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Lina Khan, nominee for Commissioner of the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC), speaks throughout a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation affirmation listening to on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, April 21, 2021.
Saul Loeb | Pool | Reuters
Amazon accused the Federal Commerce Fee of harassing govt chairman Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy by asking them to testify in its investigation of the corporate’s Prime subscription enterprise, acknowledging the probe in a filing dated August 5 that was lately made public.
The FTC has been probing Amazon’s Prime enterprise over considerations that it misleads how customers enroll or cancel their Prime subscriptions. Insider reported in March on inside paperwork that confirmed “the corporate has been involved since at the least 2017 that person interface designs on Amazon.com have led clients to really feel manipulated into signing up for Prime” however reportedly did not implement adjustments for worry they’d negatively impression subscription development.
An Amazon spokesperson on the time instructed Insider that Prime’s cancelation and sign-up course of are “easy and clear and clearly current clients with selections and the implications of these selections.”
Amazon is in search of to restrict or quash civil investigative calls for, much like a subpoena, issued to the corporate and to particular person present and former staff, in line with the submitting. It is also in search of to quash CIDs issued to Bezos and Jassy, arguing workers has not given a professional purpose for needing their testimony as a result of it may acquire the identical data it seeks elsewhere.
Attorneys for the corporate mentioned within the submitting that the FTC’s demand for Bezos and Jassy to testify at an investigational listening to “on an open-ended checklist of matters on which they don’t have any distinctive data is grossly unreasonable, unduly burdensome, and calculated to serve no different goal than to harass Amazon’s highest-ranking executives and disrupt its enterprise operations.”
An FTC spokesperson declined to remark.
Amazon mentioned it cooperated with workers for greater than a yr, offering details about its sign-up and cancellation course of for Prime, for a probe it mentioned started in March 2021. It mentioned it produced about 37,000 pages of paperwork and met with workers on a number of events to reply questions.
However finally, “workers inexplicably disengaged,” Amazon charged. After about six months of silence, Amazon alleged, FTC workers instructed the corporate in April {that a} new lawyer would take over the probe whereas underneath “super strain” to conclude the investigation earlier than the autumn. Amazon mentioned this was the primary it heard of such a deadline and it quickly acquired a brand new CID in June that “accelerated” and “expanded” the scope of the investigation to “at the least 5 extra non-Prime subscription packages,” together with Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Limitless and Subscribe & Save, and added practically 20 particular person CIDs served to present and former staff’ houses.
The June CID on the corporate is “unworkable and unfair,” Amazon mentioned, although it added it is nonetheless dedicated to getting workers the knowledge it wants. If the fee will not quash the CID, Amazon requested it at the least prolong the deadline for the knowledge to Sept. 15, moderately than August 5.
Amazon has had a difficult relationship with the FTC underneath Chair Lina Khan, who rose to prominence together with her 2017 Yale Legislation Journal article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which argued for a rethinking of antitrust enforcement in digital markets that might reshape business practices. Final yr, Amazon sought Khan’s recusal from its antitrust probes, arguing her previous public feedback concerning the firm recommend she wouldn’t be an neutral voice in issues towards the agency.
Khan has mentioned previously it takes “braveness” to tackle firms with huge energy and assets. In a January interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and contributor Kara Swisher, Khan mentioned the FTC was “actually exhibiting these firms, but additionally exhibiting the nation, that enforcers aren’t going to again down due to these firms flexing some muscle or type of making an attempt to intimidate us,”
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