 recognize the channel lady from Georgia Ms. McBath for five minutes. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bezos you referred to third-party sellers today as Amazon's partners and that your success depends on their success but over the past year we've heard a completely different story. As part of this investigation we've interviewed many small businesses and they used the words like bullying, fear, and panic to describe their relationship with Amazon. I'm going to share the story of a small business owner who is also a wife and a mother so you can understand how this is actually affecting the lives of everyday people and why this truly matters. We were a top bookseller on Amazon.com and we worked day and night very hard towards growing our business and maintaining a five-star feedback rating. Most importantly this business feeds a total of 14 people which includes three children and one 90-year-old granny and as we grew we were shinkling Amazon's market share in the textbooks category. So now in retaliation Amazon started restricting us from selling. They started with a few titles in early 2019 and within six months Amazon systematically blocked us from selling the full textbook category. We haven't sold a single book from the past 10 months or probably more. We were never given a reason. Amazon didn't even provide us with a notice as to why we were being restricted. There was no warning. There was no plan. So Mr. Basil, so after Amazon just delisted the small business without any apparent reason or notice she told us that they sent more than 500 separate communications to Amazon including to you Mr. Bezos over the past year. There was not a single meaningful response. Do you think this is an acceptable way to treat someone that you described as both a partner and a customer? No Congresswoman and I appreciate that you've showed me that anecdote and I would like to talk to her. It does not at all to me seem like the right way to treat her and I'm surprised by that and it's not the systematic approach that we take. I can assure you I don't even understand what's going on in that anecdote because we would love for third-party sellers to sell books. Respectively sir. I don't understand it but I would like to understand it better and with your permission I would like to get in touch with your office. I think though that you're missing the point. This is not just about one business. I'm concerned that this is a pattern of behavior and basically this pattern of behavior has to change. Mr. Bezos my question is simply are you willing to make sure going forward that you know the numerous sellers that we've talked to they have problems just like this and there are more sellers who have told us that they've exhausted all of their options before finally reaching out to you directly as a last resort but they're still waiting for your response. So what do you have to say to the small businesses who are talking to Congress because you simply won't listen to them? Well I say that's not acceptable. If we aren't listening to you I'm not happy about that at all and but I do you know if you allow me to disagree a little bit with a piece of this I do not think that's systematically what's going on and the evidence that I would suggest would be useful for you to consider in that regard is that third-party sellers in aggregate are doing extremely well on Amazon. They grew from 20 years ago it was zero and today it's 60% of sales. Thank you so much. Mr. Bezos thank you so much. You said that sellers have many other attractive options to reach customers but that's not at all what we found in our investigation according to e-marketer a source Amazon cited in submissions to this committee Amazon has nearly seven times the market share of its closest e-commerce competitor. One seller told us that and I quote Amazon continues to be the only show in town no matter how angry sellers get they have nowhere else to go so are you saying that these people aren't being truthful when they say that Amazon is the only game in town? Yeah congresswoman with great respect I do disagree with that I believe that there are a lot of options and some of them are not even listed on that chart I just looked at it briefly but I didn't see some that I know of for example so I think there are a lot of things. Thank you for that Mr. Bezos my time is short. If Amazon didn't have monopoly power over these sellers do you think they would choose to stay in a relationship that is characterized by bullying, fear and panic? With all respect congresswoman I I do not accept the premise of your question that is not how we operate the business and in fact we we work very hard to thank you for that thank you for that and that's why they've been successful. Thank you for that Mr. Bezos I'm going to close with giving the book seller the opportunity to finally be heard by you. Mr. Bezos we increased our sales on Amazon by five times in the past three years and we have contributed that much of proportional seller fees to Amazon we have contributed that much to your business to five times we followed all the rules that were set by you we we please you know just help us in earning a livelihood. We beg you there are 14 lines at stake please please please help us get back on track. With that I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.