Packages in a United States Postal Service (USPS) truck near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 24, 2025.
Amazon has angered some online retailers that say they didn't consent to have their products scraped and listed on the e-commerce giant's sprawling marketplace.
In February, the company announced "Shop Direct," a feature that lets consumers browse items from other brands' sites on Amazon. Some of those items include a button labeled "Buy for Me," an artificial intelligence agent that can purchase products from other websites on a shopper's behalf.
Amazon pitched the services, which are in testing phase for some U.S. users, as a way for shoppers to "find any product they want and need," including items that aren't available on its site. Over the past decade, Amazon has increasingly turned to third-party merchants for products, and now says more than 60% of sales on its retail platform are from independent sellers.
In recent weeks, some businesses began to object to their products being sold on Amazon without their permission, according to posts on Reddit and Instagram. Retailers, in some instances, said the program resulted in Amazon listing products that they never sold or that were out of stock.
"Sounds like a great program until the agentic AI starts selling customers things you don't have, all while your shop has no idea it's sending the wrong items to the customer," Hitchcock Paper, a Virginia-based stationery shop, said in an Instagram post in late December.
The paper retailer said it discovered it was part of the program when it began receiving orders for a stress ball product, which it doesn't sell, from a "buyforme.amazon" email address.
Bobo Design Studio CEO Angie Chua said she started receiving orders from Amazon's Buy for Me agent last week even though she hadn't opted in to the program. Her company sells stationery and journaling accessories through its Shopify website as well as a storefront in Palm Springs, California.
Chua told CNBC that, based on Amazon's instructions in an FAQ on its site, she reached out to the company to request that it pull her products. The listings were taken down within a few days, but she said the experience left her feeling "exploited."
"We were forced to be dropshippers on a platform that we have made a conscious decision not to be part of," Chua said, referring to an online retail model that involves selling products to shoppers without storing the inventory.