Amazon pushes up prices across the Internet

The piece explains how Amazon’s fee and policy architecture forces third-party sellers to raise prices, driving higher costs across the whole internet. Beyond the headline 15% referral commission, sellers commonly absorb fulfillment, storage, returns and advertising charges that can push Amazon’s take toward half of a sale. Fulfillment-by-Amazon (Prime eligibility) and sponsored ads are effectively mandatory to win the Buy Box and get visibility, so sellers who want to compete on Amazon must pay up. Because many fees are percentage-based, higher retail prices feed directly back into larger platform commissions, creating a feedback loop that inflates pricing.

Crucially, Amazon’s Fair Pricing rules let it remove the Buy Box or suspend sellers who offer lower prices elsewhere, so merchants who raise prices on Amazon must match them on their own sites and at other retailers or risk losing sales. That dynamic, backed up by reporting and legal filings, is central to the FTC and state antitrust case alleging Amazon uses its market power (roughly 40% of U.S. online retail) to enforce platform-wide pricing. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe have started pushing back, but for now the consequence is simple: consumers often pay Amazon’s prices even when shopping off-Amazon, and market competition can’t correct what the platform’s rules lock in.