Following an investigation by the European Commission into Amazon’s potential breach of EU anti-trust regulations, the e-commerce giant has made commitments to improve its practises of allocating carriers to sellers and not using non-public data from sellers in its operations going forward.
As well as setting out terms for data protection, Amazon has committed to allowing Prime sellers to freely choose any carrier to oversee the logistics of delivering their products. It has also said that it will allow more direct contact between sellers and carriers.
These commitments have been accepted and made legally binding by the commission. It conducted market testing for the commitments between July and September, adding amendments where it felt necessary.
One of the amendments increased the duration of the commitments from five to seven years. Should Amazon breach the commitments set, the commission can impose a fine of ‘up to 10% of Amazon’s total annual turnover’.
