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The plans with the Amazon logo are transported to a packaging station of an Amazon redistribution center in Horn-Bad Meinberg, West Germany, December 9, 2024.
Ina Fassbender | AFP | Getty images
German antitrust regulators have warned Amazon On Monday, that the company’s pricing mechanisms for third -party sellers could submit to competition laws.
The office of the Federal Cartel said In its preliminary assessment according to which Amazon prices controls limit the visibility of merchant products and, “depending on non -transparent market rules,” interferes with their freedom to set prices.
Amazon uses algorithms and statistical models to calculate certain price ceilings for products, said the cartel office. The products which are reported as having “too high prices” or “prices which are not competitive” can then be demoted in the search results, excluded from advertising or deleted from the purchasing box, they added.
The purchase box is the list that appears first when a visitor clicks on a particular product, and the one purchased when a buyer taps “add to the basket”.
“Competition in online retail in Germany is largely determined by Amazon’s rules for the trading platform,” said Federal Cartel Office, Andreas Mundt, in a press release. “Given that Amazon competes directly with other market retailers on its platform, influencing the prices of competitors, even in the form of price ceilings, is fundamentally questionable from the point of view of competition.”
Amazon’s pricing practices threaten not only sellers’ companies, but could also affect other retailers by dissuading them from offering lower prices, said the cartel office.
A spokesman for Amazon said that the company did not agree with the preliminary conclusions of the cartel office. They added that all the changes in Amazon pricing mechanisms would be “bad for customers and the sale of partners”.
“If Amazon is prevented from helping people find offers at competitive prices, this will lead to bad shopping experience for them, because we must promote non-competitive or even abusive prices in our store,” the spokesman said in a statement. “This would mislead customers by thinking that they get good value when, in reality, this is not the case.”
Amazon can provide comments to the cartel office on its preliminary assessment before making a final decision.
Amazon in 2022 concluded an agreement with the antitrust regulators of the European Union who investigated its use of the seller’s data and bought box practices. As part of the regulations, Amazon has agreed to display a second purchase box on products sold in Europe when there is a second different competing offer on the price or delivery.
The Federal Trade American Commission is also investigating the use by Amazon of pricing algorithms on its vast third -party market as part of a large -scale antitrust trial tabled in 2023. Amazon said the FTC complaint was “wrong about the facts and the law”.
The case is expected to be tried in October 2026.
