5 Things Amazon Sellers MUST KNOW about Amazon’s Fair Market Pricing Policy
Here are the top five things you need to know about when it comes to price gouging, and you got to stay with me to the very end because the fifth one is the most important. It has to do with criminal liability.
Number one. With 100% certainty, Amazon is turning your information over to state’s attorney generals, they’re turning over your name, your address, your phone number, your email address, the actual sales, where they were sold both within your own state and outside your state. I have seen the data. Amazon is giving the attorney general’s information about you that could result in criminal charges.
Number two. In addition to turning over information about your sales in your home state, Amazon is turning over information about your sales to other states. If you are located in New York, your state attorney general has authority over things that occurred in your state, but Amazon’s not stopping there, they’re turning over your sales all over the United States, outside of your state. Where that liability is going to end up, I don’t know, but I can tell you this, Amazon is turning over information about you in specific detail to your state attorney general about your sales in the state and outside of your state.
Number three. Amazon is not, of course, turning information over about itself. I’ve spoken with several state attorney generals and not a single one has received any information about Amazon retail sales. And you know as an Amazon seller, your number one competitor is Amazon itself, so they are turning over your information but keeping their own sales to itself.
Number four. Repricing software. Repricing software is a huge source of price gouging accusations both on Amazon and also outside of Amazon by your state attorney generals. If you’re using repricing software, you have to lower your ceiling, you may even consider getting away from the repricers for now, but you certainly don’t want an automated system setting your prices so high that your account gets suspended or that a state attorney general comes knocking on your door.
Number five. This is the most important thing you need to know about price gouging, just like intellectual property right issues, you cannot use a non-lawyer to write a plan of action when it comes to a price gouging accusation. We have seen non-lawyers write plans of action where you are admitting to criminal liability. What you write in your plan of action, we expect to be turned over to state attorney generals, and if you had someone else write a POA who didn’t realize that you might have some criminal liability, who can’t read a price gouging statute in your state, then you may be opening the door up to some awful experiences.
We have been able to persuade each and every attorney general, at least so far, not to proceed with actual criminal charges against our clients.
If you have been accused of violating Amazon’s fair market pricing policy, you need to write a plan of action that does not admit criminal liability. If you’ve been contacted by your state’s attorney general, you need to count on the fact that they know about each and every one of your sales, the prices that you were charging, and you need to take it extremely seriously.
If you want to learn more, email me, call me, text me, chat with me: 1-877-9-SELLER.
We are available to sellers seven days a week from the beginning of business on Monday in New York to the close of business on Friday in California, plus Saturdays, plus Sundays. We are here for sellers.