Andy Ayers was walking to his car in a Big Lots parking lot -- shopping cart brimming with cereal, dog treats and Always brand feminine hygiene products he planned to resell for a markup on Amazon.com Inc. -- when he got a phone alert that his account had been suspended.
“I thought, ‘Oh Crap. Perfect timing,”’ says Ayers, 32, of Athens, Georgia.
An Amazon shopper had complained that one of Ayers’s products wasn’t authentic. Ayers disputed the claim and provided receipts to back it up. But about two weeks had passed by the time his account was reinstated, and the downtime cost him sales.
“I wasn’t doing anything shady,” says Ayers, who estimates he’ll sell $500,000 worth of goods on Amazon this year. “It seems there are a lot of Amazon sellers who aren’t doing anything wrong and are getting punished. There’s an arbitrary nature to it.” He has plenty of company. Attendees at an annual gathering of online merchants in Seattle on Friday said merchants are “living in fear” that they’ll be kicked off the site.
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I sold on Amazon for 10 years.. I had 2 late shipping date violation -which means I shipped 2 items a day late (not late arriving-they arrived 3 days earlier to customer than Amazon's estimated arrival date-my arrival date was 100% and 97% Positive feedback rating) and I was booted from the site. What Amazon said I could do was ship my whole inventory ($6000.00-paid by me of course) to one of their new empty fulfilment centers-pay them to store it.. Pay them
ReplyDeleteTo ship it and then pay a higher free for the privilege. They have built all these new fulfilment centers with massive tax breaks because they promise they will hire 100's of employees so they need to fill these buildings. They have a huge precentage of them practically empty so thats how they are filling them. Put my 10 year business out of business. I begged .. I pleaded explained I would go out of business .. That was my only option.so now I am
Unemployed looking for a job...
eBay is doing similar things, I'm an 18 year member, 18,000 100% feedback, all 5 star detailed ratings. One month there was a glitch and somehow 11 items got relisted that had previously sold. When these items sold again, I immediately emailed the buyers offered refund and/or substitute items and very buyer was happy and no one complained. In fact they praised me for being willing to send them a higher priced item and being so quick to let them know. But 11 of 201 items sold for month were out of stock which put me over 2% for month, so I was suspended from 3 months. I make about $1200 a month profit on eBay so there went my ability to pay bills and buy groceries for 3 while months. Didn't matter I was a 100% 18 year company. They were very cold and rude.
ReplyDelete