Looking at Amazon's filings, the argument they made is the following:
>Given the unprecedented size of the proposed class consisting of 288 million members, the individualized issues on which their claims depend, and the overwhelming evidence that the challenged conduct resulted in lower prices in Amazon’s store, Plaintiffs have not—and cannot demonstrate that a class action would be manageable.
The "individualized issues" references arguments presented earlier in the filing. They also cite prior cases where class lawsuits have been denied certification because the class was too big to be manageable. You might disagree with Amazon's lawyers here, but it's unfair to characterize it as "we've wronged too many people to be held accountable". It's an "wild" argument because it's a strawman.
I don't see the difference between what the lawyers are saying and the parent's summary of it.
> we've wronged too many people to be held accountable
Sounds like exactly what it is... it's too big of a class to be managed, and therefore should not be?
In fact, the very next line is the judge saying:
> Chun found there was no evidence at this stage that the size of the class was overbroad. Other federal courts had certified class actions with millions or hundreds of millions of class members, the judge said.
> They also cite prior cases where class lawsuits have been denied certification because the class was too big to be manageable.
Evil corp got away with it once. All evil corps should be able to do the same is not a sane argument.
But it is an argument to add regulations and make large corporations accountable as soon as possible. So, make them pay for their past damage and force them to have better practices from now on.
To say it's "unfair" is a non sequitur. Other classes may have been denied certification because they are large. But being "unmanageable" is both vague and in no way equivalent to being unfair, as you put it. Computers are fast and capacious. You can manage a few hundred million things on your phone.
We have the technology to handle billions of MAU's financial transactions for billing, but there noooo way we can manage to track that many people's legal gripes against us! Bulllllllshiiiiiit.
> Sorry, we've wronged too many people to be held accountable! What a wild argument.
Class actions, as an alternative to the normal direct action lawsuits, are an accommodation in the legal system for economy of justice; a class that is too diverse in how they are situated with respect to the issues raised (which is a more accurate summary than the article’s “too large” for Amazon’s argument) negate that function.
I’m not saying the court ruled incorrectly on Amazon’s argument, just that the article is misleading on what the argument actually is.
Unfortunately this approach seems to fly all the time for large businesses.
Plucky startup takes the 'ask forgiveness rather than permission' approach and ignores a bunch of regulations, legal system doesn't care because they're just a plucky startup.
10 or so years later plucky startup is a massive corpo, another 5 or so years later the legal system catches up but they're a massive corpo making piles of cash and the worst the legal system can do at that point is penalize them with the equivalent of pocket change compared to the piles of cash they made while ignoring those regulations.
>up but they're a massive corpo making piles of cash and the worst the legal system can do at that point is penalize them with the equivalent of pocket change compared to the piles of cash they made while ignoring those regulations.
Examples? Usually when I see this argument being brought up, it's usually something like "[multinational megacorp] fined $x for breaking Belgian privacy laws", and then people pile in saying how "$x is 1% of [multinational megacorp]'s turnover" and therefore the fine is just "a cost of doing business", but neglecting to account for how much % of their revenue is in Belgium, or how much money they could have plausibly gained from the offenses in question.
Manageable isn't just from Amazon's side, it is also an argument from the side of the plaintiffs. e.g. "This class is too diverse. It will be like herding 300 million cats, which decreases the likelihood of arriving at a suitable settlement. Better to split this into multiple classes with more specific grievances".
Everyone benefits from the class being manageable (except maybe the plaintiffs' attorneys, who just want the biggest class they can possibly find).
What's the difference between a class of 20M and one of 200M? 99.98% of them aren't being surveyed for specific grievances, they're ticking a box on a letter or on a website. Let's not pretend that they're all getting surveyed for their desired outcome.
Yep, and if legal system won't work in such cases then it clearly need to be redone, somehow. It would be realy easy in monarchy (if monarch wants) so why obvious _effect_ can't be possible with democracy too ?
Same with "right deny to repair" - obviously anti-legal.
> The consumers’ 2021 lawsuit said Amazon violated antitrust law by restricting third-party sellers from offering their products for lower prices elsewhere on rival platforms while they are also for sale on Amazon.
I've noticed that third-party sellers generally get around this by having the same list price on their own site, but basically offering everyone a coupon for 15-30% off. Not just for signing up for e-mails, but spinning a wheel that pops up a discount, items that are on sale 95% of the time, etc.
So while this may very well be anticompetitive of Amazon, at the same time it's generally something savvy sellers and savvy consumers have been able to get around easily for a long time.
