A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed a proposed class action that accused Amazon.com of obscuring product listings for lower-priced items with better delivery times, duping millions of consumers and causing them to pay more for purchases.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle federal court said in her ruling, opens new tab that the two named buyers who sued Amazon last year had not shown how they were allegedly harmed.

“Plaintiffs do not identify any specific purchase they would have made if not for Amazon’s alleged deceptive practices, nor do they identify any lower-priced items that they could have bought from other sellers,” Pechman wrote.

The judge gave the consumers 30 days to file an amended lawsuit. She said the claims in the case were not barred by a four-year statute of limitations, rejecting one of Amazon’s arguments.

Amazon and an attorney for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Two California residents filed the lawsuit in February, seeking damages under a Washington state consumer-protection measure that outlaws deceptive trade practices.

The lawsuit focused on Amazon’s “buy box,” which is the version of a product featured in a “buy now” or “add to cart” box on product pages. Other offers are listed further below from “other sellers on Amazon.”

The consumer plaintiffs contend Amazon “uses a biased algorithm to determine which offers shoppers will see, and therefore which sellers they will buy from.”

The lawsuit said Amazon steers shoppers to Amazon’s own retail offers or to sellers that use the company’s “Fulfillment by Amazon” program and pay high fees for services including inventory storage and packing and shipping.

Amazon countered that “there is nothing unfair or deceptive about a retailer deciding which product offerings it believes will be most appealing to its customers, and then letting customers accept or decline those offers based on their own evaluation.”

The company faces a number of other lawsuits from consumers and government agencies.

In another pending case in Seattle, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last year accused Amazon of using deceptive user-interface designs to trick shoppers into automatically renewing paid subscriptions for its Prime service. Amazon has denied the allegations.
The case is Taylor v Amazon.com Inc, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, No. 2:24-cv-00169-MJP.