Unsealed documents from California AG Rob Bonta's 2022 lawsuit detail Amazon's use of automated tools to track independent sellers' prices on Walmart, Target and other sites, penalizing deviations as small as one cent by removing Buy Box eligibility. The Guardian's review of San Francisco superior court filings includes deposition testimony from Leveret owner Mayer Handler, who stated his toddler pajama product was suppressed after a $19.99 Amazon price exceeded a Walmart listing by one penny; Handler adjusted Walmart pricing or altered product codes to restore visibility.

California filings cite internal emails and presentations showing systematic monitoring tied to Amazon's higher seller fees, a pattern synthesized with the FTC's September 2023 antitrust complaint alleging monopoly maintenance through similar punitive marketplace controls and the 2021 House Judiciary Committee report documenting concentrated digital market power. The EU Commission's 2022-2023 Amazon investigations examined analogous self-preferencing and parity practices, per official statements.

Initial coverage focused on general allegations but underreported the technical infrastructure of real-time price scraping and eligibility algorithms; these mechanisms create market-wide price elevation as sellers raise offers across platforms to protect Amazon sales volume, according to the unsealed records and FTC filings.