A \u201cmodern leather\u201d table lamp, listed online at Walmart, shot up from $24.99 to $39.<\/p>\n
The price of an air fryer on a retail site called Newegg went from $84.99 to $149.99.<\/p>\n
An electric ice-cream maker was listed at just $17.99 at Amazon<\/a> and Best Buy. Then it became unavailable at Best Buy, and more than tripled in price to $59.99 at Amazon.<\/p>\n The price hikes and the product disappearances were not the blips of supply and demand \u2013 they were the results of behind-the-scenes pressure by Amazon, according to internal emails reviewed by the Guardian and court claims against the world\u2019s largest company.<\/p>\n For years, as many Americans have felt squeezed by the costs of basic consumer goods, Amazon has deployed a variety of techniques that have incentivized suppliers to push for higher product prices on other retailers\u2019 sites, California authorities claim in court.<\/p>\n In some internal emails, Amazon employees have flagged low product prices on rival retailers\u2019 sites as threats to Amazon\u2019s own profitability, and informed the products\u2019 suppliers that their sales on Amazon.com<\/a> have been cut \u2013 or might soon be cut \u2013 going forward.<\/p>\n Other emails describe Amazon slashing its product prices to match retail rivals like Walmart and Home Depot, then pushing suppliers to compensate it for the revenue lost due to these lower prices.<\/p>\n Chart of price increases to products after Amazon contacted suppliers<\/a><\/p>\n To escape this financial pressure, some suppliers have responded with a fast and cheap alternative: making sure the prices of their products are higher with Amazon\u2019s rivals, or pulling their products from those rivals altogether, according to internal records cited in litigation.<\/p>\n Over the last decade, Amazon has suppressed the sales of some suppliers\u2019 products or demanded millions of dollars in compensation from them because of the low prices of Amazon\u2019s retail rivals, according to a trove of internal company emails, presentations and notes reviewed by the Guardian, as well as interviews with 15 current or former Amazon supplier representatives, company employees and state and federal law enforcers.<\/p>\n The mass of internal Amazon records were obtained from Amazon by California\u2019s attorney general as part of a lawsuit that alleges the company has engaged in widespread price fixing, which is defined as arrangements among companies that seek to raise or otherwise control the prices of products or services.<\/p>\n The Guardian examined those records, as well as hundreds of pages of deposition testimony of current and former employees of Amazon and supplier companies. Most of the documents and depositions \u2013 which were partially unsealed in recent months \u2013 have never been publicly reported on.<\/p>\n The California attorney general, Rob Bonta, alleges that Amazon\u2019s tactics have coerced suppliers into raising the prices of their products with its rivals.<\/p>\n In the case of the ice-cream maker, Bonta\u2019s office points to emails that say Amazon temporarily took \u201cdown\u201d the supplier\u2019s inventory off its platform \u2013 a move that prompted its manufacturer, a firm called Maxi-Matic, to scramble to pull its inventory from Best Buy, eliminating Amazon\u2019s price competition from the electronics retailer.<\/p>\n By the end of that day, Amazon had put Maxi-Matic\u2019s product \u201cback live\u201d on Amazon.com and more than tripled its price, the records show.<\/p>\n Diagram of how the price of an ice cream maker increased<\/a><\/p>\n In the case of the air fryer, Amazon \u201csuppressed\u201d the product\u2019s sales on its platform and told its supplier that it would stop ordering several of its products for Amazon.com<\/a> \u2013 unless the supplier agreed to reimburse Amazon for revenues the online retailer had lost due to its practice of copying competitors\u2019 lower prices, according to emails revealed through the attorney general\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n This spurred the supplier, a kitchen appliance firm called Chefman, to move to secure a price increase for the air fryer at Target and an online retailer called Newegg as it hashed out an agreement to reimburse Amazon $100,000 on top of the $400,000 it had already given back, according to the emails.<\/p>\n Asked about the air fryer\u2019s price jump, Mark Friedman, Chefman\u2019s senior vice-president of global sales, told the Guardian: \u201cI can\u2019t talk to you because I still do business with Amazon and I don\u2019t want to bite the hand that feeds me.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s written responses to the Guardian did not respond to questions about these specific incidents. The company accuses the California attorney general of \u201cdistorting a handful of emails\u201d out of \u201cnearly one million vendor communications\u201d to \u201csuggest a far-reaching conspiracy among unspecified thousands of vendors and retailers\u201d.<\/p>\n Amazon says it works hard to protect customers from \u201cpaying too much\u201d and to negotiate economic terms that allow it \u201cto offer products at the competitive prices\u201d that \u201ccustomers expect from Amazon\u201d. It also says the California attorney general\u2019s suit is \u201casking the court to prevent Amazon from negotiating with its vendors to lower prices, likely leading to higher prices for Amazon\u2019s customers\u201d.