Amazon is postponing its marquee shopping event Prime Day until at least early October. The company had previously targeted September as the potential timing for Prime Day, but on Wednesday, Amazon informed third-party sellers that the date could be pushed back another month, according to the email, which was viewed by CNBC and first reported by Business Insider. Prime Day, which started in 2015, is typically held in July. The discount celebration is partially designed to secure new Prime members, as well as to promote Amazon's own products and services and provide a sales boost in the middle of the year. Over the past few months, brands and sellers have been preparing for Amazon to delay this year's Prime Day. Amazon in June held a fashion sales event, called the "Big Style Sale," in an attempt to provide a boost for sellers feeling the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. It was also meant to help sellers get rid of excess inventory in lieu of Prime Day. Amazon has been working to return its logistics operations to normal after it was hit with a wave of online orders at the height of the pandemic, which resulted in delivery delays and inventory shortages. Since then, operations at Amazon's warehouses have slowly returned to normal, but the company now faces new coronavirus outbreaks across the country, which could threaten to upend its logistics operations again. The recent surge in Covid-19 cases has already resulted in some shipping delays domestically and abroad, said Fahim Naim, a former Amazon executive and CEO of e-commerce consultancy eShopportunity. Naim added that some of his clients have sold through their inventory due to the surge in online traffic both on and off Amazon and have been scrambling to get items back in stock. Inventory shortages, as well as warehouse delays, have "added much uncertainty in recent weeks," Naim said.
Internal documents reveal how a former aide to Joe Biden helped the tech giant build a lobbying juggernaut that has gutted legislation in two dozen states seeking to give consumers more control over their data. Filed Nov. 19, 2021, 11 a.m. Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters. In Virginia, the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted. In California, the company stifled proposed restrictions on the industry’s collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. And in its home state of Washington, Amazon won so many exemptions and amendments to a bill regulating biometric data, such as voice recordings or facial scans, that the resulting 2017 law had "little, if any" impact on its practices, according to an internal Amazon document. The architect of this under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections has been Jay Carney, who previously served as communications director for Joe Biden, when Biden was vice president, and as press secretary for Deals President Barack Obama. This da ta has been written by GSA Conte nt Generator DEMO !
Hired by Amazon in 2015, Carney reported to founder Jeff Bezos and built a lobbying and Sales public-policy juggernaut that has grown from two dozen employees to about 250, according to Amazon documents and two former employees with knowledge of recent staffing. One 2018 document reviewing executives’ goals for the prior year listed privacy regulation as a primary target for Carney. One objective: "Change or block US and EU regulation/legislation that would impede growth for Alexa-powered devices," referring to Amazon Fashion’s popular voice-assistant technology. The mission included defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, along with blocking efforts to make companies disclose the data they keep on consumers. This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with 10 former Amazon public-policy and legal employees. It is the third in a series of reports revealing how the company has pursued business practices that harm small businesses or put its own interests above those of consumers.
The previous articles showed how Amazon has circumvented e-commerce regulations meant to protect Indian retailers, and how it copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands over those of other vendors on its India platform. In a statement, Amazon said: "The premise of this story is flawed and includes reporting that relies on early, incomplete drafts of documents to draw incorrect conclusions." The company said it protects consumers’ privacy and doesn’t sell their data. Amazon said the 2018 document listing Carney’s goals to defeat privacy regulation is "out-of-date" and does not reflect the company’s current public-policy objectives. The company said it has opposed "poorly crafted" state privacy bills. Amazon’s lobbying against privacy protections aims to preserve the company’s access to detailed consumer data that has fueled its explosive online-retailing growth and sales provided an advantage in emerging technologies, according to the Amazon documents and former employees. The data Amazon amasses includes Alexa voice recordings; videos from home-camera systems; personal health data from fitness trackers; and data on consumers’ web-searching and buying habits from its e-commerce business. Post was gen erated with GSA C ontent Generator Demover sion.