Amazon Seller Central - the REAL cost of doing business with Amazon.com. Account Suspensions, Exhorbitant Fees, No Customer Support and MORE! Seattle Washington

Sorry to hear about your Amazon adventure, but Amazon.Com Did it to me also, and Thousands more ! Read my complaint posted June 6th, and you will see how it all connects.

I don't want to repeat what was posted, but none of this was an accident. The title of the post is: Amazon Steals $40 Million every 90 days.

I wish I had started some research before getting involved in Amazon and other large companies. Good Luck with your outcome.

Mary

Caveat Emptor (Buyer ... or in this case Seller ... beware of Amazon).


Like many other small businesses, we tried Amazon's selling solution
(called Seller Central) to reach a wider audience. We are certified,
licensed resellers of Computer Aided Design (CAD) software for the
Engineering Community. The products that we sell are all New and fully
supported applications by both the manufacturer and our organization.


At the end of March, 2009, we signed up with Amazon (with a Pro Merchant Account) to sell products on their site. We carefully scrutinized their seller agreement to ensure that we would meet and be able to adhere to all of their policies as well as understand their terms. We decided to go forward with an account and signed up to pay $39.99/month for the service (this is just the start of the fees).


Signing up was the easy part. From then on, it was all down hill.
When we first went to add one of our products to the site, we noticed
that we had to have an ISBN number or a UPC code. Since the software manufacturers have no need for official ISBN or UPC codes, we were forced to buy them. Each UPC code costs anywhere from $40 to $200 (we found them for $40 each) to obtain (from a 3rd party organization); we purchased 6 of them for the 6 products that we sell.


One note here: Once you purchase a UPC code or ISBN number and list your product, ANYONE can now sell that same product despite you having paid for that unique code. We didn't have this problem, but its important to understand.


Once we had the products listed in their site, we also began populating
as much data as we could about our organization just in case people
needed more details about who was selling these products.


By April 6th, we had everything listed on the site. By April 17th, we
had received our first order ($1195). The fees on this order were
$180.60 which was automatically taken from our money.

Of course, at this point, we filled the order and contacted the customer
to let them know that not only was the physical shipment en-route (we
supplied the tracking number), but that they could also download the
software immediately if they wanted (we provided them with a download
link).


We then checked to see when the money would reach our account. We
received a notification that "The disbursement for Order ID: XYZ will be
made 14 business days after the order has been confirmed".
We thought this was an exhorbitant amount of time to hold the money (we need to pay the manufacturer for the software within 30 days), but
decided this was yet another cost of doing business.


On April 24th, we received another order for the same amount with the
same fees. By this time, we had already received another $39.99 fee for the monthly fees as well.


Also on April 24th, our account was put "Under Review" and funds would be held for "up to 30 days". The notification stated the following:


"Please know this is not necessarily a negative reflection of your
selling history. This action is taken regularly on marketplace selling
accounts across the Amazon platform, particularly where sales volumes or inventory levels are not supported by sufficient buyer feedback or
established sales history. Account reviews may also be the result of
increases in negative feedback, chargebacks or A-to-z Guarantee claims
received."


How on earth could we have obtained "suffiecient buyer feedback or
established sales history" with 2 sales within 1 week?


The section that Amazon will continually point to (for those of you going
through this problem as well) is section H of their selling agreement:


"h. If we reasonably conclude based on information available to us that
Seller's actions and/or performance in connection with the Services may
result in a significant number of Buyer disputes, chargebacks or other
claims, then we may, in our sole discretion, delay initiating any
remittances and withhold any payments to be made or that are otherwise due to you in connection with the Services or this Participation Agreement for the shorter of: (a) a period of 90 days following the initial date of suspension; or (b) completion of any investigation(s) regarding any Seller actions and/or performance in connection with this Participation Agreement. We will not be liable to Seller if we act in accordance with the provisions of this Section."


They feel as though this gives them carte blanche to simply hold funds.
To me, this is their ponzi scheme ... hold one group's money and disburse funds to others (30, 60, 90 days later ... look at Amazon's own message boards ... of course you'll have to search for "under review" in their seller central message boards to see these issues).


This is when the exchange of our emails with Amazon's automated response system began. Each time we were asked to provide Tracking Numbers, dates/times of shipments, proof that we were legitimate resellers, etc.


We complied with every request (probably 15 of them).


Finally, after several weeks of back and forth emails that never seemed
to change, we got through to their phone support (you can't call them,
there is a very hidden feature in the system to have them call you). In
chatting with their on-line representative (who, I will admit, was
amazingly calm through the call) told us that the funds "will not be
released until the 30 days are up". And that "this is quite common for
new sellers with Amazon".


Here it is now June 1st and although our funds were officially
"released", they now had to wait another 14 days until the next
disbursement date (May 29th) to be transferred. The transfer "should
take 5-7 business days".


The entire Amazon experience has been horrendous. Not only do they
charge exhorbitant fees (compared to a high cost system such as
eBay/Paypal), they have no customer support, and will simply hold your
money at will.


In researching other sellers issues, we noticed just how common this practice is. Apparently, its so common that some groups are
financially devastated.


In our case, we dropped our account prior to getting charged for the 3rd month of fees (of course, they have our credit card on file [a mandatory item] and I'm sure we'll end up getting charged for June as well) before we've even gotten paid.


We've had to already pay the software developement organization (our markup was 20%), so we are out money on both ends.


We won't be doing business with Amazon ever again ... as a consumer or a selling organization.