<\/p>\n The incident involving the price hike for the leather table lamp, for example, was part of a broader exchange about dozens of products on Amazon.com<\/a> sourced from a New Jersey based supplier called All The Rages.<\/p>\n The email exchange shows that Amazon negotiated for cost decreases for many of the supplier\u2019s other products, ensuring lower prices for consumers on Amazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the messages also refer to raising the prices of other items sold by Amazon\u2019s competitors.<\/p>\n After Amazon reached out, an All The Rages employee named Joseph Martin replied that his company had \u201ccontacted\u201d various unnamed retailers \u201cto fix the retail\u201d and had seen an increase in retail prices \u201cfor a lot of the items already\u201d.<\/p>\n Two days later, Martin told Amazon that the lamp price at Walmart had increased from $24.99 to $39. \u201cWe should be good now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Martin told the Guardian that the lamp\u2019s price change \u201creflected the correction of a pricing error\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAny decision regarding retail pricing was made by Walmart and Amazon, so you would have to ask them about their pricing decisions,\u201d said Martin, who added that his company believes the California attorney general\u2019s claims \u201care without merit\u201d.<\/p>\n Amazon and Walmart declined to provide statements about this specific incident.<\/p>\n \u2018It seemed like he knew what was happening\u2019<\/p>\n While such tactics can generate savings for Amazon consumers, they can also raise prices for consumers shopping elsewhere, an effect that company employees on the ground were well aware of, according to supplier representatives as well as former Amazon employees who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n One former vendor manager, who worked at Amazon from 2022 to 2024 before getting laid off, said that on phone calls with suppliers he tried to be upfront about the fact that raising prices with Amazon\u2019s competitors could help them avoid demands that they compensate Amazon for lower-than-anticipated profit margins.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, if you can make sure this product doesn\u2019t continue to be sold at this lower price point, then we don\u2019t have to keep revisiting this discussion about margin,\u201d the former Amazon vendor manager recalled telling suppliers.<\/p>\n A former Amazon \u201ccustomer success\u201d manager said that Amazon staff had \u201cvery black-and-white conversations\u201d with suppliers about the prospect of raising prices with Amazon\u2019s competitors.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019d say, \u2018You need to go to Target. You need to go talk to Walmart to get them to raise their price,\u2019\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n An Amazon Prime delivery van sits parked near a Walmart store on 3 September 2020 in Richmond, California. Photograph: Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The former customer success manager told the Guardian that higher ups instructed Amazon employees to have certain conversations with suppliers over the phone in order to avoid a digital trail of potential price-fixing allegations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only rule was, \u2018Do not have this in writing\u2019,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n The former employees\u2019 accounts echo several Amazon emails and presentations relied on in court by California\u2019s attorney general. One from 2022 reminds staff to \u201cnot use email\u201d for certain conversations with suppliers. Another email from 2020 reminds staff to \u201ckeep in mind it is often best to have these conversations over the phone\u201d.<\/p>\n Amazon did not directly respond to questions about these sources\u2019 statements and those presentations cited in court by the attorney general. But in legal filings, the company has pointed to other instructions it disseminated to staff barring them from making agreements with vendors or competitors on pricing.<\/p>\n Ryan Turano, chief technology officer of a fertilizer company called AgroThrive, told the Guardian that when Amazon\u2019s profitability was threatened due to its price matching, an Amazon vendor manager would reach out to him and sometimes list off businesses like Walmart or Home Depot for him to contact.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d go, \u2018Home Depot is probably causing the problem, talk to your vendor manager there to see what you could do,\u2019\u201d recalled Turano. \u201cIt seemed like he knew what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n In one internal email, that Amazon manager asked Turano for an \u201cupdate on the price match issue we discussed\u201d. Turano told him that he had \u201cjust got out of a meeting with the Home Depot manager,\u201d who had \u201cagreed to raise the prices this time\u201d.<\/p>\n Home Depot declined to comment on the email.