We are in the computer products industry and it has been hit with tariffs quite a bit. Moreover, manufacturers have been raising their prices heavily for the past few months, even before tariffs.

We've expressed this to our account manager at Amazon, she understands the issue, but I don't think she can or did anything about this. At the most, she submitted this anecdote to their system - that's what Amazon calls real life experience examples provided by a seller. Amazon, in theory, analyzes such anecdotes against its own data and makes corrections. That's one of the Jeff Bezos things he did and he believed that, usually, anecdotes are more accurate than their own data. But Bezos is long gone and Amazon is too complicated and inattentive to these, from what I heard. Therefore, nobody knows if this will ever be addressed.

In general, though, and that has been going on for years, when Amazon kills everyone's Buy Box on the product page due to the Competitive Price block, we immediately see an uptick in sales for this item at other sales channels. Both online and offline. At the end, we still sell products, same volume as intended and projected, but Amazon gets nothing. They are simply shooting themselves in the foot.

I realize that Amazon is so customer-centric that they would rather not make money than charge its customers more. That's their business. Same customers will go elsewhere, they need the product anyway. And, perhaps, they will stick around at Amazon's competitors much longer than Amazon would like them to be. They will buy other products there too. Heck, if they like others' services, they might even start comparing prices and availability there and at Amazon. That's something that Amazon would definitely not appreciate. But who am I to give Amazon any advice? :-)

From what I understand, Amazon's "Competitive Price" is based on several factors:

-MSRP entered in the ASIN or obtained from the manufacturer or some other source.

-Lowest price from a reputable source available for public to purchase outside of Amazon.

-Historical price data at Amazon.

All three have some serious issues:

-MSRP might change from time to time. I saw that happening hundreds of times over my 30-year career in this business. And at times like this it definitely goes up, not down. However, Amazon doesn't seem to pick that up from manufacturer's websites, and manual ASIN editing doesn't seem to do much. It used to, but not anymore, based on my experience lately.

-Collecting prices from outside sources is a big joke. Some third-party occasional seller at eBay should not be qualified as a reputable source. He/she might say that it's brand new factory sealed, but photos shows the product taken out of the box and photographed on her kitchen table. I see these examples all the time. A reputable source should be a manufacturer authorized reseller/dealer with a proven track record and long and stable history of selling the product. Not some student who bought a computer, then changed his mind, and now is selling it at a loss, trying to recoup some money back.

-Historical price data at Amazon is the worst and it blocks a lot of Buy Box offers that otherwise would be showing there. Amazon's system simply cannot conceive that a product cost $700 for several months and now suddenly costs $900 from all sellers. It doesn't understand the possibility that the manufacturers raised the prices due to whatever circumstances. Moreover, some products are introduced to the market at a discounted promo price for quite some time. Manufacturers do that to hook the customers and then slowly play with the price, raising to the most tolerable level to maintain as much volume as possible with the most possible profit. Amazon doesn't like that and sellers have to go and sell it elsewhere.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the issue.