California is stepping up its legal fight against Amazon, accusing the tech giant of running a broad price fixing scheme that quietly drove up online prices while preserving Amazon’s reputation as the cheapest place to shop. In a new filing, Attorney General Rob Bonta is asking a San Francisco Court for a preliminary injunction to immediately halt the alleged conduct as the state’s antitrust case advances toward a January 2027 trial.
How the Alleged Scheme Worked
According to the motion, discovery in California’s 2022 lawsuit has produced countless interactions in which Amazon, its vendors, and rival retailers allegedly agreed to raise prices or pull lower priced listings from competing sites. Investigators say that, time and again, Amazon contacted vendors after spotting lower prices elsewhere and, under threat of dire consequences, pushed them either to raise prices on competitors’ websites, temporarily remove cheaper offers, or delist products entirely so that Amazon…
could maintain higher price points without losing sales. There are three main patterns in the motion.
First, when Amazon and a rival were price matching in ways that pushed prices down, either Amazon or the competitor, working through a shared vendor, would agree to increase the retail price or make the product temporarily unavailable, allowing the other to match a new, higher market price and increase what consumers paid.
Second, when a competing retailer discounted a product, that rival would later raise its price at Amazon’s request, communicated via the vendor, so that Amazon could follow the increase and again raise the price shoppers paid.
Third, in cases where a rival offered a lower price than Amazon, vendors allegedly removed the product from the competing site, eliminating the cheaper option so Amazon could raise its own price without fear of being undercut. Bonta’s Sharp Criticism of Amazon In a strongly worded statement, Attorney General Bonta said, “My office has uncovered evidence that Amazon bullied vendors to hike up the price of their products sold at other shops, or secured the removal of these products altogether, to ensure Amazon was the cheapest place…
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