Newly unsealed records reveal Amazon’s price-fixing tactics, California attorney general claims | Amazon

Hundreds of pre-redacted records reveal how Amazon pressures independent sellers using its platform to raise their prices on the sites of rivals such as Walmart and Target, California authorities allege; so it may appear that Amazon has lower prices.

The global conglomerate became concerned if a competitor sold a product for as little as a penny, according to a portion of the new unredacted evidence.

The never-before-reported documents include internal emails, deposition statements and confidential corporate presentations obtained by California attorney general Rob Bonta’s office as part of a civil lawsuit it launched in 2022. accuses Amazon’s large-scale price fixing.

The Guardian obtained and reviewed the evidence, which was filed in the San Francisco county superior court but has not yet been made public. In the documents, California state attorneys revealed important details, paragraphs and sometimes entire pages that had previously been blacked out. A judge allowed some corrections to remain at Amazon’s request.

Bonta said in a statement that the newly revealed evidence strengthens his office’s claims that Amazon’s actions “unlawfully penalize sellers whose products are sold at lower prices by other online retailers.”

“There is no room for illegal practices that stifle competition and raise prices, especially as consumers face an affordability crisis,” Bonta said. “California looks forward to our hearing in January 2027.”

Amazon called the allegations in the lawsuit “completely false and misguided.”

The government alleges that Amazon has for years used automated tools to monitor how independent sellers on its platform priced their products on rival sites, then leveraged its dominant position in e-commerce to ensure those prices did not fall below those on Amazon, even though Amazon often charged sellers much higher fees.

The state’s lawsuit alleges that Amazon penalizes sellers who dare to offer discounts on its own site or rival sites like Walmart, suppressing sales on Amazon by denying sellers access to critical features like the site’s “Buy Box” (the panel on the right side of the site where customers see buttons like “add to cart” and “buy now”).

In a previously redacted deposition marked “highly confidential,” Mayer Handler, owner of a clothing company called Leveret, testified that in October 2022 he received an email from Amazon informing him that one of his products was “no longer eligible to be a featured offer” through Amazon’s Buy Box.

According to his testimony, the tech giant was selling the tiger-themed toddler pajama set for a dime more than the price it was offering at Walmart because his company was selling it for $19.99 on Amazon.

A. Amazon — The price on Amazon was higher than the price on Walmart.
Q. So how high is it?
A. A penny.

Handler then testified that his company “altered prices at Walmart to match or exceed Amazon’s price” or changed the product’s product code to bypass Amazon’s price tracking system.

We changed Walmart’s price to match or exceed Amazon’s price. Or we changed the code.

In response to a question from the Guardian, Handler criticized Amazon for tracking prices online and “shadowing” his company’s products; He said these tactics deprive consumers of “low prices.”

“Maybe that’s what capitalism is,” he wrote. “Or it’s a monopoly that causes price increases on the consumer.”

In another blunt statement, Terry Esbenshade, a garden store supplier in Pennsylvania, stated that his sales on Amazon will drop by about 80% in October 2024 when his products lose Amazon’s Buy Box due to lower prices elsewhere on the internet. He said this financial reality forced him to raise the prices of his products with other retailers elsewhere.

In one instance, Esbenshade testified that he discovered one of his company’s best-selling patio tables had been “suppressed” on Amazon.

He recalled that Esbenshade didn’t know why until someone at Amazon suggested he look at Wayfair, another online retailer that was selling the patio table for less than Amazon’s price.

The businessman went online and set a new minimum advertising price to make sure the table at Wayfair was higher than Amazon’s.

“That increased the price, and voila, my product was back on Amazon,” thanks to the reinstatement of the Buy Box, he said.

Amazon has defended that their practices actually promote, encourage and reward competition. company in question It works to “ensure its customers see deals at low, competitive prices” and provide online shoppers with the “best possible” customer experience.

The company also denied trying to protect itself from competition through agreements with independent sellers.

In response to the government lawsuit, the company denies that “the purpose or effect of any agreement Amazon has with third-party sellers or providers is to protect itself from price competition” or “to solidify any ‘dominant’ position.”

But Bonta’s office said the new unregulated exhibits showed Amazon employees were proactively trying to undermine market competition and were aware of the effects of their actions on prices.

In one example alleged by the government, an Amazon engineer revealed that the company used Buy Box blocking and an internal program known as SC-FOD to undermine sellers’ desire to sell products on Temu, a rival e-commerce site.

map, FOD and leave Temu
But ye hua hai toh this is a big success for us
😄

In another example, a senior Amazon employee sent an internal email in August 2023 explaining how the company’s Buy Box blocks caused an Indiana-based home goods and furniture retailer to regularly raise its prices on other sites.

“When this happens, they claim to be looking for the lower price and when they find it, they raise it to match the price on Amazon,” the employee wrote in a confidential deposition read out loud last year.

Amazon, which recently surpassed Walmart, world’s largest company by revenueIt is America’s #1 online retailer by a wide margin.

Available on Amazon in late 2022 calculated According to figures compiled by , US e-commerce accounts for nearly half of retail spending, compared to less than 8% for its closest rival, Walmart. PYMTS.coman analysis firm. In the third quarter of 2025, Amazon captured 56% of online retail spending, compared to 9.6% for Walmart (PYMTS) to create.

Amazon did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s questions before publication. The Guardian will update this article when it receives a response.

The trial of the California attorney general’s lawsuit against Amazon is currently scheduled to begin on January 19, 2027.