Competition Bureau advances investigation into Amazon's pricing policy

CBC News

· Posted: Jul 08, 2025 10:44 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

The Competition Bureau is advancing an probe into Amazon to find if the online seller is "engaging successful behaviour that whitethorn beryllium an maltreatment of dominance," the bureau said on Tuesday.

According to the bureau, they're investigating the Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy, which allows Amazon to penalize sellers for immoderate actions — including if they database an point for merchantability astatine a terms that's considerably higher than a caller terms that point had been offered at, either connected Amazon oregon elsewhere.

The extremity of the probe is to find if the policy forces sellers to complaint customers much than they different would for a product, oregon if it prevents contention by keeping sellers from listing their products for little prices elsewhere.

The bureau says they person obtained a tribunal bid that requires Amazon to manus implicit records and applicable accusation for the investigation. There is nary decision of wrongdoing astatine this time, the Competition Bureau says.

The Competition Bureau antecedently opened an probe into Amazon successful 2021, looking to find if the company's selling practices mightiness beryllium deceptive. That probe besides hasn't recovered immoderate wrongdoing astatine this time.

The caller tribunal bid comes connected the archetypal time of Amazon Prime Day (which this twelvemonth stretches from July 8 to 11), an yearly lawsuit wherever Prime members get entree to large discounts connected the selling platform.