House committee calls on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify

Members of the House Judiciary Committee are calling on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify before the panel over concerns his deputies may have misled Congress in their own testimony about the use of data from third-party sellers.

In a letter sent to Bezos on Friday, the bipartisan group of lawmakers cited a Wall Street Journal report that said the company had used sensitive business data from third-party sellers on the website to create competing products.

“If these allegations are true, then Amazon exploited its role as the largest online marketplace in the U.S. to appropriate the sensitive commercial data of individual marketplace sellers and then used that data to compete directly with those sellers,” they wrote to Bezos, who has never testified before Congress.

“Amazon has responded to this report by describing the Amazon employees’ conduct as a violation of its formal policy against the use of non-public, individual seller data. The report, however, details that Amazon employees described pulling competitors’ data as ‘standard operating procedure’ when making products such as electronics, suitcases, sporting goods or other lines.”

The lawmakers are reserving the right to issue a subpoena if Bezos does not voluntarily testify.

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment on the committee’s request.

Allegations: The Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing interviews with 20 former employees of Amazon’s private-label business and a review of documents, that the online retail giant used the information from other sellers to price items, determine which features to copy or whether to enter a product segment based on its earning potential.

The reporting seems to directly contradict testimony by Amazon associated general counsel Nate Sutton, who when asked by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) about practices like those detailed in the Journal’s story said that “we do not use any seller data to compete with them.”

In response to a follow-up question from Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Sutton testified that “we do not use their individual data when we’re making decisions to launch private brands.”

A spokesperson for Amazon told The Hill that the company “strictly prohibit[s] employees from using non-public, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch.”

“While we don’t believe these claims made by the Wall Street Journal are accurate, we take these allegations very seriously and have launched an internal investigation.”