Amazon defeats US consumer lawsuit over 'buy box' product listings

A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing Amazon.com of hiding product listings to offer lower-priced items with faster delivery times, misleading millions of consumers into paying more for their purchases.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in federal court in Seattle He said in his rulingopen a new tab that the two named buyers who sued Amazon last year had not demonstrated how they were allegedly harmed.

“Plaintiffs do not identify any specific purchases they would have made but for Amazon’s alleged deceptive practices, nor do they identify any lower-priced items they could have purchased from other sellers,” Pechman wrote.

The judge gave consumers 30 days to file an amended complaint. She said the claims in the case were not barred by a four-year statute of limitations, rejecting one of Amazon's arguments.

Amazon and an attorney for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Two California residents filed the lawsuit in February, seeking damages under a Washington state consumer protection measure that bans deceptive business practices.

The lawsuit focused on Amazon’s “buy box,” which is the version of a product that appears in the “buy now” or “add to cart” box on product pages. Other offerings are listed below from “other sellers on Amazon.”

The consumer plaintiffs claim that Amazon “uses a biased algorithm to determine which offers buyers will see and, therefore, which sellers they will buy from.”

The lawsuit alleges that Amazon directs buyers to Amazon's own retail offerings or to sellers that use the company's “Fulfillment by Amazon” program and pay high fees for services including inventory storage, packaging and shipping.

Amazon responded that “there is nothing unfair or deceptive about a retailer deciding which product offerings it believes will be most attractive to its customers and then allowing customers to accept or reject those offerings based on their own evaluation.”

The company faces a number of other lawsuits from consumers and government agencies.

In another pending case in Seattle, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last year accused Amazon of using deceptive user interface designs to trick shoppers into automatically renewing their paid subscriptions to its Prime service. Amazon has denied the allegations.
The case is Taylor v Amazon.com Inc, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, No. 2:24-cv-00169-MJP.