Amazon.com uses shady practices with it's own sellers

By R. Black

Amazon.com uses shady practices with it's own sellers

I'm not going to use my real email address as we all know what happens to sellers who speak the "truth" about Amazon selling. They get canned.

Our company has sold on the web for over 10 years, Amazon is by far the poorest managed sales place we have ever encountered. The feedback system is completely bogus and often used to blackmail the seller. There is no buyer feedback in public view, so that is worthless. Amazon has an A-Z claim system by which any consumer can file a dispute, claim anything they please and more often than not go in the consumers favor.

Amazon is completely unresponsive to numerous issues at the site including:

1. Buyers manipulating the site to rip off sellers.

2. Site stability (it's broken constantly)

3. Cycling (you pay a fee to have product listed, Amazon cycles your listings so today maybe your stuff is saw in California and Florida, no place else). Amazon has admitted this, they call it "surfacing".

4. Consumers at the site are well aware of how to steal from sellers and get away with it, Amazon does not care, its not their money or merchandise.

5. Amazon cares about 1 thing, Amazon. This can be witnessed time and time again in Amazons own forums.

6. Amazon is constantly saying they are working at improving the site. The only changes that take place are completely cosmetic (unlike eBay). These cosmetic changes usually destroy third party sales. For example, the recent changes in looks of listings have cut our sales by 50%. We have 1100+ products listed at Amazon, it makes a bit over $100 a day. Yet at eBay the same 1100+ items make over $800 a day.

7. Amazon has literally no automation. Its always promised but never happens.

8. Recently Amazon has worked to remove email addresses of buyers, getting rid of the ability to communicate effectively.

9. Amazon has different selling platforms that are not an equal level playing field. For example, a seller who is featured will see more sales than they ever thought they could see. I know a featured seller who gets sales every 4-5 minutes. Being featured however is only given to those Amazon see's worth giving it to.

10. Read why Toys R Us has such issues with Amazon. They are valid grievances and why Toys R Us won the lawsuit.

11. Some sellers are allowed to manipulate the place. I have personally complained countless times about one seller who uses two accounts, one a business account, one a marketplace account. It allows the seller to completely control sales of the listings. Amazon does nothing. Said seller will use a business account and put things up at .01 and charge $6 per item shipped. Then use the marketplace account to sell items with Amazons standard shipping rate at a higher base price.

12. Amazon allows some sellers to make and change ad's. This results in those sellers manipulating the ad's to favor their sales, destroy others sales and even result in negative feedback since the buyer expects one thing and the advertisement has been changed by someone else! Complain to Amazon, they do nothing.

13. The site is in fact so bad that many sellers using Amazons own forums have banded together to try and form their own sites.

14. At any time for any reason Amazon will suspend your account. You do not get to defend yourself. The Amazon Alliance group does this, they have no people you can speak to. They will happily hold your money for months and months and months on end.

15. The company has been cited numerous times for indiscretions from manipulating buyer accounts to other matters. The out of court settlements are proof of the companies rather careless attitude as was Jeff Bezos attitude in the recent Toys R Us case where he managed to even make the judge completely dislike his cavalier approach to business.

16. Wall Street and markets are now seeing Amazon for what it is. Hence stock being downgraded and the plummet of its value.

There's more. But I will stop there. The bottom line is yes you can make money at Amazon but do not expect Amazon to care one bit about you. They care about only enormous sellers the rest of the sellers are just afterthoughts to them.

There are sellers who are brownies. They'll run to Amazon and say, "See I said this about you and it got published". Go read Amazons own forums and you will see many more upset sellers than happy ones.

R. Black

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