Overview
- Attorney General Rob Bonta asked a San Francisco judge for a preliminary injunction to halt conduct he says inflates prices for consumers.
- The motion describes countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and competing retailers agreed to raise prices or remove lower-priced listings on sites such as Walmart, Target, and eBay.
- The state outlines three recurring tactics: coordinated price hikes during price-matching, requests routed through vendors for rivals to raise prices so Amazon can match, and vendor pullbacks of products from competing sites.
- The filing says merchants who refused faced penalties including loss of the Buy Box or being cut off, and it seeks a court-appointed monitor to oversee compliance while the case proceeds.
- Amazon disputes the allegations in court papers as procompetitive and beneficial to consumers, with a trial scheduled for January 2027.