Amazon is selectively enforcing its own Buy Box rules and most brands have no id
By Brandon Fishman · May 27, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Amazon is selectively enforcing its own Buy Box rules and most brands have no idea it's happening to them.
A coffee brand I work with has its 1P price swing from $28 to $45 depending on the day. Other brands sit at higher prices on three or four other retailers and Amazon never touches them.
Same platform, same policy, but the enforcement is not the same.
The algorithm is supposed to catch pricing variance automatically. So when a brand loses the Buy Box for adjusting price by a few cents, while a much larger brand sits untouched at obvious MSRP violations across other channels, it is not the algorithm. It is a person making a call.
Amazon laid off the vendor managers most brands used to escalate to. So when this happens, there is nobody to call.
If you are a $1M to $10M brand and your Buy Box vanished after a small price change, you are not imagining it. You are watching a manual override decide your week.
This should not be how the largest retail platform in the country operates.
Time to call Amazon out on it again.