The French subsidiary of the large American online trade group had been enjoined by the repression of fraud to comply its contracts with traders who sell products on its platform in December 2021.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
The repression of fraud announced on Wednesday November 7, claiming on Amazon the payment of a penalty of 3.3 million euros for a “delay in compliance” of its contracts with traders who sell Products on its French platform.
The Directorate General for Consumption, Competition and the Repression of Frauds (DGCCRF) recalls in its press release that it had enjoined the online trade giant in December 2021 “to modify as quickly as possible, and at most Late before March 22, 2022, certain clauses under its contractual conditions applicable to third-party sellers present on its Amazon.fr platform, due in particular to a significant imbalance of these contractual conditions for the benefit of Amazon “.
This injunction was accompanied by a penalty of 90,000 euros per day of delay “applicable in the event of non-performance on the part of the Amazon company from March 22, 2022”, she specifies, but “face At a late return on April 28, 2022, the DGCCRF requests the regulation of 3.33 million euros in Amazon, as a penalty “.
” New irregularities “
In 2019, the company was sentenced by the Paris Commercial Court to a fine of 4 million euros “following an assignment of the Minister responsible for the economy”, the court censoring “different clauses unbalanced in the contract that Amazon imposed on companies using its online market place, “recalls the repression of fraud.
It evokes a new survey, launched in 2020 by the National DGCCRF Investigation Service on the contractual conditions imposed by Amazon on third -party sellers, which “had led to the observation of new irregularities”. “Following these observations”, the DGCCRF explains that it has decided “to use, for the first time, the new power of injunction under penalty provided by the Commercial Code”, a legal tool allowing to fix amounts of Dissuasive penalty, up to 1 % of global turnover, “according to the severity of the damage to the observed economic public order”.
Solicit Tuesday evening After the publication of an article in Les Echos reporting this case, a spokesperson for Amazon France assured that the DGCCRF had “recognized” that the changes made in April by the platform were “in accordance with its injunction”. “However, we are in disagreement with the DGCCRF on its conclusions, its decisions and the related penalty, and we each dispute before the courts. We remain determined to offer the best experience to our customers and partner sellers,” added This spokesperson.