The FTC is investigating the Amazon and Apple deal that crushed small resellers

Last year, Amazon reached an agreement with Apple to bring iPhone direct sales to its platform for the first time. Now, the agreement is under scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission.

The deal was first announced last fall , apparently as a way for Apple to sell Amazon officially and reduce counterfeit or marketed products in a misleading manner. However, it had the effect of launching hundreds of legitimate vendors offering low-cost and refurbished Apple products that were no longer for sale by the company itself.

A vendor, a Minnesota man named John Bumstead who specializes in restored MacBooks, was contacted earlier this month by a group of FTC officials. Bumstead told that he was interviewed by FTC lawyers and an economist about the impact of the Amazon-Apple agreement on his business. The group did not reveal the broader purpose of the interview, but at least one member of the group is listed as belonging to the newly formed FTC Technical Task Force, a division launched in February to control anti-competitive behavior on technology platforms.

FTC officials were curious about Amazon's role in the Bumstead business and how much their business suffered when it started. When Apple secured the deal in November, Bumstead received a couple of months' notice before he was forced to leave the Marketplace platform, which is the leading e-commerce website in the United States for outside vendors.

“They wanted to know how Amazon works, how eBay works. I went on to describe how a listing works on Amazon. Amazon is interesting because it doesn't necessarily create a list. It is simply labeled in an existing list, "Bumstead tells ." If that list is deleted, you probably cannot sell that product. That's how Amazon did this. They created a lot of renewed listings of people who were certified, and let those people sell on those listings, and abandoned everyone else. "

Earlier this week, the MLex regulatory news organization reported that the FTC had cited Amazon Marketplace seller data on products not sold by the company itself, although it is not clear whether the two efforts are related. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment.