I am seriosuly thinking of submitting a claim to the DOJ about Amazons unfair policies when they lose an FBA shipment. The sellers should not have to upload documents and invoices and stuff. Heck, even if I were to upload documents from a supplier, I find theres is always some thing missing from the document that Amazons want. The amount of information they need to issue you a reimbursement for a loss FBA shipment is just shy of you giving them your SSN.

I get bombarded with emails from amazon telling you about how much more in sales you can earn if you send more to FBA. Well, when you lose a shipment, that is a big loss for a small mom and pop company.

It is their fault for losing the shipment, not yours.

It is with a bit of sadness I write this post. I began listing on Amazon in the fall of   2000. I have seen the company expand their catalog and resellers ability to make money. I was blessed to keep going between job layoffs from the sales I made.

But Amazon has gotten way too big for its britches. They continually cut reseller off from selling items and are focusing on the “big guys”. Last week I was notified that I had “Broken their drop shipping rules”. I initially reached out to gain more information…they refused to tell me anything. I have since appealed 2 more times. Again no information or guidance on how to address the issue. 

Back in 2021 I was also shut down and was able to appeal this with changes to my protocols. Let me slip in here and say that I have never had as a business model drop shipping. However, if for some reason I can’t or do not want to mail an item I have reached out to a whole variety of on line stores to fulfill my orders. When purchasing from these sources I include a message approved by Amazon back in 2021. It has been 4 Yrs ago with no issues since.

And I can’t even get a confirmation on if it truly was a drop ship issue or someone trying to sabotage my business. They refuse to give me any information at all or get to someone who could help. They arbitrarily closed me out of fulfillment but merchant. My business do not move items out quickly enough to make FBA an option. I tried it when it first was introduced and ended up shipping back to myself 90% of my FBA inventory after 2 yrs. Tomorrow I ship out my last two orders. I will pull down my inventory records and move on to other online stores. I will cancel my marketplace account as of 7/1. I have been faithful to Amazon for the last 24 yrs. To bad they can’t be even fair with me.

I started selling on Amazon about 15 years ago and loved the platform. Both from a buying and selling standpoint, it was great; made a decent amount of $$ here selling and the products we bought were delivered fast and generally good quality.

Fast forward to today and I ABSOLUTELY HATE AMAZON. The toxic culture they have created for 3P sellers is abusive at best and outright right illegal at worst:

1. Suspected IP

2. High Price Errors

3. CPC Re-verification (well know massed produced toys).

4. FBA Storage Fees (need full time accountant to keep track).

5. Lost, stolen, Damaged FBA Inventory

6. Supply Chain Authentication (can anyone tell me what a valid wholesale invoice is to Amazon).

On top of it, the incompetent Seller Support and the inability to fix any of the above problems plus dozens more makes this place absurd. Suspension is literally a valid concern everyday, even for large accounts and even when you follow Amazon's ridiculous rules (there are many and they change often).

As I have stated before we try not to buy from Amazon, will not support this abusive platform. What will it take for this evil (maybe not the right word) company to be made accountable?? As of this morning Amazon has a $1.97 Trillion market cap, 3-4th largest company in the world, this is absurd; granted all of the other larger trillion $ companies are not great either, but Amazon and their behavior towards millions of small business 3P sellers is staggeringly bad.

At this point I see no way Amazon will change, they make too much $$ and appear to be rewarded for their bad behavior. I have opened dozens of cases, spoken with captive team members at length, emailed the leadership team multiple times, tried the moderators here, even called my AG and nothing (it is actually getting worse).

Generally curious as to what others feel it would take to end this nightmare? Also curious if anyone is happy with Amazon, forums are very negative right now, but there must be some (maybe?) that like Amazon?

具体问题就是后台商品可售显示是100个，但是前台能显示但是货物状态是Currently unavailable，开了无数case就是机械重复让我重新验证，一直重复邮件内容，根据链接点进去也没有提交重新激活材料的地方，再次开case给了问题和图片，又给我重复发送之前的邮件内容要我重新激活，你们客服是机器人？现在我的货物在你们仓库了，月租还正常在扣着，但是为什么我的商品没问题又不能卖？

So I'm on vacation and brought my Computer i Use for Amazon to the air BnB so i can continue to work. I been reading forums and worried my account is possibly at risk for deactivation? Can someone please clarify the risk. thank you. Right now i have save receipts form Airbnb to show locations i stayed at just incase any issues araise? can a mod please clarify. thank you.

