On Monday, 11 March, Amazon silently decided to stop telling third-party sellers to lower their prices on its website as compared to other online retailers, Reuters reported.
The price parity agreements that Amazon has let go of, were used to ensure that third-party sellers don’t sell products at a cheaper price anywhere else, online. This is being seen as a violation of the antitrust laws that the United States has put in place.
The decision, according to the Reuters report comes after Senator Richard Blumenthal, in a 19 December letter, argued to the Federal Trade Commission Chairman and Assistant Attorney General that the practice would stifle market competition and artificially inflate prices.
Blumenthal has also called for an investigation into antitrust violations and how they could affect the prices that consumers pay for goods, a CNN report said.
Few years ago, regulators in Germany and Britain investigated this practice and it was dropped in Europe.
Last week, presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren announced an antitrust proposal and said that if she’s elected in 2020, she will work to break up big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
(With inputs from Reuters and CNN.)
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