• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 26, 2025

A federal judge has rejected consumers' request to reconsider her pro-Amazon ruling in a dispute over its “Buy Box” practices.

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle said in a three-page order issued Wednesday that the consumers who sued Amazon failed to show that she made a “manifest error” in her prior ruling, which dismissed their lawsuit.

The order stems from a class-action complaint brought last year by Jeffrey Taylor and Robert Selway. They alleged that Amazon's algorithms for the Buy Box are biased in favor of products Amazon sells as a retailer, and products sold by third parties that use Amazon's shipping services -- even when other sellers on Amazon offer the same products at lower prices.

The duo claimed that Amazon's customers “reasonably believe” the Buy Box features the lowest price for items.

They said in an amended complaint that in October 2020, Taylor paid a total of $24.87 to purchase the CD “Band Magic: The Sound of the Fabulous Forties” via the Buy Box, when a third-party vendor on the site offered the same CD for $13.85.

“Amazon Retail offer won the Buy Box -- even though, including shipping, it was almost 80 percent more expensive than the third-party offer,” the amended complaint alleged.

Amazon countered that it considers several factors -- such as sellers' performance and cancellation rates -- when deciding which items to place in the Buy Box.

The company also said the amended complaint lacked allegations regarding “particular misrepresentation or deception” that caused people to purchase the Buy Box item instead of the other offers on the site.

Pechman sided with Amazon, ruling last month that the allegations, even if proven true, wouldn't show that Amazon bilked consumers.

“It is true that Amazon Marketplace prominently features the Buy Box offer, and those offers that fail to 'win' the Buy Box are relegated to the 'Other Sellers' section of the item detail page. But this is not deception; it is marketing,” she wrote.

Taylor and Selway than asked Pechman to reconsider, arguing that juries, not judges, should decide whether particular practices were unfair or deceptive.

Pechman denied that request Wednesday, essentially writing that juries were only required where there was a dispute about the underlying facts.