Participate in the multiple parties currently investigating Amazon and its shameful behavior from the market, authorities in Germany and Canada are now launching their own respective probes.
The German Federal Antitrust Bureau, the regulatory authority responsible for maintaining fair competition, has been investigating Amazon since April over complaints about the company’s impact on price on its platform, CNBC reported Monday. Per an English translation of coverage of the study by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the probe seems to be affected by problems that arose during the pandemic and subsequent complaints from vendors. The Federal Cartel Office told CNBC that it “is not up to a private platform to be a price regulator like the price police.” The regulatory authority did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment on the investigation.
Problems over pricing in the Amazon market have been brought into sharp focus during the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this year, Amazon awarded with obscene gold coins on its platform amid growing demand for things like masks and hand sanitizers, and separately, Amazon has been accused by U.S. antitrust watchdogs of undercutting third-party vendors and violating their own data aggregation rules to boost their product sales. (In addition to offering third-party products, Amazon has its own lines of products that compete directly with other vendors on the platform.) President Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that its probe is focused on “whether and how” Amazon Affects Retailer Prices in the Marketplace. ”
Reaching for comments on Monday, an Amazon spokesman told Gizmodo in an email statement that Amazon sellers “set their own product prices in our store.”
“We want customers to buy trust every time they make a purchase on Amazon.de and we have policies to ensure that sales partners price their products competitively,” the spokesman said. “Our systems are designed to take action against prize winning. If sales partners are concerned, we encourage them to contact our sales partner support partner. ”
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Meanwhile, our northern neighbors are now also investigating the tech giant’s concerns about anti-trust, the Competition Bureau of Canada announced Friday. The agency said its ongoing investigation specifically looks at whether third-party sellers are able to succeed without being forced to use the company’s ads or complete through Amazon services, or whether Amazon uses one tool to persuade shoppers to own to buy products on similar products from third-party sellers, and if Amazon has had or still uses policies that “may affect the willingness of third-party sellers to offer their products for sale at a lower price on other retail channels.” That last part sounds terribly similar to a type of price confirmation the company was found engineering last year.
In a statement, Amazon told Gizmodo that it “cooperates with the Competition Bureau’s review and continues to work hard to support small and medium-sized businesses that sell in our Canadian store – and help them grow.”
Uh-huh.
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