<\/p>\n Turano blamed Amazon for the pressure that resulted in price increases like the one he negotiated for with the home improvement retailer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were at their mercy. Because we didn\u2019t have the resources to push back,\u201d Turano said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just a nightmare. It didn\u2019t feel good,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s almost understandable. Because they\u2019re so big they can do whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon \u2013 which recently surpassed Walmart as the world\u2019s biggest company by revenue \u2013 is currently facing multiple court cases alleging price-fixing.<\/p>\n Price-fixing lawsuits against Amazon being pursued by the California attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are both slated to go to trial in early 2027. The company is also battling similar claims in a private class action lawsuit in federal court in Seattle and a legal action pursued by Washington DC\u2019s attorney general, which was initially dismissed but revived on appeal.<\/p>\n Amazon denies the claims in the various court actions and says its practices encourage lower prices, incentivize competition and create greater product selection for consumers.<\/p>\n In the California case, Amazon told the Guardian that the price fixing theory asserted by the attorney general is \u201clegally untenable, with the state offering no evidence of any communication between Amazon and any other retailer, much less an agreement among them to fix prices. The practices California challenges are common in the retail industry and part of the pro-competitive give-and-take between Amazon and its vendors.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022 Amazon agreed to pay $2.25m to resolve claims by Washington state\u2019s attorney general that it forced some merchants to raise prices for products they sold through the company\u2019s \u201cSold by Amazon\u201d plan. The company made no admission of liability and said it strongly believed the program was legal.<\/p>\n The power of algorithms<\/p>\n Amazon has long prided itself<\/a> on offering Americans the lowest prices online.<\/p>\n The company points to studies<\/a> showing that over the last nine years, Amazon has consistently offered consumers the lowest prices among major American retailers and academic research<\/a> suggesting that the competition between online and traditional retailers has driven down product prices and might have actually tamped down on inflation in years past. According to a 2025 study from the analytics firm Profitero+, Amazon\u2019s prices were on average 14% lower than its leading competitors.<\/p>\n But the FTC and California lawsuits allege the company\u2019s vaunted price floor<\/a> is a mirage, obscuring its behind-the-scenes efforts to drive up its competitors\u2019 prices.<\/p>\n Throughout the 2010s, Amazon systematically mapped the prices of its main retail rivals across the internet, according to testimony of current and former Amazon employees in depositions conducted by the FTC and California authorities.<\/p>\n In 2011, Amazon had a team of about 200 to 250 people using a hybrid mix of manual and automated methods to surveil competitors\u2019 prices, Karthik Mitta, a former Amazon director, testified last year in a deposition in the FTC case. By 2019, Mitta testified, that team had grown to nearly 2,000 people, enabling the company to use web crawlers to collect pricing information and monitor tens of thousands of competitor sites.<\/p>\n Harnessing this knowledge of pricing data across the internet, Amazon adopted what one executive called a \u201cgame theory\u201d approach to pricing which could help it evade the costs of a \u201cperfectly competitive market\u201d, according to the FTC\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n Amazon developed an algorithm that rapidly copied rivals\u2019 price changes \u201cto the penny\u201d, according to the FTC. If retail rivals raised or lowered its price, the FTC claimed, Amazon would do the same.<\/p>\n An associate updates the price on a sale item at a Walmart store on Black Friday in Columbus, Ohio, on 28 November 2025. Photograph: Brian Kaiser\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The company did not respond directly to questions regarding allegations about its algorithm, but pointed the Guardian to academic literature<\/a> and industry<\/a> reports<\/a> noting<\/a> how common it is for retailers to track prices<\/a> and for suppliers to try to enforce minimum prices for their products.<\/p>\n Arjun Narayan, a former general manager for Amazon\u2019s vendor program, told the Guardian that the company\u2019s price-following tactics were designed to ensure that the company continued to fulfill founder Jeff Bezos\u2019s original mission<\/a>: that it strive to help customers find \u201canything they might want to buy online\u201d at \u201cthe lowest possible prices\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I figure out that you\u2019re actually selling at a lower price elsewhere, the very promise is defeated, right?\u201d noted Narayan, who now advises brands with his own firm, SalesDuo.<\/p>\n The FTC argues the algorithm sought to instill another lesson among Amazon\u2019s competitors: they could not compete with Amazon by offering lower prices, so with no better options left, they may as well raise their prices \u2013 increases that Amazon\u2019s algorithm would then happily follow.