Well, germany has customer protection laws, but before amazon, customer service was always worse than in the US i would say.

Just think about Media markt customer service for example…

Amazon changed that by introducing US-style no-questions-asked 30 day returns etc… but nowadays they are slowly chipping away at that, 14 days is the the norm now, (which is the hard limit anyway, since being set into law a couple years ago)

But yes the customer friendliness is slowly being cut down, due to growing costs. Zalando (an online fashion retailer) has also reduced their return policy recently.

Amazon.de customer service has consistently been much better than anything else in Germany, so it's probably not the law.

It's "loss leader", selling under the price to make your competitors go bankrupt, then use monopoly power.

It's illegal under German law, EU law, and I'm sure it's also explicitly called out as illegal in at least 5 trade treaties Germany signed.

Needless to say, like everything in the EU, it's only enforced against local companies, in this case German ones.

Or, it's easier for Amazon to have a consistent customer experience everywhere in the world. But that would make too much sense?

Yep, I'm sure it's the brilliance of Amazon and not the same old trick of creating a monopoly then exploiting it that people have been using since the early middle ages and regularly outlawed because it destroys economies.

Say ... what was Amazon's initial reason for success? Being cheaper by exploiting the interstate commerce clause to avoid paying sales tax when it's competitors weren't allowed to do so? You don't say. Amazon is famous for losing money on their delivery business (up until recently)? It's constantly repeated in 10+ years of their financial statements ...

So either Amazon has completely changed tactics and become truly brilliant and we still don't understand the plan ... or they're up to their old tricks, being slightly cheaper, now with less legality!

... and not just the law but consumer protection agencies. The Verbraucherschutz does not mess around - break the law strategically and you will get banged up hard.

This is what Cory writes about: We need laws and regulations if we want to prevent enshittifiaction.

In the US these laws have been dismantled since the 70s (if I get the text correctly, I'm not expert on US labor law). And in Germany there is a chancellor who is pushing to increase the 40 work week (which still meant up to 50 hours) to a 48 hour work week - that's the change necessary to have Amazon (and others) treat their drivers and warehouse workers with more dignity. /s