The Centre has asked the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) and Competition Commission of India (CCI) to take action on trade body CAIT’s representation seeking urgent steps against Amazon India, in light of recent US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against the e-commerce giant.

The Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade (DPIIT) in the Commerce and Industry Ministry has forwarded CAIT’s representation to the DCA and CCI, said sources. 

When contacted, an Amazon spokesperson said: “We do not have any comments on this.”

US FTC’s COMPLAINT

It maybe recalled that the US FTC had, in the third week of June, filed a complaint in US Court against Amazon.com for its years-long effort to enroll consumers into the Prime programme without their consent, while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to Prime.

FTC, in its complaint, charged that Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling them into Amazon Prime. Specifically, Amazon used manipulation, coercive or deceptive user interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions, FTC had submitted to the US court.

FTC charged that Amazon put in place a cancellation process designed to deter consumers from successfully unsubscribing from Prime. 

The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them, according to FTC. 

WHAT CAIT SAID 

In its representation to the DPIIT on July 4, the Confederation of All India Traders’ (CAIT) National Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal contended that the practices for which US FTC has proceeded against Amazon are similar to the e-commerce entity’s practices in India, where it has been favouring a few preferred/controlled related sellers and service providers at the cost of smaller independent sellers and service providers.

Nisha Kaur Uberoi, Partner&National Competition Head, Trilegal, said: “The US Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against Amazon in the federal court in Washington on what appears to be a purely consumer issue on alleged dark patterns and the ability of consumers to subscribe and cancel their Prime subscription. 

Samir Gandhi, Co-founder, Axiom5legal, a law firm, said the CCI is not obliged to investigate each issue referred to it, and has in the past been quite careful to intervene only where a competition law infringement is made out. 

“In this instance I would think that the CCI will examine the complaint based on Indian market realities and business models and not simply because  a foreign regulator has chosen to launch an investigation,” he added.