Amazon has complained to federal regulators that they are harassing company founder Jeff Bezos and senior executives for making “impossible-to-satisfy demands” in their investigation of Amazon Prime, the popular streaming and shopping spoof with free delivery. service and an estimated 200 million members globe.
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazon Prime’s sign-up and cancellation practices starting in March 2021, the largest online retailer and tech giant issued a civil subpoena in a petition to the agency filed earlier this month. did.
The petition asks the FTC to cancel, or extend the deadline, to respond to the summons sent to Bezos, former Amazon CEO and current CEO Andy Jesse, last June. It says the FTC has “recognized no valid reason to require his testimony when it can obtain similar information, and more, from other witnesses and documents.”
Jassi took the top spot in the Amazon from Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, in July 2021. Bezos became acting chairman.
According to Amazon, the FTC investigation has expanded to include at least five other subscription programs: Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited, Subscribe & Save, and an undisclosed third-party program not offered by Amazon. Is. Regulators are asking the company to identify the number of consumers who were enrolled in programs without their consent, in addition to other customer information. The petition says that in June, agency employees sought to summon about 20 current and former Amazon employees to their homes, with dates to testify in the coming weeks.
Amazon says in the petition it has worked “diligently and cooperatively” with FTC employees for more than a year to provide information relevant to the investigation, offering some 37,000 pages of documents. It called the information sought in the summons “too broad and cumbersome”.
Amazon blamed the impasse on “unexplained pressure exerted on employees to complete the investigation hastily, by an arbitrarily chosen deadline.”
Spokesmen for the FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
With an estimated 150 million US customers, Amazon Prime is a major source of revenue, as well as a wealth of customer data for the Seattle-based company, which runs an e-commerce empire and ventures into cloud computing, personal “smart” . Tech and beyond. Amazon Prime costs $139 (approximately Rs 11,000) per year. The service added an iconic feature this year by acquiring exclusive video rights to the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.”
Last year, Amazon unsuccessfully asked FTC Chair Lena Khan to step aside from an antitrust investigation into its business, arguing that their public criticism of the company’s market power before joining the government was for them. Being fair makes it impossible. Khan was a fierce critic of tech giants Facebook (now Meta), Google and Apple as well as Amazon. She rose to the antitrust scene in 2017 when she was a Yale Law student, writing an influential study titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.”
Amazon’s latest petition to the FTC was first reported by Business Insider on Monday.
