The American giant is accused of illegally promoting its products on the platform.
US internet giant Amazon is the subject of a £900 million lawsuit brought on behalf of millions of users in the UK, accusing it of illegally promote their products on your platform. The lawsuit is due to be filed at the end of October in London’s Competition Appeals Tribunal and will argue that the tech giant is abusing its dominant position and harming consumers, according to a statement published on Thursday.
The lawsuit, spearheaded by consumer rights activist Julie Hunter, claims that Amazon is inducing, through “a secret algorithm that promotes it”, users need to click on your section “buy box(shopping box). According to this press release, there are products sold directly by the platform or by third-party sellers.who pay huge storage and delivery costsfind yourself presented. “More than 80% of purchases on Amazon are made through the offers contained in the +Buy Box+“, but “many independent sellers are excluded even when they offer the same product for less“, according to the press release. In a statement received by AFP on Thursday, Amazon responds that the complaint is “unfounded» and that the e-commerce giant «always strives to support the 85,000 businesses that sell their products in (his) store in the UK“.”Over half of our physical product sales on our UK site come from independent seller partners“Add Amazon.
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In the sights of the European Commission
In July, Amazon had proposed an agreement to close two investigations by the European Commission, which it suspects of violating competition rules, in particular in the preferential treatment of sellers who use its delivery services. The platform is committed to guaranteeing a “equal treatment for all sellers” for the “buy box” Y “to display a second competing offerIn particular, it promised, as part of its Prime program, to allow sellers “freely choose any carrier» . The European Commission, which opened an investigation in July 2019, also criticizes Amazon for relying on trade data from independent retailers to gauge its own offer. However, no agreement has yet been reached and discussions are ongoing.
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In Italy, the competition police imposed a fine on Amazon in December 2021 of 1,128 million euros for having discriminated against sellers who had not used its logistics service. The firm appealed. US tech giants are frequently accused of breaching competition rules. Google was heavily sanctioned by the EU, for a cumulative total of 8 billion euros. Microsoft has also received several European sanctions for imposing its Internet Explorer browser on it. Apple has been accused since May 2022 of abuse of a dominant position in contactless payments.
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