Hi All,

We’ve been selling on Amazon for many years now. We rarely reach out to support because of the terrible experience it always is. I could get into it in detail, but I’ll save that for if anyone asks the sickening tactics we’ve been subjected to by base level Amazon selling “support.” We also almost never post on the forums for fear that Amazon will look at it negatively. (It’s disturbing realizing that they have such control over your resources).

Anyway, 3 days ago we learned our account had just been deactivated for that new INFORM act incompliance. What’s crazy is that we double AND triple checked that we submitted all this information, strictly for this reason. We even called “support” and confirmed it was all they needed and that the verification would finish any moment.

What happened was that someone called and ensured we uploaded everything necessary for the INFORM consent act. Then a month or so went by and I noticed the identy verification still said “pending” or “in progress.” I checked that out (about 2 weeks ago this was) and saw that for some wild reason they now required that the drivers license of the contact person of the account have the same address as the business registered address. This doesn’t even make sense because we’re a corporation.. what if the business is in a location other than your residence?

But whatever, luckily my partner’s address matched on her license and we submitted it immediately. But then suddenly, 2 weeks later, this happens. Customers are reaching out wondering if we’ve stopped selling on Amazon. So I go and check the INFORM act notice and click “(in progress)” again and it says it now wants us to RESUBMIT the bank statement, even though it’s exactly the same as the one we’ve already submitted.

So I do this, and NOW the verification finally completes. But it says that our account will be reactivated within 48 hours. I’m sure you can see where this is going. During this time I called and spoke with multiple “account health support specialist” who all did absolutely nothing, even though many of them SAID they filed reports or escalated the case, etc. Lo and behold, it’s well passed 48 hours and our account has not been reinstated.

So again, I call the worst customer support service (Amazon) I’ve ever experienced. The guy does his 3-5 minutes of research, tells me I’m right and that they’ll have to escalate this to the team that can help.. also mentioning I should wait another 24 hours.

Meanwhile, we’re losing an enormous portion of our cash flow. Additionally, now that our website is the only place to get our flagship products, tons of those customers are now being forced to come to our website to purchase, making it so we have to manually fulfill all these orders. So, not only is Amazon hurting our cash flow signicantly, they are losing their own customers to us because of it!

If I was an Amazon executive and I saw this, whew, I would be furious with my company’s service. I just don’t get their inability to accomplish one minute, simple, straightforward thing like reactivate an account. It takes one click. There’s no long process to fix this. It’s just that no one is doing it.

What’s even crazier is that we have TWO seller accounts for the same business. (Yes, we have a valid necessary reason for this and have cleared it with Amazon years ago). But why then didn’t our other account not get deactivated? It had the EXACT SAME original documentation but wasn’t flagged or rejected or subjected to all this extra scrutiny. Who decided this account was the one that needed deactivating? It almost seems targeted with how ridiculous this is.

Regardless, we are obviously very upset that something so easy to solve has taken this long, causing a massive loss to our business. At least we’re getting a ton of new customer data for the first time since Amazon’s actions are sending them all to us.

All this to say, I hope it is back up by tomorrow, but Amazon’s support has not instilled any confidence in that timeframe whatsoever. I’ll let you know what absurdity happens next.

I have a direct relationship with a publisher and manufacturer who makes and sells a book that I've been selling for many months. They're family friends, and we've done great business together.

Out of nowhere, after I'd replenished 600 units, the listing brand name was CHANGED to some random Chinese seller's name, the listing was temporarily removed, and now that it's back, I have to get approval with this random Chinese brand. This is absolutely insane, considering this book is directly sourced from the manufacturer who is ALSO the publisher. And Amazon will do NOTHING to rectify this - they've only given me and the publisher a runaround, and "oh we'll respond within the hour," and the response is something generic and unhelpful. I've done over six figures in sales with this book alone, and suddenly that's gone, inaccessible, and gated because Amazon refuses to help or correspond with me/the owners of the material.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? I have no idea how to navigate this and just want the listing back in order.