<\/p>\n \u2018We will discontinue from your problematic competition\u2019<\/p>\n In 2020, three days before Black Friday, Amazon informed Armen Living, a California based furniture supplier, that it \u201chad to suppress and remove\u201d one of its office chairs from its platform, according to emails released in the California lawsuit.<\/p>\n Amazon had bought the chair, a minimalist curvy unit with a walnut wood exterior and a chrome-plated steel base, for $79 a pop, and had planned to sell them on its site for $116.45.<\/p>\n But another retailer in the market happened to be selling the same chair for just $58.62, and Amazon had matched that price, which was so low that Amazon was losing money on every sale.<\/p>\n Following the price reduction, Amazon made clear to Armen Living that if it wanted to have the chair \u201cback\u201d up on \u201cthe website soon\u201d, it was up to the furniture brand to do something about the financial squeeze caused by Amazon\u2019s own programmatic price matching.<\/p>\n In an email, Paige Nguyen, an Amazon vendor manager, laid out three options that the furniture company could choose from to \u201chelp address\u201d the issue:<\/p>\n It could compensate Amazon for the revenue loss \u2013 paying Amazon $57.83 for every chair sold on the site. <\/p>\n It could slash the amount it was selling the chairs to Amazon, a future giveaway to the retail colossus.<\/p>\n Or \u2013 likely the least costly option \u2013 it could \u201cmanage\u201d the \u201cother channels\u201d where it sold the chair, a euphemism pointing to the Amazon competitors who were selling the chair for less, according to the California lawsuit.<\/p>\n Nguyen didn\u2019t elaborate on what managing these other \u201cchannels\u201d meant, sticking to the kind of language that Amazon uses when training staff on how to talk with suppliers. The California attorney general alleges terms like \u201cchannel optimization\u201d are a \u201cnaming gloss\u201d for Amazon\u2019s push to get suppliers to enforce minimum prices with or pull inventory from Amazon\u2019s competitors.<\/p>\n Rather than paying compensation or offering a cost decrease to Amazon, Armen Living made clear it understood just how it could manage its channels to appease the online retailer.<\/p>\n The company promised it would \u201clook further into the potential offenders\u201d in the market offering low prices and pull its inventory from those Amazon competitors if need be.<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon is always our top priority,\u201d noted an Armen Living marketing analyst: \u201c\u2026 If the problematic retail does not fix by the end of the week, we will discontinue from your problematic competition to ensure that Amazon can return to a healthy state with these items.\u201d<\/p>\n In the end, Armen Living confirmed in an email to Amazon that it had removed its inventory from the \u201coffenders sites\u201d.<\/p>\n Nguyen, the Amazon employee, thanked her for her action, but complained that the prices of two other chairs, which she had also flagged, had \u201cdropped\u201d and \u201cstill\u201d not recovered \u201cto the original price\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me know if you need more time to adjust this,\u201d Nguyen said.<\/p>\n Nguyen did not respond to requests for comment. Amazon and Armen Living did not respond to specific questions about this incident.<\/p>\n Martin Heubel, a consultant for e-commerce brands who previously worked as an Amazon vendor manager, said Amazon\u2019s compensation demands help entrench its power in the market.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not so much about the money that you recover. It\u2019s more about the education of your suppliers,\u201d said Heubel, who said he was speaking as a consultant who advises brands negotiating with Amazon and not from his experience as a former Amazon employee.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go elsewhere, you will get punished \u2026 so think twice about it whether you really do.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon has said in legal pleadings that the incidents cited in the California case are \u201calleged to have occurred many years in the past\u201d and involve \u201cemployees who lack pricing authority\u201d and \u201ca microscopic portion of Amazon\u2019s catalog of millions of products\u201d.<\/p>\n Confidential presentations<\/p>\n The pressure Amazon exerts on its suppliers may only be partially visible in internal company emails like these because of Amazon\u2019s efforts to train staff on how to avoid putting certain messages in writing, according to a recent court filing by the California attorney general.<\/p>\n The internal records obtained in the California lawsuit include an in-house presentation from 2019. It instructs staff to send screenshots of rivals\u2019 product listings to suppliers when making compensation requests, but to avoid mentioning the companies\u2019 names.<\/p>\n Excerpt from 2019 Amazon internal presentation released in court by the California attorney general. Photograph: Obtained by The Guardian<\/p>\n double quotation markAvoid using competitor name<\/p>\n The former Amazon vendor manager, who asked to speak anonymously, said that he would avoid explicitly telling a supplier that Walmart had caused a price-drop, which Amazon\u2019s algorithm had followed. Instead, he recalled, he would say, \u201cThere\u2019s a retailer in blue that sells this product\u201d \u2013 a reference to Walmart\u2019s blue, yellow and white color palette.