How Amazon's seller fees and pricing rules push up prices elsewhere
A plain-English walk through the mechanism at the center of the FTC's antitrust case.
Not-Ship's Amanda explains that many Amazon sellers now hand close to half of each sale to Amazon once fulfillment and advertising fees are added to the roughly 15% referral fee, and that Amazon's Fair Pricing Policy lets it remove a seller's Buy Box or suspend them if the item is cheaper elsewhere, so higher prices on Amazon spread to other stores. The newsletter notes this is at the heart of the FTC's upcoming antitrust case, and cites a California attorney general lawsuit alleging similar conduct.
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FTC v. Amazon
After exploring How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet, the case it describes is FTC v. Amazon.
The FTC's 2023 lawsuit, joined by 17 state attorneys general, alleging Amazon holds and abuses an online retail monopoly.
Wikipedia · Swim · 30 min
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