Independent UK retailers have launched their biggest ever class-action lawsuit with a £1bn damages claim against Amazon, which they claim has been driving them out of its online marketplace.
The lawsuit, brought by around 35,000 sellers and led by the British Independent Retailers Association (Bira), claims that between October 2015 and today, Amazon used non-public data belonging to retailers to inform the launch of its own rival products.
It also alleges that Amazon manipulated access to its “buy box”where the majority of sales are made on the platform, to divert shoppers away from independent retailers towards its own items.
Bira said that Amazon was already charging its members a “non-negotiable 30% commission for each product sold on the site” and claims that by “misusing its proprietary data to bring to market rival products that sell more cheap, Amazon is effectively pushing many of the UK’s independent retailers out of the market.”
“The consequences of Amazon’s abusive behavior have been to inflate its profits and harm the UK retail sector, especially smaller independent retailers who are struggling at a time of difficult economic circumstances,” the trade body said.
Bira said he would file more than 1,150 pages of documents with the Competition Appeal Tribunal (Cat) in London setting out the claim against Amazon.
Andrew Goodacre, chief executive of Bira, said: “One might ask: why would an independent retailer use Amazon if it is so detrimental to their business? We have actually seen a significant change in consumer purchasing behavior and if small businesses want to sell online, Amazon is the dominant marketplace in the UK.
“As a result, for small retailers with limited resources, Amazon is the marketplace to start trading online.”
An Amazon spokesperson said: “We have not seen this complaint, but based on reports so far, we are confident that it is baseless and will be exposed in the legal process. Over 100,000 small and medium sized businesses in the UK sell on the Amazon store, over half of all physical product sales in our UK store come from independent selling partners and the fact is that we are only successful when companies we work with are successful. “
In 2022, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into whether Amazon had been giving its own brands and those who used its logistics services an unfair advantage over third-party rivals in its market.
The UK investigation, and a similar investigation by the EU Commission, came after a series of reports alleging that Amazon used data from third-party sellers to copy products.
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In November last year, the investigation was closed after the company agreed to give independent sellers a fair chance to have their offers appear in the site’s “buy box.” He had until May 3 to apply that directive.
Amazon was also prevented from using market data it obtains from third-party sellers to give itself an unfair competitive advantage and agreed to allow sellers to negotiate their delivery rates directly with third-party suppliers.
Amazon had already made similar commitments in December 2022 in response to the EU investigation.