<\/p>\n An Amazon presentation from 2022, also revealed in litigation, instructs staff that it is \u201cnot ok\u201d to talk with suppliers about \u201cchannel pricing\u201d, an industry term<\/a> referring to a supplier\u2019s varying prices with different retailers.<\/p>\n Excerpt from 2022 Amazon internal presentation released in court by the California attorney general. Photograph: Obtained by The Guardian<\/p>\n double quotation markdo not use email<\/p>\n The same slideshow, however, also gives staff a seemingly contradictory instruction, noting that if they need to highlight \u201cactivities in the channel\u201d affecting Amazon\u2019s profitability or if they need to negotiate compensation payments with suppliers, they should \u201cnot use email\u201d. It then reminds employees to follow the previously mentioned rules against discussing \u201cchannel pricing\u201d. <\/p>\n In an interview with the Guardian, the California attorney general, Bonta, said Amazon\u2019s use of \u201ccode\u201d words would not be an adequate defense in court.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever euphemism it is, whether it be \u2018update pricing\u2019 or \u2018resolve an issue\u2019 or \u2018address a concern\u2019 in the market, all that means is: \u2018Fix prices. Get your lower price up to Amazon\u2019s higher price or suffer the consequences,\u2019 and that\u2019s illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n The company rejects that claim. It says the conduct the state of California challenges consists of routine retail contracting and negotiating that \u201cdrives down prices for consumers\u201d.<\/p>\n In court, Amazon has pointed to emails and staff presentations showing its compliance with laws protecting free market competition.<\/p>\n A worker delivers packages on Amazon Prime Day in New York, in July 2025. Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In one staff presentation from 2021, for example, the company instructed staff that they should not \u201cpermit vendors to share competitor pricing intentions with us\u201d.<\/p>\n Likewise, an email from 2023 shows an Amazon employee telling a vendor representative that Amazon has \u201cno interest in being part\u201d of discussions, \u201cdirectly or indirectly\u201d with other retailers about their prices.<\/p>\n Despite Amazon\u2019s guidance to staff, representatives for the suppliers themselves said in some email exchanges that they would help raise prices with Amazon\u2019s competitors.<\/p>\n Documents disclosed in litigation show that on the afternoon of 17 February 2023, an Amazon vendor manager named Kara King emailed Andrew Newell, then a manager for an e-commerce company that helped brands interface with Amazon. The Amazon employee wanted Newell to get an appliance company he was representing called RugDoctor to sign a \u201cguaranteed minimum margin\u201d agreement.<\/p>\n The guarantee would ensure it compensated Amazon for a pet-focused vacuum cleaner whose profitability had \u201cbeen challenged\u201d due to \u201csales price compression\/competitive matching\u201d \u2013 a reference to Amazon\u2019s practice of matching its competitors\u2019 prices via algorithm.<\/p>\n But Newell responded that the guarantee wouldn\u2019t be \u201cnecessary\u201d. He said he was confident he could \u201cget Walmart to raise the price back up\u201d so that Amazon could then match it. \u201cThis would resolve the margin issues,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n In response, King, Newell\u2019s counterpart at Amazon, continued to float the possibility of compensation funding, but suggested they not discuss the matter further over email. \u201cThis is a delicate conversation for numerous reasons and probably best suited for a phone call\/virtual meeting,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In an interview with the Guardian, Newell said he did not recall the particulars of the incident but said the incentives that Amazon had created for brands made raising prices with competitors an obvious solution.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like basic marketing understanding and math,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n King did not answer questions from the Guardian about the exchange.<\/p>\n Newell noted that Amazon vendor managers would tell him to schedule price increases with Walmart then reach back out to them, so they could \u201cflip\u201d the price back up \u201con the same day\u201d. Amazon staffers avoided putting such messages in email, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know exactly what they\u2019re doing,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThey\u2019re really well coached. They wanna get you on the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n Get in touch<\/p>\n Contact George Joseph about this story<\/p>\n If you have something to share about this story you can contact George using one of the following methods:<\/p>\n Secure Messaging in the Guardian app<\/p>\n The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS<\/a>\/Android<\/a>) and go to the menu. Select \u2018Secure Messaging\u2019. When asked to choose a recipient select \u2018Investigations (Guardian US)\u2019.<\/p>\n SecureDropIf you can safely use the tor network without being observed or monitored you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform.<\/a><\/p>\n