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| At an Amazon booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center during CES 2020 this month |
As David Barnett tells it, Amazon is an abusive, unfair and uncaring partner to smaller businesses using its platform.
Barnett, founder and CEO of PopSockets, which makes adhesive grips for the backs of phones, on Friday lambasted the e-commerce giant for ignoring issues about counterfeit that he'd raised for months and bullying him to lower his prices.
His comments were part of his sworn testimony before the House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, which has been holding hearings to investigate the potentially excessive power of the biggest tech companies in the US.
"This is tiring, this is tiring week after week," Barnett told lawmakers at the University of Colorado's Wittemyer Courtroom, describing Amazon's threats to extract better prices -- a practice that ultimately caused him to end his partnership selling products directly to Amazon.
He says his company is now banned from selling on Amazon's website on its own and he's lost countless sales after cutting off the lucrative direct-sales relationship. Other companies, he suggested, would rather put up with Amazon pushing them around to keep getting paid.
Amazon, along with fellow tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple, have all faced tough scrutiny over the past year from lawmakers and regulators, who not that long ago looked at Silicon Valley in a far more positive way. Now officials are raising concerns about these companies' growing dominance in the market, which could be squashing competition.
This work could bring about big changes in the tech industry, perhaps forcing big players to break up, cutting off future mergers, or creating new regulatory restrictions. Officials say they're pursuing this work to make sure innovative new startups can thrive and customers can benefit from strong competition.
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