Amazon’s top executives allegedly made donations to the chair in charge of investigating the eCommerce giant, CNBC reported on Sunday. The donations were reportedly made two months before lawmakers were planning to interrogate Amazon as part of a bigger antitrust probe that also involved Apple, Facebook and Google. The main benefactor of the campaign funds […]
Lawmakers want to know how Amazon determines which products receive its “Amazon’s Choice” badge. In a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal expressed concern that the eCommerce giant could be leading consumers into buying “inferior” products. Their comments come after a recent report showed the […]
The US Postal Service (USPS) reported a decline in package shipping for the third quarter of fiscal 2019. According to a press release, while the agency saw an increase in total revenue for the period — US$17.1 billion, which is a boost of US$16 million — it was essentially flat compared to the same quarter […]
Merchants who sell their products on both Amazon and Walmart are complaining about the pressure they’re getting from Amazon to raise their prices on Walmart. As Bloomberg has reported, Amazon scans rivals’ prices to see if they’re lower, and if it finds a cheaper product on a site such as Walmart.com, the eCommerce giant sends […]
US-based companies like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix have been targeting the video streaming market in India. Walmart could be the latest to join the fray. According to Bloomberg, Walmart’s Indian e-commerce company Flipkart will soon add a free streaming video service for some members on its platform. Flipkart Plus loyalty members can expect the […]
Amazon is exploring the purchase of a 26% stake in Reliance Retail, India’s biggest brick-and-mortar retailer. Owned by Reliance Industries, Reliance Retail had an unsuccessful meeting with China’s Alibaba Group, which then sparked talks with Amazon, two senior industry executives told The Economic Times on Thursday, August 1. Talks with Alibaba tanked due to valuation […]
Realogy announced Tuesday, July 23, that it had entered a partnership with Amazon dubbed Turnkey, a new homebuying program through which homebuyers will receive up to US$5,000 in complimentary Amazon products and services on move-in, courtesy of the brokerage giant. “When we designed TurnKey, we recognized that ‘closing’ on a home is really just the […]
Facebook and Amazon have been spending big to influence government policy on Capitol Hill. Each company has spent around US$4 million on lobbying in the second quarter of 2019, reported CNBC. Another tech giant, Google, spent much less, at US$2.9 million for the quarter. Apple was the lowest spender in the pack, at US$1.8 million […]
The EU’s Competition Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon to investigate whether the company is using sales data to gain an unfair advantage over smaller sellers on the Marketplace platform. The Commission stated it will look into Amazon’s agreements with marketplace sellers, as well as how Amazon uses data to choose which […]
Amazon struck a deal with Germany and Austria to shut down antitrust probes into how it handles other merchants on its site, just as it faces a bigger European Union investigation into its use of sellers’ data, reported Bloomberg. The US retail giant will change its business services agreement worldwide in mid-August to address a […]