Amazon sellers are also breaking the rules by banding together! ? Some have already been arrested and sentenced!

Recently, three sellers were detained by Amazon and the police. The reason was that the three companies colluded with each other? The mastermind also faces up to 10 years in prison! How can you accidentally get yourself into trouble by being an Amazon seller?

According to the documents, several Amazon sellers in the same category have long been working together to monopolize the products in this category on Amazon in terms of price and products, so that consumers can only find the products of these sellers when searching for such products. At the same time, using this monopoly position, several sellers began to raise prices simultaneously, forcing consumers to pay more fees. They are suspected of making illegal profits of more than 1.46 million US dollars!

The collusion between peers to eliminate internal competition and drive up prices in the industry is essentially a standard definition of monopoly. The reason why Amazon and the police arrested these sellers was because they violated the antitrust law. Even Amazon, as a platform, cannot escape the sanctions of the antitrust law. If a few small sellers are really caught by this crime, they will definitely suffer a lot.

But the question is, the amount involved in the case of these three sellers is not much, how can they form a monopoly? How to determine the monopoly category? There are so many subcategories now, maybe there are only two or three sellers in some unpopular small categories. If the competitors withdraw, won’t I become a monopoly?

After Amazon changed its leader in 2021, the compliance measures have become more and more ruthless. Our domestic sellers have a very complicated attitude towards their peers. Some believe that their peers are enemies and keep their distance and engage in intrigue. But at the same time, many peers have formed small circles and share what they have when they encounter problems. To a certain extent, they can even raise prices together. There are many such cases in China. Will this be considered a monopoly and a high-risk operation?

This is actually quite strange. Some top sellers can actually achieve substantial monopoly in certain small categories by themselves, but no one says anything. Both Amazon and law enforcement agencies basically acquiesce. But when it comes to small and medium-sized sellers, they can just squeeze you, no matter how much, as long as they block Amazon's own financial path, then they're done.

As for our domestic sellers, Amazon and domestic agencies have not yet reached the antitrust law. Some service providers or sellers that are jointly arrested must be based on relevant domestic laws and regulations, such as fake orders, reselling personal information, etc. As we all know, my country's antitrust law enforcement was basically laissez-faire before 2020. Alibaba was sanctioned for antitrust violations that year, which was the first in Chinese history. So even if Amazon reaches out to China, it cannot use the name of antitrust to target sellers.

However, this does not prevent Amazon from using fair pricing strategies to remove sellers' products or stores. This is really a good policy. During the 2020 epidemic, this policy was used to remove a large number of epidemic supplies. In a market economy, with a serious imbalance between supply and demand, it is normal for masks and other products to rise in price. But Amazon doesn't care. If you set the price too high, they will accuse you of price gouging, and it is common for them to remove products without permission.