Amazon said that it has removed hundreds of thousands of products and suspended thousands of sellers amid price gouging on its website.
It has removed 530,000 high-priced products and suspended 2,500 sellers. This comes after several sellers were listing hand sanitizer and face masks at ridiculously high prices.
The online retailer says that it is proactively monitoring the marketplace for high prices and enforcing its fair pricing policy to protect its customers.
CNBC found that some face masks that were originally priced at $13.98 USD (about $17 CAD) had been increased to $195 USD (about $261 CAD).
Amazon now says that it is detecting price gouging by comparing prices submitted by sellers with historic prices offered in the marketplace. It is also using machine learning to aid with the human monitoring.
The company also recently banned any products that falsely claimed to prevent or cure the coronavirus. Amazon notified third-party merchants that it was going to remove listings that claimed to stop the spread of the virus.
