The Competition Bureau is taking further steps in its investigation into Amazon to determine if the online seller’s rules for sellers on the platform are an abuse of dominance under the Competition Act, the agency said on Tuesday.
According to the bureau, they’re investigating the Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy, which allows Amazon to penalize sellers for some actions — including if they list an item for sale at a price that’s considerably higher than a recent price that item had been offered at, either on Amazon or elsewhere.
The goal of the investigation is to determine if the policy forces sellers to charge customers more than they otherwise would for a product, or if it prevents competition by keeping sellers from listing their products for lower prices elsewhere.
Third-party sellers have to agree to the fair pricing policy, which was first instituted in 2017, as a condition of selling their products on Amazon.
The agency says they have obtained a court order that requires Amazon to hand over records and relevant information for the investigation. There is no conclusion of wrongdoing at this time, the Competition Bureau says.
The Competition Bureau previously opened an investigation into Amazon looking to determine if some of the company’s marketing practices violate deceptive marketing rules. That investigation also hasn’t found any wrongdoing at this time.
The Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. has also investigated Amazon for multiple reasons, including looking into whether or not Amazon has an illegal monopoly.
The new court order comes on the first day of Amazon Prime Day (which this year stretches from July 8 to 11), an annual event where Prime members get access to big discounts on the selling platform.
