me (first sale doctrine is a similar concept but not exactly.)

If I was a seller, I'd probably find this a good thing --- Amazon is effectively giving me more customers for free.

Overtones designed to stoke outrage aside, this is very much in line with what the original vision of the Web was about. Amazon's tech here is acting as the user agent. (It happens to be that this UA that operates on/with the data that is supplied by some far-off website (the vendor's) is a UA that is itself presented in a web browser and accepts commands that way, and ferries them off the user's local device instead of processing the commands in right there e.g. with a native binary.)

This is a win for user control over how they interact with content on the Web.