- United States
- Colo.
- Letter
I'm writing as a constituent to urge action on Amazon's anticompetitive pricing practices, which raise costs for consumers and squeeze small businesses nationwide. Recent reporting and litigation have surfaced internal evidence of a clear pattern:
Price parity coercion: Amazon pressures suppliers to raise prices on other retail sites whenever they undercut Amazon, even by pennies, as California's Attorney General has documented with internal emails.
Buy Box retaliation: Sellers with a lower price anywhere else, including their own website, can lose Amazon's "Buy Box," instantly losing the majority of their sales.
Escalating fees: Amazon's cut of third-party sales has grown from roughly 20% to 50% over the past decade, preventing sellers from lowering prices even if they wanted to.
Algorithmic price matching: Amazon's pricing algorithms match competitors' price cuts instantly, discouraging price competition and inflating prices market-wide.
These practices are central to the FTC's ongoing monopolization case against Amazon (joined by 18 states, trial set for February 2027) and California's separate state lawsuit. The bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act, reintroduced in the Senate in 2026, would directly address this kind of self-preferencing conduct.
I'm asking you to do one of the following, and let me know which: A) if you already support this legislation or these enforcement actions, confirm your support and tell me what you're doing to advance it; or B) if not, please co-sponsor or introduce legislation curbing platform price coercion and strengthening antitrust enforcement against dominant online marketplaces.
This is not a minor technicality — it affects prices and fair competition for millions of consumers and small businesses. I'd appreciate a written response.