EU questions Amazon sellers on price-parity restrictions again

Amazon dropped its written price-parity clauses in Europe years ago. Brussels is asking sellers whether the practice survived without them. The European Commission has been sending questions to third-party sellers about whether they are penalised for offering lower prices on rival marketplaces or on their own sites, the first concrete sign of a new competition file on Amazon's marketplace terms.

What happened

The Commission has been quizzing businesses that sell through Amazon on so-called price-parity restrictions, meaning arrangements that discourage a seller from pricing lower somewhere else (Bloomberg, September 18). Questionnaires of this kind are how the Commission decides whether to open a formal case, so nothing has been charged and no finding has been made.

Trade coverage over the weekend framed the same story around the seller experience: whether a lower price on a competing marketplace or a brand's own store costs you visibility on Amazon (ChannelNews, September 21).

Context matters here. Amazon settled two earlier EU cases in 2022 with binding commitments covering marketplace data use and the Buy Box (EUR-Lex, cases AT.40462 and AT.40703). Pricing across channels was not the subject of those commitments.

Why it matters

Most brands price differently by channel because the cost of serving each channel differs. A DTC order carries payment and shipping costs but no referral fee. An Amazon order carries a referral fee, a fulfilment fee and usually advertising. If your Amazon price has to match your cheapest channel, the channel with the highest cost to serve sets the ceiling for every other one.

That is why the question the Commission is asking is a margin question, not a legal curiosity. Any rule, written or algorithmic, that ties your Amazon offer to your lowest price elsewhere moves the decision about your own margin out of your hands.

What a parity probe covers, and what it does not

• In scope: contract terms or platform behaviour that penalise a seller for a lower price on a competing marketplace or on their own website.
• In scope: informal enforcement, meaning the same outcome produced by an algorithm rather than a clause.
• Not in scope: Amazon choosing not to show a Featured Offer when it judges a price uncompetitive against the wider market. Retailers are allowed to decide what they promote.
• Not in scope: your own pricing mistakes, including a promotion on your DTC store that you forgot to mirror.
• Not yet decided: anything at all. A questionnaire is an information-gathering step, not an infringement finding.

What to do this week

1. Write down your price by channel for your top 20 ASINs. Amazon, other marketplaces, your own store, wholesale. Most teams discover a gap they did not intend.
2. Check whether Featured Offer losses line up with off-Amazon discounts. If a SKU loses the Featured Offer on the days your own store runs a promotion, that correlation is worth recording with dates.
3. Keep the evidence. Screenshots, seller support cases and dated exports are what a competition authority can act on. Recollections are not.
4. Price each channel from its own cost to serve. Referral rate, fulfilment, returns and advertising differ per channel, so identical prices rarely mean identical margins.
5. If a questionnaire reaches you, take it seriously. Responses from sellers are the raw material for whether a case opens.

An illustrative example

Illustrative arithmetic, not measured data. Take a product at a 24.99 euro selling price. On Amazon a 15% referral fee is 3.75 euros, fulfilment 3.60 euros, advertising 2.00 euros, landed cost 8.00 euros, leaving 7.64 euros of contribution. On your own store the same unit carries 0.80 euros of payment fees, 4.50 euros of shipping and 2.50 euros of paid acquisition, leaving 9.19 euros. Matching the Amazon price on your store gives up nothing, but matching a 21.99 euro store price on Amazon removes 3.00 euros, which is 39% of the Amazon contribution. Run the same two columns on your own numbers before you align prices across channels.

The Nova angle

Cross-channel pricing decisions are only safe when you know the true contribution of an Amazon unit after every fee. Nova breaks each order down to the fee level so a price change can be tested against margin rather than revenue. See Nova Profit & Loss and custom breakdowns.