Twin Mechanisms for World Domination - Amazon's FBA-Prime Scheme

c. Amazon unlawfully maintains its monopolies by conditioning Prime eligibility on sellers’ use of FBA

395. Through these twin mechanisms—(1) raising the costs for sellers of using multiple sales channels and (2) artificially stunting the growth of independent fulfillment providers—Amazon maintains its monopolies in the online superstore and online marketplace services markets by denying rivals the ability to gain the scale needed to compete meaningfully against Amazon.

396. (Redacted) Some sellers on Amazon that might otherwise also sell off Amazon choose not to due to the associated logistics and administrative costs, while other sellers offer only certain products to other online stores. Sellers must effectively accept Amazon’s burdensome terms, and Amazon’s rivals are thus deprived of the opportunity to meaningfully compete for sellers. By tying a product’s Prime eligibility to the seller’s use of FBA for that product, Amazon suppresses competition for sellers’ product selection and for online shoppers.