The Evil Side Of Amazon

Amazon's dark side defines the business it is engaged in.

March 11, 2021, Los Angeles, CA - Amazon's unchecked monopoly power is leaving a tsunami of destruction on Amazon third-party sellers, bullied retail partners, manufacturers, and deceived consumers. Allegations of stealing from its employees, fake product reviews and blocked feedback, along with improperly using third-party data for its strategy for developing and selling its own private-label products contribute to its nefarious business profile. The e-commerce giant has grown into a global juggernaut of fraud, scams, counterfeits, replicas, and false claims.

Amazon is a mercenary with a strategy to own the infrastructure that other businesses rely on to get to market through three channels: Amazon's retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. The result is a destructive retail apocalypse that is gaining a stranglehold on retail that is destroying competition and eroding jobs.

As retailers go out of business, small businesses feel they must use Amazon to sell their wares while Amazon charges them fees for selling and for advertising. Amazon can treat sellers in this manner because it knows that sellers have no other realistic alternatives to its platform. "Amazon Marketplace is like Hotel California, a lovely place to start or expand an online retail business, but check out from Amazon Marketplace, and you can quickly find your business in bankruptcy" -- Amazon seller.

Amazon isn't just listing products on its website; it's on a quest to sell all things to all people through merchandise and pharmaceutical sales, personal data mining, entertainment, and company takeovers. The allegations against Amazon range from the individual (the mistreatment of workers and differential pricing to customers), the market (anti-competitive behavior including the suppression of competitor products), and social (tax avoidance) -- suggest an organization that not only lacks a moral compass but could be well on its way to a state of ‘profound immorality’ says Professor Sarah Kaine

• Amazon is facing up to $36 billion in fines after Europe’s antitrust regulators charged Amazon with violating competition law. The U.S. has lagged far behind, allowing e-commerce sites to operate virtually immune to product liability claims and destructive anti-competitive behavior. There is no incentive for Amazon to stop -- they make too much money.
• An Indian retailer group calls for a ban on Amazon in country after a Reuters report
• Amazon remains on the U.S. Trade Representative's "Notorious Market List" for a second year. The list is reserved for the worst online markets and offenders that enable and facilitate the world's largest criminal enterprise; counterfeit product sales, copyright piracy, and trademark infringement. Amazon has the distinction of being the first and only U.S. company to be added to the list.
• About 50% of Amazon products come from China, assisted by fake review companies (almost always in China) that open hundreds or thousands of fake Amazon accounts known as “zombie accounts.
• An astonishing 500,000 brand-owners are fighting Amazon counterfeits. Trademark-owner complaints are often ignored, or sellers simply relist.
• Amazon's self-preferencing predatory pricing and exclusionary conduct exploits their power to become even more dominant and unaccountable to anyone but themselves, while ravaging dozens of businesses.
• Amazon recently engaged a policy banning books containing undefined "hate speech" and banned selected movies from Prime and its stores. Several Dr. Suess books and When Harry Became Sally disappeared from Amazon.
• Amazon was served with a federal class-action lawsuit in September 2020 as a direct seller of fraudulent items while also facilitating third-party sales. Alarmingly, Amazon continues to list the fraudulent items, selling over 130,000, after notification to correct and remedy their deceptive marketing practices and fraudulent sales.

Amazon tops the list of "Most evil" tech companies -- those doing humanity the most harm, e.g. unauthorized surveillance, data dumps, and secretly selling us—yes, you and me -- as a commodity to other companies. (observer.com)

• CSRHub, an organization that rates the corporate responsibility of over 17,000 companies, gives Amazon a score of 48 out of 100. That's a pretty mediocre score, just one-point shy of an acceptable rating (over 50) and well short of a good one (60-79) or a great one (80-100).
• Amazon's competitor and Seattle neighbor Microsoft is No. 6 on the list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens. HP is No. 5, Apple is No. 95. But Amazon? It didn't make the list.

Amazon is aggressive about dodging taxes and getting everyone else to subsidize its inevitable growth through tax breaks. Amazon’s original business model involved legally dodging the obligation to collect sales taxes, and then using the resulting price advantage to gain market share. It did this by locating its first warehouses in very few states, most of which do not have a sales tax, and then shipping its goods to customers in all the other states that do tax retail sales. This enabled Amazon to not have “nexus” in sales-tax states, so those states could not compel it to collect the tax; Texas alone came after Amazon for $269 million in uncollected sales taxes. Gizmodo

The powers that be at Amazon have often attempted to sweep these stories under the rug, but with social media and the Internet, squashing the stories has become difficult. After all, if there really are shady things going on inside Amazon, the public ought to know! Whistleblowers, step forward.

A final unsavory fact about Amazon is how they are rumored to treat employees. Employees often speak of being treated no better than robots, are uncompensated for overtime, and aren’t allowed to have bathroom breaks. On top of that, Amazon has also pushed many of its third-party delivery drivers to the breaking point, as Business Insider previously reported.

• Amazon needs to pay back nearly $62 million in drivers' tips that it skimmed over the years, says the FTC. "While we disagree that the historical way we reported pay to drivers was unclear, we added additional clarity in 2019 and are pleased to put this matter behind us," an Amazon spokesperson told CBS News.
• California regulators fined Amazon and its delivery contractor $6.4 million for stealing wages from drivers

The fines may seem massive at first glance, but they are not even rounding errors to the global giant that paid no federal income tax on $11.2 billion in profit in 2018 and a 1.2% tax rate on a $13.3 billion profit in 2019. Amazon even received a $129 million tax rebate from the federal government, mostly thanks to a tax overhaul in 2017, CNBC reported.

The House Judiciary Committee recently published its bipartisan investigation into the state of big-tech competitive practices, including Amazon. The results of the investigation are shocking, concluding, "Our economy and democracy are at stake." By controlling access to markets, the tech giants can pick winners and losers throughout our economy. They not only wield tremendous power, but they also abuse it by charging exorbitant fees, imposing oppressive contract terms, and extracting valuable data from the people and businesses that rely on them. They have surveilled other companies to identify potential rivals, and have ultimately bought out, copied, or cut off their competitive threats.

Regulators and politicians say its tactics are unfair for a company its size and potentially illegal. Amazon executives often initiated efforts like these on their own, though in some cases examined by The Wall Street Journal, Jeff Bezos himself was involved, according to former Amazon executives and internal emails. Jeff Bezos has announced he is stepping down as Amazon CEO, senior VP Jeff Wilke and several other executives retired.

While Congress is engaged in partisan bickering, America is being destroyed by China, unregulated e-commerce, and big tech. Amazon may be just another massive corporate entity to feel a vague sense of guilt about giving your money to, but you have a choice.

Additional research material:

The Heavy Hand of Amazon: A Seller Not A Neutral Platform
Edward J. Janger & Aaron D. Twerski,
14 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 259 (2020).

How Amazon Wins: By Steam rolling Rivals and Partners
Dana Mattioli, The Wall Street Journal