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Amazon.com Witheld Funds, Lost Inventory, Revoked Selling Privilages, Unethical Practices Seattle, Washington

5th of Jun, 2011 by User892946

I was a seller on Amazon Starting in January of this year until they shut me down on 3-10-11 for "an excessive product defective rate" of 3%... basically, for product returns. That's 6 items returned out of 200 sold in the first 2 months of my seller's account being opened (by the way, only two items were actually defective). Does 3% sound excessive to you? And so starts the real fun... Problem #1:
I appealed my suspension 3 times, only to have all 3 rejected leading to my account being permanently revoked. They were as vague as they could possibly be as to why I was being kicked out, providing no explanation whatsoever. I asked for a phone call from the review team in each of my appeals so I could make sure I was addressing their concerns correctly... no calls received. I even called customer support and asked how I could file a formal complaint about the lack of phone support for the seller account review team, and the agent told me, "I can send them an email on your behalf, but I doubt it will do any good. But, we appreciate your feedback, though." (I laughed out loud when he said that last part!) They informed me that they were going to keep my funds for 90-days (they still have them). I am fighting with them on the principle of this policy right now. Also, they state that they can and will make interest on my money and will not pass any of it along to me - it's in one of their "policies". Problem #2:
Amazon.com FBA lost 7 of my items, but waited for me to inquire as to why they weren't showing up in my inventory as available for sale before they even looked into the problem. Then, they spent two weeks "investigating the issue" only to conclude that they indeed had lost the items. To give you an idea of how crazy this is, all of the items were very large and heavy (corporate printers, street legal scooters, projection screens, etc.)... not exactly items you would expect to go missing during the receiving process. They took their sweet time to look into each one, most of them took two weeks to resolve. At the point they deem the item lost, they reimburse your seller account based on their calculation of the "value" of the item. When you look up their policies on determining the "value", it is once again as vague as possible. The amounts they reimbursed me for these items were nowhere near the true value of the item. They were far from fair reimbursements. They told me that if I wanted to dispute the reimbursement amounts, I had to produce my sourcing invoices to prove higher value. It is absolutely unethical for them to request to see my sourcing information so they can compete with me directly, so I refused to do so. (I have some very unique sources and products listed on those documents, and I'm not about to let Amazon have them.) So at this point, I have lost nearly $1000 from FBA inventory mis-handling, and they refuse to make it right. I even proved the value based on what the product was selling for on THEIR OWN SITE and what my price for that item was still set at in the system (lowest price of all sellers), and they still refused to make adjustments. Problem #3:
I have lots of my inventory still in Amazon.com FBA warehouses. I am now forced to sell these on other websites, such as eBay, for a much lower price. Regardless, Amazon has impacted my stellar customer service reputation on the other sites twice by FBA's failure to perform. Once, they placed an item I had sold into "Reserved" status as I was building the fulfillment order, and it stayed in that status for 2 weeks. I had to refund the customer's money and beg his forgiveness as a result. On the other item... I submitted a fulfillment order for a large corporate printer I had sold on eBay. They shipped it and provided me a tracking number just like normal. I gave the tracking number to my customer. All was good until the customer asked me what the status was with his shipment about a week later, stating that UPS has no information on the tracking number I gave him. I checked, and sure enough, UPS hadn't received the item yet. I opened a case with Amazon, and they acted surprised and said they would look into it. A week went by (during which, I had to refund my customer and beg forgiveness again) before Amazon finally admitted they had lost it during the shipping process. Another prime example of how Amazon arbitrarily assigns value to an item as it benefits them. Problem #4:
Some of my FBA order fulfillments were charged a dimensional shipping charge, generally reserved for very large, heavy packages. On the latest order fulfillment, the longest side of the box was 18" and the weight under 10 lbs. When I asked why, they simply stated "it's in our policy you agreed to when you signed up." Anyone vaguely familiar with common shipping practices would, and should be able to assume that Amazon follows the same basic principles without finding surprise charges in their statements. I sell on several different web venues and value my reputation for integrity and excellent customer service. I am absolutely shocked that Amazon works this way, and that all of this could happen in such a short period of time. Amazon is getting away with anything they want to and I want to contribute to a solution to this unethical behavior in any way I'm useful. This has to stop quickly.

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