WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As part of its review of Amazon's agreement to buy Whole Foods, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that Amazon misleads customers about its pricing discounts, according to a source close to the probe.
The FTC is probing a complaint brought by the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which looked at some 1,000 products on Amazon's website in June and found that Amazon put reference prices, or list prices, on about 46 percent of them.
An analysis found that in 61 percent of products with reference prices, Amazon's reference prices were higher than it had sold the same product in the previous 90 days, Consumer Watchdog said in a letter to the FTC dated July 6.
Amazon settled similar allegations with Canada's Competition Bureau in January. It paid a fine of C$1 million ($756,658.60) as part of the settlement.
Amazon ran afoul of the FTC in 2014 for making it too easy for children to run up bills while playing games such as "Pet Shop Story" and "Ice Age Village" on mobile devices, resulting in an estimated $86 million of unauthorized charges. It has been ordered to reimburse parents for the charges.