I am constantly being told by buyers that Amazon is saying their order is lost or delayed when using Standard Mail Envelope. I ship all of my orders out on time and in some instances, the orders are delivered and buyers still receive these messages.

eBay offers a tracking service for standard mail envelopes. Why can't Amazon do the same? It's unreal that a billion dollar company can't match the tech of eBay. It's also ridiculous that their system's can't at least send a better message to buyers saying how their order is arriving.

Does anyone have any insight to this?

@Seller_1KYLYkgAlu4xX

@Seller_c2KLMXKhUYF3u

@Seller_RsATYbG9XP0HP

@Seller_F4AbbFj6ovBk3

@Seller_RTAKHeZqlPLvF

@Seller_hme3Wbydd1ihr

@Seller_guPeMXBrBxqyU

@Seller_R6oYCnTB9O1Uy

@Seller_t9kvdr2yixQej

@Seller_GEZPMc4CeQfh6

Hi,

Is it true that in order to sell USED books on Amazon you have to provide an invoice from a supplier, showing you've ordered 10 copies of each title? I knew that was the case to sell new books, but not with used books.

Our book inventory of 10,000 listings was suspended today over one $10 book that was damaged in transit, repackaged by the post office and sent to the customer, and for some reason we received a COUNTERFEIT/INAUTHENTIC claim for this?!We have emailed the seller support address we were given numerous times with a copy of the exact invoice, clearly showing that we ordered 10 new copies of the book on 2/23/23 from a publisher. Yet, the invoice was rejected because it was older than 12 months. The books were purchased in February of 2023. THIS MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE TO ME?! We've purchased, listed and sold books for 20 years, so many of our legitimately new book listings were bought years ago. How can we speak to a live person who can review our letter of explanation, the invoice, see that we've been selling books here for 20 years, have perfect feedback and account health? An email or a phone number? Otherwise it appears this is in a loop, where whatever we send is rejected by AI.How is it POSSIBLE that because a $10 book was damaged and repackaged by the post office, our seller account is hit with a Counterfeit/Authenticiy complaint?? Why are we as long time sellers with Amazon receiving form letters of rejection repeatedly, when we follow directions, enclose proof that the book was new, ordered from a publisher? Yet the invoice is rejected multiple times?Again, We could not prevent USPS from damaging the package, nor how they responded (repackaged and sent to the customer). The customer received the book within a week, it was still in new condition; we've emailed with her and she is fine. She realizes the delivery delay was not due to Amazon nor us as the 3rd party seller.Yet here we find ourselves, with 10,000 deactivated new and used book listings.

Our only option may be to begin again requesting approval to sell used books.

I appreciate any insight!!

I am posting this information because I support this category and I am aware of problems some of you have had when processing refunds for wrong items returned by buyers. Please use the process outlined below and share your experience here.

If a buyer returns an item and it is not the item they purchased, immediately contact them and tell them you believe they made a mistake. Ask them if they would like the incorrect item returned to them, and let them know that they can return the correct item for a refund. In your communications to them via buyer seller message, be sure to attach a clear image of what you received from them.

Contacting the buyer is a crucial first step. It shows good customer service and positive intentions. It will support any appeal or claim you make later to defend your claim of switcheroo. Next, launch the partial refund workflow. Grade the item condition and upload images. You may take a 100% restocking fee.

The buyer may file an A-to-z claim. Defend the claim and reference the images you uploaded when you processed the refund and the message you sent the buyer.

Alternatively, Amazon may have refunded the order upon the carrier’s first scan of the return label. If so, file a SAFE-T claim. Seller Assurance for E-Commerce Transactions (SAFE-T) claims allow sellers using Prepaid Return Labels (PRL) in the seller-fulfilled network to appeal Amazon's decision to issue a refund to a customer.

Please share your feedback here! I like you and I want you to be successful selling on Amazon.

Best regards, Susan