But what's stopping them from collecting the affiliate fee?
This narrows the use-cases for this quite a bit. Not only are they forcing you to forgo collecting the fee yourself for somebody you referred to Amazon to make a purchase (assuming this is a service/app you've created), you have to pay _more_? So really, depending on the model, you'd have to mark up the Amazon product ~10-13% just to cut even.
Amazon Associate's TOS. You can't get affiliate fees for products you purchase (technically they are still the purchasing agent--you even contact Zinc for a return label).
This narrows the use-cases for this quite a bit. Not only are they forcing you to forgo collecting the fee yourself for somebody you referred to Amazon to make a purchase (assuming this is a service/app you've created), you have to pay _more_? So really, depending on the model, you'd have to mark up the Amazon product ~10-13% just to cut even.