Price Check Spurs Bay Area Backlash Against Amazon

Amazon.com may not be evil nor an empire, but Bay Area bookstores are bonding together to strike back in a Christmas season price war.

The online retailer this year created a "Price Check App" that allows shoppers at brick-and-mortar retailers to scan an item and find it for less money online. Cheaper, maybe; legal, yes -- but fair? Not for the owners of Marcus Books in San Francisco's Fillmore District, who have begun an online petition to stop Amazon.com's "race to the bottom" which ultimately causes lost jobs and lost tax revenue, according to the Oakland Tribune.

In fairness, the Amazon Price Check promotion lasted just one day -- Dec. 10 -- and other retailers barely noticed, the newspaper reported. Nonetheless, Amazon's tactics have led other industry representatives like the American Booksellers Association to pen letters against the online retailers lobbyists.

"Amazon has been doing shifty things to us for a while," Jon Stich, a manager at Diesel bookstore, told the newspaper.