Public Citizen, an American association of consumers accuses figures in support of Amazon of having inflated the price of certain basic necessities, including masks "sold by Amazon". However, the platform regularly speaks out against this practice.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the American consumers' association Public Citizen in the United States analyzed the price evolution of a dozen basic necessities - both sold by third parties and directly by Amazon. And the finding is rather overwhelming: between May and August, the price of certain products literally exploded - even though it seems totally against the rules of the platform.
Amazon is fighting opportunistic price hikes, and yet ...
Since the start of the pandemic, however, Amazon has regularly spoken out on the subject. For example, revealing that many third-party sellers had to be banned from the site for opportunistically inflating their prices. Where the Public Citizen report is very embarrassing is that it shows that the increases also concerned products which are marked "Sold by Amazon".
The increases for these products whose price was supposed to remain stable, reports Public Citizen, could range from 48% for hydroalcoholic gel to 1000% (from $ 4 to $ 39.99) for boxes of 50 disposable Amazon masks. The Consumers Union also talks about toilet paper rolls sold by eight "flashed" for $ 36.39 on Amazon in June compared to $ 6.89 at other sellers. Or an antibacterial soap sold for up to $ 7 when the product was only sold $ 1.49 a few months earlier (+ 470%).
Third-party sellers in the marketplace are not left out, with again many increases. Public Citizen thus cites increases of up to 274% for antibacterial soap and up to 941% for flour. The report also dwells on the difficulty of realizing these slippages. It is still difficult to know the exact evolution of the prices of certain products over time, except when monitoring a panel directly or if the prices are tracked by extensions like Keepa.
Force platforms like Amazon to be more transparent
It happens that listings are deleted and replaced by slightly different products making the comparison and any follow-up more complex. Public Citizen calls on the authorities to force platforms like Amazon to be more transparent. Their wish would be that, ideally, Amazon displays a history next to its prices, and that the platform stop muddying the waters by creating new listings to replace existing listings.
In a statement taken up by The Verge, Amazon denies having surfed the pandemic. The platform nevertheless admits "a small number of pricing errors" and says it has removed "more than a million offers that attempted to inflate prices" as well as more than 10,000 accounts of third-party sellers. And to add: "we have forwarded the most serious cases to the state and federal authorities of the country to be held accountable […] we continue to actively monitor our store and remove offers that violate our policies" .
Amazon has repeatedly said in the past that there is "no room for opportunistic price hikes" on the site, including for products sold directly by the company. Finally, let us note in conclusion that the price increases noted by Public Citizen are the result of an investigation on the American site. To date, there are no similar analyzes of foreign sites, in particular around the prices charged by the Amazon France platform.