{"id":86569,"date":"2017-07-24T08:57:24","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T12:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techvibes.com\/?p=86569"},"modified":"2017-07-24T08:56:34","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T12:56:34","slug":"federal-trade-commission-investigating-amazon","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/magazine\/federal-trade-commission-investigating-amazon","title":{"rendered":"Federal Trade Commission Investigating Amazon Over Misleading Price Discounts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that Amazon tricks consumers with misleading discounts.<\/p>\n<p>The move, part of the FTC&#8217;s review of <a href=\"https:\/\/borndigital.com\/2017\/06\/16\/amazon-is-buying-whole-foods-in-a-deal-valued-at-13-7-billion\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon&#8217;s agreement to buy Whole Foods<\/a>, follows a complaint by\u00a0Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that found more than half of product prices online showed false regular prices.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon countered, stating Consumer Watchdog&#8217;s study was &#8220;deeply flawed,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-whole-foods-m-a-amazon-ftc-idUSKBN1A52R5\" target=\"_blank\">reports Reuters<\/a>, insisting that reference prices are validated &#8220;by manufacturers, vendors and sellers against actual prices recently found across Amazon and other retailers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first time Amazon has been called out for deceptive discounting. Earlier this year, Amazon settled a similar allegation with Canada&#8217;s Competition Bureau. The ecommerce giant <a href=\"https:\/\/borndigital.com\/2017\/01\/13\/amazon-fined-for-tricking-consumers-misleading-pricing\" target=\"_blank\">paid a fine of $1 million<\/a>\u2014a drop in the ocean for a company whose annual revenue is now in the hundreds of billions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Bureau\u2019s investigation concluded that these claims created the impression that prices for items offered on Amazon.ca were lower than prevailing market prices,\u201d the Bureau <a href=\"https:\/\/borndigital.com\/2017\/01\/13\/amazon-fined-for-tricking-consumers-misleading-pricing\" target=\"_blank\">said in January<\/a>, which goes against Amazon&#8217;s current claim. \u201cThe Bureau determined that Amazon relied on its suppliers to provide list prices without verifying that those prices were accurate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Consumer Watchdog wants Amazon&#8217;s acquisition of Whole Foods to be put on hold until the company ceases its misleading practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that Amazon tricks consumers with misleading discounts. The move, part of the FTC&#8217;s review of Amazon&#8217;s agreement to buy Whole Foods, follows a complaint by\u00a0Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that found more than half of product prices online showed false regular prices. Amazon countered, stating Consumer Watchdog&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55555,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[65,133,780],"magazine-region":[],"magazine-series":[],"magazine-topic":[],"class_list":["post-86569","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","hentry","category-News","tag-amazon","tag-ecommerce","tag-investigation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/86569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/magazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/55555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine\/86569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86569"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-region?post=86569"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-series?post=86569"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brainstation.io\/wp\/api\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=86569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}