New seller terms worldwide after German antitrust action
Amazon made sweeping changes to its suspension policy for third-party sellers this week, following an intervention by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office.
As part of a settlement it reached with German antitrust authorities over its marketplace policies, Amazon said it will now give a 30-day notice to sellers facing suspensions and provide specific reasons to those who are blocked for “alleged legal infringements.” Until now, Amazon could terminate seller accounts at any time “without justification,” according to the agreement announced by The Federal Cartel Office of Germany, reports CNBC.
The changes will become effective August 16th
Third-party merchants now account for 58% of items sold on Amazon, up from 31% a decade ago, and produce higher margins than Amazon’s retail model.
But with millions of new sellers sourcing products from tons of unvetted manufacturers, counterfeits have flooded the marketplace, leading to a swarm of infringement claims. As Amazon has cracked down on the counterfeit problem by aggressively suspending abusers, many honest sellers have gotten kicked off as well.
Germany’s antitrust office wrote in the agreement that it looked into the suspension problem mainly because “numerous sellers complained about the unsubstantiated and surprising cancellations and resulting loss of turnover.”
More Amazon news
Major shutdowns in China due to new COVID outbreaks
Multiple companies in Zhejiang province have suspended operations due to COVID-19 outbreak, halting production of goods from batteries and clothing to textile dyes and plastics. Zhejiang is one of China's biggest and busiest manufacturing hubs. The local government...
Amazon is using sellers as a cash cow
Amazon collects a third of seller revenue A new study claims that Amazon makes far more from fees on its Marketplace platform than even the cash cow known as AWS, reports TechCrunch. According to the report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, sellers now give...
Inflation spreads to e-commerce
A recent report by Adobe shows that e-commerce is experiencing many of the same pricing pressures in the broader economy due to supply chain problems, higher shipping and labor costs. Online prices rose 1.9% in October from a year earlier and 0.9% from the previous...
