Amazon and Small Business

• Amazon’s monopoly has allowed it to raise fees on third-party sellers by 11% from 2015 to 2020. Additionally, Amazon uses data from its third-party sellers to launch competing products and undercut the work of small businesses. Third-party sellers have reported that Amazon can arbitrarily suspend their accounts, leading to a “death knell.” Because of this, some third-party sellers fear retaliation from Amazon.
• In 2018, Amazon and Apple struck a deal that led to the removal of repair shops selling refurbished Apple products on Amazon, harming “hundreds if not thousands” of small repairers. Apple made repair shops pay to become “authorized service providers” and has lobbied against right-to-repair legislation.