Amazon accuses the FTC of harassing Jeff Bezos and his top executives

The bad relationship between Amazon and the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has added a new chapter. Is that the company accuses the US government agency of harassing its founder, Jeff Bezosand other high-profile officials in an investigation related to Amazon Prime memberships.

The investigation in question is not exactly new, since it has been underway since March 2021. But what has generated a new short circuit between the parties has been the FTC’s decision to issue subpoenas for twenty employees and executives. Among the latter is not only the aforementioned Bezos, but also the current CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, ​​and the former vice president of Prime, Greg Greeley, just to mention a few.

Amazon is asking that the subpoenas of Jeff Bezos and other executives be annulled or limited, because it believes that they have submitted a large amount of documentation and that “they have not identified a reason” why their testimonies are necessary. But the company goes further and claims that the FTC’s practices are “unduly onerous and calculated to have no purpose other than to harass Amazon’s most senior executives and disrupt their business operations.”

Without a doubt, this represents one more point of conflict for Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission, whose relationship has been far from the best in recent times. Let’s not forget that, like Facebook, the firm founded by Jeff Bezos challenged the appointment of Lina Khan as chair of the FTC and requested that it refrain from getting involved in proceedings related to Amazon. Why? Because prior to his arrival at the US government agency, Khan gained recognition for his criticism of the business models of large corporations that resulted in anti-competitive practices, and for his statements against Amazon in particular.

The FTC is going after Jeff Bezos and other Amazon executives

The discord investigation, in this case, relates to Amazon Prime. The FTC is looking into whether Amazon used deceptive tactics as part of the membership registration and cancellation processand if they have been transferred to other of its services, such as the cases of Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited and Audible, to name a few.

As reported Business Insider, the agency intends to find out if “ambiguous language and confusing designs” were used to register buyers without their consent, or to prevent them from being able to unsubscribe easily. But that would not be all, since they also want to know if Jeff Bezos and company could have used “ephemeral messaging” services to discuss issues related to this situation.

Faced with this situation, Amazon has taken its claws out. The company says that for more than a year it has been working diligently on FTC requests, producing about 37,000 pages of documents, among other requests. But he says subpoenas sent to company executives and employees in recent months, known formally as Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) are “unjust and impracticable”.

We’ll see how this story goes. The truth is that the Federal Trade Commission seems to be going all out both against Amazon and against who made it what it is today: Jeff Bezos.


We would like to say thanks to the author of this short article for this awesome material

Amazon accuses the FTC of harassing Jeff Bezos and his top executives