“In one alleged instance, Amazon sent Levi’s links to two “styles of concern” due to lower prices on Walmart’s website, noting it hoped these can “get resolved” within a few days.”
And of course they were! "“Walmart partnered with [us] to update this as a test for the best interest of the marketplace,” Levi’s reiterated to Amazon, according to the filing. "
“In another instance, Amazon allegedly told a vendor, Armen Living, that it would “remove all four of [the products] from [Amazon’s] website in the next few days” if a pricing issue wasn’t resolved, which would have been just before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events.”
Amazon is the toxic black mold of selling in the US!
The brands they are pushing to raise prices probably don’t like being pushed around, but it doesn’t sound as though this hurt them much. From what I understand, it’s really just customers who are hurt by this.
They actually started a suit 2 years ago but it seems to have disappeared. This is round 2. Hopefully it gets some traction since it will have to happen at the STATE level currently.
I see no hope of any Fed actions for at least three years.
Longer, because one party has gutted the agencies and sold, sealed, and delivered the concept that government institutions are pure evil, unless government is used to keep business’ open by using socialism, in which case they are necessary and spectacular.
On top of screwing with their competitors on pricing, there was also
Amazon allegedly asked home furnishings and decor vendor Linon if there was anything it could do to ensure a price drop at competitors was resolved permanently and wouldn’t happen again. In response, Linon agreed to remove inventory from the competitor.
and
The unredacted filing also alleges that Amazon trains employees to obscure written evidence of price-fixing efforts. An Amazon price training tells employees to “not use email” if “you need to refer to specific example, when negotiating incremental price match funding, or to highlight activities in the channel,” per the filing.
It’s so much more than just prices. Amazon’s bullying in the retail space is mafia-grade: threats, armtwisting, cover ups, coercion, extortion, and normalizing criminal activity at all levels.
“The fact that so many major retailers were implicated in this scheme should give every participant in this economy pause,” Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, told Retail Dive. “We tend to talk about Amazon as having an adverse effect on thousands of smaller third-party sellers on the platform, but when you see that Amazon’s conduct is coercing very large retailers, including Levi’s and Hanes, that is a new dimension to the scale of Amazon’s harm.”
@dwat0870 thank you for sharing! I moved this topic out of Amazon because it involves many ecommerce channels. To comply with News for Ecomm Sellers formatting, I removed your title Amazon price fixing lawsuit is back in CA! and added the linked article title.
Prime Day appears as leverage for Amazon in two ways:
In one such case, Amazon directed vendor Scotts (a manufacturer of lawn/garden products) to “reach out to the retailer that we are price matching to and have them raise their prices, even if it is just for the 3 days leading up to [Prime Day].”
In addition to monetary demands, Amazon uses other methods to coerce vendors to increase prices, including threatening to remove products from its website, either through temporary suppression,77 longer-term CRaP, or permanent de-listing;78 threatening to block access to promotions like Prime Day, remove access to advertising and other favorable placement on its website; and/or imposing other unfavorable terms related to shipping or returns.79
The unredacted filing also alleges that Amazon trains employees to obscure written evidence of price-fixing efforts. An Amazon price training tells employees to “not use email” if “you need to refer to specific example, when negotiating incremental price match funding, or to highlight activities in the channel,” per the filing.
Might this tie into the email option no longer being available when contacting Seller Support?