Neither here nor there, but about 15 years ago while I was a fresh grad/hire at Amazon, I realized that the crawler that was supposed to enforce this had not been running for multiple years. I went out and fixed it and got it running again, and I showed about $8M/month revenue increase from this.
What did I get? From my skip level manager: "Great job, but too bad about that bug. Next time if it's perfect we can talk about promo" (the crawler went down for a day from an edge case that was preexisting, I fixed it same day)
I made a BigCo $130M p.a. with a general improvement but was similarly denied a promotion. Changed my career plan after that and got out of there. These same companies complain constantly that it’s so hard to hire good people.
Also, amazon straight up steals successful products from 3rd party sellers, rebrands them as Amazon basics, and then undercuts until the 3rd party seller goes out of business
That can easily be perceived as violating the ToS and get you kicked off the marketplace. Big risk to take if that's where you're making most of your $.
I doubt it. I've seen this for products with 10,000+ reviews. It's totally mainstream. If Amazon had a problem with it, they would have cracked down already.
What can they say, that "20% off your cart" coupons are prohibited anywhere else the product is listed? That's not feasible. You see North Face doing the same thing with sports retailers. Their jackets never go on sale, but retailers make cart-wide promotions available so you can still get the discount.
I immediately just click the back button when some spin wheel discount thing pops up, I just figured it was temu leaking. Thank you for explaining why they are doing this, tho I still wonder why it has to be gamified and not just, click here for a coupon, is it because the agreement with Amazon precludes them from offering coupons, but neglects to forbid casino games?
I think it's just a psychological trick, I'm sure there's some statistic showing that if people think they won a larger discount by chance they're more likely to use it or something. I don't think there's any connection to Amazon, as some sites do just provide regular coupons.
A lot of those things require you to give them your email to get the coupon. They could do that with a button as well but couldn't then follow up to let you know you didn't buy anything from them in 24hrs.
I saw it with mattress shopping. Every online brand I looked at had their mattresses “on sale” pretty much always. There might be one day a week where they were full price or one week they were 15% off and 20% off the next. Rinse. Repeat.
The next class action needs to address the anticompetitive procedure of artificially protecting shit products by deleting critical customer reviews.
In my Prime account, 90 percent of my reviews are positive, but because I've left several scathing, unapologetic negative reviews for products that shouldn't exist, all my reviews are now placed in eternal limbo. None of my reviews ever actually post.
For the reviews that posted, three months later when the product stops working, Amazon prohibits me from updating the original review. The FTC is well aware of this too.
Keep this in mind when evaluating a product using reviews as a metric. And further note the egregious usurpation of the review content search function being replaced by Rufus, the world's foremost most worthless heap of artificially generated product deception.
The argument is that it is too large for the court to handle, not too large for Amazon to handle.
Class actions work by grouping many plaintiffs who have been harmed in the same way and whose damages if they win can be addressed in the same way (e.g., everyone gets a fixed amount of money, or a fixed percentage of what they spent, or something like that).
Then the cases of a small number of representatives of the class can be addressed at the actual trial, and the outcome applied to the whole class.
The larger the proposed class the more likely the variation in the harms to the members and in how to redress those harms, which can mean you need a larger number of representatives of the class at the actual trial.
Get large enough and it becomes difficult for the court to manage. In that case the class needs to be shrunk down to a set of plaintiffs with more uniform harms that can be addressed more uniformly. The people removed from the class might form another class or classes for separate suits, or sue as individuals, or some mixture of those options.
Very excited for my impending choice between a 30-day extension to my Prime membership or a $5 off of $50 coupon for anything in the Prime Fresh store.
...after 5 years of lawfare and gozillions spent, of course. :/
Readit News
Sorry, we've wronged too many people to be held accountable! What a wild argument.
>Given the unprecedented size of the proposed class consisting of 288 million members, the individualized issues on which their claims depend, and the overwhelming evidence that the challenged conduct resulted in lower prices in Amazon’s store, Plaintiffs have not—and cannot demonstrate that a class action would be manageable.
The "individualized issues" references arguments presented earlier in the filing. They also cite prior cases where class lawsuits have been denied certification because the class was too big to be manageable. You might disagree with Amazon's lawyers here, but it's unfair to characterize it as "we've wronged too many people to be held accountable". It's an "wild" argument because it's a strawman.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.29...
> we've wronged too many people to be held accountable
Sounds like exactly what it is... it's too big of a class to be managed, and therefore should not be?
In fact, the very next line is the judge saying:
> Chun found there was no evidence at this stage that the size of the class was overbroad. Other federal courts had certified class actions with millions or hundreds of millions of class members, the judge said.
