Amazon quietly ends controversial pricing agreements with sellers

Amazon will no longer require its third-party sellers to price their products lower than on other competing websites

It quietly eliminated a clause in its contracts that critics have called anti-competitive.

Price parity agreements, or most-favored nations clauses (MFNs), were formerly used by Amazon in contracts with third-party sellers to ensure that people selling products on the platform did not sell the same products for cheaper on any other platform like eBay or Alibaba, reports The Verge.

Amazon declined to comment.

A few years ago, regulators in Germany and Great Britain investigated this practice and it was dropped in Europe. The threat of regulation or impending investigations might be at fault for causing Amazon to drop MFNs in the United States as well. Last December, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) penned letters to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission demanding an investigation into these anti-competitive provisions in Amazon’s contracts.

“Amazon’s wise and welcome decision comes only after aggressive advocacy and attention that compelled Amazon to abandon its abusive contract clause,” Blumenthal said Monday. “I remain deeply troubled that federal regulators responsible for cracking down on anti-competitive practices seem asleep at the wheel, at great cost to American innovation and consumers.”

Last week, presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rolled out a sweeping proposal to break up big tech companies like Apple, Amazon and Google, and announced that it would be one of her top priorities as president, reports TechSpot.

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