BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s antitrust authority opened an investigation into Amazon’s citations with third-party investors promoting on its site, its official said Sunday.
“Lately we are reading and how Amazon influences the way investors set costs in the market,” Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartels Office, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
Germany is Amazon’s largest market after the United States.
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many retail outlets were closed and buyers flocked, Mundt said there had been court cases in which Amazon had blocked some merchants because prices were supposedly too high.
“Amazon is not a worthwhile driver,” he said, adding that Amazon had responded to data requests from his workplace and that those statements were being evaluated.
Not without delay in the place of work of the poster to make comments.
An Amazon spokeswoman said the company’s policies were designed for its partners to set competitive prices.
“Amazon’s sales partners set the value of their own products in our store,” she said.”Our systems are designed to take action opposed to abuse of value,” he said, adding that those with considerations deserve to touch their team by their traders.
Until 2013, Amazon had prevented merchants from offering their products through other online sites at a value lower than that of its market, a German antitrust surveillance policy forced it to abandon.
Last year, Amazon reached an agreement with the German government to review its terms of service for outside traders, which led the office to abandon an investigation of the past seven months.
Reports by Emma Thomasson; Editing through Tothrough Chopra and Barbara Lewis
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