Shkreli made back all the money from his clients that he misappropriated (by gambling with Retrophin shares). He still went to jail for fraud.
Evil corp got away with it once. All evil corps should be able to do the same is not a sane argument.
But it is an argument to add regulations and make large corporations accountable as soon as possible. So, make them pay for their past damage and force them to have better practices from now on.
lower than what?
Class actions, as an alternative to the normal direct action lawsuits, are an accommodation in the legal system for economy of justice; a class that is too diverse in how they are situated with respect to the issues raised (which is a more accurate summary than the article’s “too large” for Amazon’s argument) negate that function.
I’m not saying the court ruled incorrectly on Amazon’s argument, just that the article is misleading on what the argument actually is.
Plucky startup takes the 'ask forgiveness rather than permission' approach and ignores a bunch of regulations, legal system doesn't care because they're just a plucky startup.
10 or so years later plucky startup is a massive corpo, another 5 or so years later the legal system catches up but they're a massive corpo making piles of cash and the worst the legal system can do at that point is penalize them with the equivalent of pocket change compared to the piles of cash they made while ignoring those regulations.
Examples? Usually when I see this argument being brought up, it's usually something like "[multinational megacorp] fined $x for breaking Belgian privacy laws", and then people pile in saying how "$x is 1% of [multinational megacorp]'s turnover" and therefore the fine is just "a cost of doing business", but neglecting to account for how much % of their revenue is in Belgium, or how much money they could have plausibly gained from the offenses in question.
Everyone benefits from the class being manageable (except maybe the plaintiffs' attorneys, who just want the biggest class they can possibly find).
What's the difference between a class of 20M and one of 200M? 99.98% of them aren't being surveyed for specific grievances, they're ticking a box on a letter or on a website. Let's not pretend that they're all getting surveyed for their desired outcome.
Same with "right deny to repair" - obviously anti-legal.
Stupidity can't win forever.
I've noticed that third-party sellers generally get around this by having the same list price on their own site, but basically offering everyone a coupon for 15-30% off. Not just for signing up for e-mails, but spinning a wheel that pops up a discount, items that are on sale 95% of the time, etc.
So while this may very well be anticompetitive of Amazon, at the same time it's generally something savvy sellers and savvy consumers have been able to get around easily for a long time.
What did I get? From my skip level manager: "Great job, but too bad about that bug. Next time if it's perfect we can talk about promo" (the crawler went down for a day from an edge case that was preexisting, I fixed it same day)
Also, amazon straight up steals successful products from 3rd party sellers, rebrands them as Amazon basics, and then undercuts until the 3rd party seller goes out of business
Dead Comment
What can they say, that "20% off your cart" coupons are prohibited anywhere else the product is listed? That's not feasible. You see North Face doing the same thing with sports retailers. Their jackets never go on sale, but retailers make cart-wide promotions available so you can still get the discount.
Republic of Tea blackberry sage tea, 50 count - $11 on their site, $13 on Amazon with Republic of Tea as the seller.
https://www.republicoftea.com/blackberry-sage-black/p/v00590...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0024SDYLI
And that's not really a super obscure product, since it's ranked #69 best selling for the "black tea" category.
In my Prime account, 90 percent of my reviews are positive, but because I've left several scathing, unapologetic negative reviews for products that shouldn't exist, all my reviews are now placed in eternal limbo. None of my reviews ever actually post.
For the reviews that posted, three months later when the product stops working, Amazon prohibits me from updating the original review. The FTC is well aware of this too.
Keep this in mind when evaluating a product using reviews as a metric. And further note the egregious usurpation of the review content search function being replaced by Rufus, the world's foremost most worthless heap of artificially generated product deception.
Amazon is indefensibly sinister.
At least they have some small fragment of decency in highlighting the Vine reviews. In green.
LOL, they literally have a giant data center at their disposal and some of the best automation geniuses in the world.
Class actions work by grouping many plaintiffs who have been harmed in the same way and whose damages if they win can be addressed in the same way (e.g., everyone gets a fixed amount of money, or a fixed percentage of what they spent, or something like that).
Then the cases of a small number of representatives of the class can be addressed at the actual trial, and the outcome applied to the whole class.
The larger the proposed class the more likely the variation in the harms to the members and in how to redress those harms, which can mean you need a larger number of representatives of the class at the actual trial.
Get large enough and it becomes difficult for the court to manage. In that case the class needs to be shrunk down to a set of plaintiffs with more uniform harms that can be addressed more uniformly. The people removed from the class might form another class or classes for separate suits, or sue as individuals, or some mixture of those options.
...after 5 years of lawfare and gozillions spent, of course. :/