Amazon is facing backlash from independent merchants over its “Buy For Me” agentic AI feature, which scrapes external websites to list products on its marketplace without consent, and purchases items for consumers on their behalf. I first reported on “Buy for Me” last April when Amazon began testing the feature.
Angie Chua, CEO of Bobo Design Studio, a stationary accessory maker, said she was confused when her products began appearing on Amazon last month, as she had never opted in to the program. She said that the listings frequently contained incorrect product names and information and described Amazon’s actions as “insulting,” claiming that they had damaged her brand and customer relationships. She also said she is aware of 100 other brands that have had similar experiences.
Retail analyst Marieke van Bruggen commented:
“They’re re-skinning independent businesses’ products and funneling them into an Amazon-branded checkout – all without their consent. Though labelled as ‘innovation’, it’s actually an attempt to gather data to inform Amazon’s merchandising and target advertising.”
Several industry experts pointed to the hypocrisy of Amazon doing the same thing it prohibits others from doing (agentically shopping on other websites), pointing to the company’s lawsuit against Perplexity, which I covered in depth in November. However there’s a big difference…
Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity is over the fact that the AI company took concerted effort to disguise its Comet browser as a Google Chrome browser to bypass Amazon’s firewalls. Amazon had repeatedly asked Perplexity to stop its agentic agents from shopping on its marketplaces, and Perplexity did it anyway.
In Amazon’s case, they are at least providing a way for independent merchants to opt-out of the program and subsequently respecting their wishes to do so. To be fair, I can’t confirm with certainty that Amazon is respecting the opt-outs, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t, as they’re not idiots.
Should it have been opt-in to begin with? You could argue that. But you’d also have to argue the same for every other AI shopping agent on the planet. The agentic shopping industry would be at a standstill if merchants had to opt-in with every agent. Though maybe that’s where we’re headed?
If ChatGPT got a merchant’s listing information wrong (which it probably does all the time), there might be less backlash. It seems to hit different when Amazon does it, given how Amazon is most small businesses’ biggest retail competitor.
Here’s my actual biggest problem with Amazon’s Buy for Me experience…
Even after the sale, they’re playing middleman between you and your customer.
An Amazon spokesperson told EcommerceBytes:
“When shopping with the help of AI, Amazon provides a secure, unique email address for each order to share communications with customers, including order confirmation and tracking details. Communications from your merchant are automatically forwarded to the customer, and when a customer replies to these emails, replies are sent directly back to your merchant’s email address. Our relay email system may reduce duplicative promotional emails to reduce customer frustration from receiving duplicative emails.”
So now my Shopify store has your stupid Amazon e-mail address associated with my customer? Screwing up my customer data? Creating duplicate customers? Fuck that!
I can’t think of a single other agentic commerce platform that uses its own branded e-mail addresses to place orders on independent websites instead of using the customer’s actual e-mail address. Yes, it gives Amazon access to follow up data like order confirmations and tracking numbers, which it could then provide to the customer within its app. But it’s also a quick way to piss off independent merchants and have them opt-out of the program, as we’re seeing. My guess is that Amazon understands this risk and decided accordingly.
