Once again I want to apologize for the delays and technical issues, and state of the blog in general over the past week or so. It’s been crazy around here, and I appreciate your patience. I’ve actually got a post for you today, just a quick one to let you know I haven’t completely abandoned you.
It’s time to talk once more about the possible pitfalls and perils of selling on Amazon.
Admittedly, selling on Amazon can be time consuming and even frustrating. If you are a casual seller with a few books rather than a professional you might be better off figuring out how to sell your books online the easy way.
I know we’ve covered this before in various ways, but this time I’m not talking about myself. There is a colleague of mine, another bookseller who’s about a quarter my size. He sells around a couple hundred books a day.
At least he did, until he recently got his account suspended by Amazon.
That’s right, it happened. The thing we all dread – suspension. He told me that he was advised in the morning that he needed to get the situation rectified, and by that same evening his account had been suspended.
He knows why it happened. He simply hadn’t been doing what he was supposed to be doing. He had been shipping books late, he didn’t have good customer service, and he didn’t reply customer inquiries in anything approaching a timely manner, if at all. Amazon, of course, doesn’t take too kindly to this type of bad behavior.
So, he got suspended for one week. He is actually supposed to get his account unsuspended by today sometime, after having prostrated himself and pleaded with Amazon. He has been selling on Amazon for five years now. That actually may have given him some equity, the fact that he had been selling on the marketplace for a while and had that history.
That doesn’t mean that he’s getting a free pass. He know he needs to fix these issues, and that he needs to straighten up and fly right or he’s going to end up banned for life.
This whole situation has hugely affected business over last week, in that over the last week he hasn’t done any business at all. He doesn’t sell other marketplaces, so an Amazon suspension was about the worst news he could get.
The thing is, this whole situation could have been avoided if he had only been doing what he was supposed to be doing in the first place. This is just one more illustration of what I have been saying: you really have to stay on the straight and narrow when it comes to Amazon. If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to, they will find out, they will call you on it, and they will penalize you. Just use common sense, follow the rules, and try and provide a basic level of good customer service, just like you would in any other business.
Tags: selling on Amazon
I also was suspended by Amazon vfrom my Pro Merchant account, but not for good reason, and it’s for life. One day I received four orders for the same book- I only had two copies, not sure why there was this double order, seems like a software issue on their end- So I had to cancel two orders, which I almost never did.
My approval rating at the time was 99% and I had rave reviews, had been selling with Amazon for over six years, never less than 90% approval.
At their invitation ( because I was a good seller) I had even tried Fufillment by Amazon but since I had lots of problems with them losing my listings, losing books, and double selling books, I withdrew from FBA- this was just before they terminated me, so it felt like sour grapes. Also, I am a small seller ( less than 8K books at the time), so I don’t think they wanted the hassle.
They pulled my account ( for three months it was “being investigated” or something, because I contested the suspension) and during that three months they held all the money that was due to me as well. Talking to seller services on the phone didn’t work, they wouldn’t give me a straight answer. When the 90 days were up, they still didn’t send my money so I had to ask for it.
I now sell just through Alibris and have nothing but good things to say about them.
I got my account suspended too. The reality of selling on amazon is that they will eventually begin a severe destabilizing process. They prey on smaller booksellers. Basically, they wait until the inevitable happens (you get 3 or 4 poor ratings) then they terminate your account for a week while you beg and plead for your livelyhood back. They start you back up but the terms are impossible for anyone that has any business sense to weather. They keep funding for 3 months with absolutely no guarantee that they wont hold monies for three months more. We are talking thousands of dollars if you have any volume at all. So if you can operate for three months without any money and have absolutely no operational issues on account of it you may be alright. But most likely the difficulties both financial and emotional involved in operating a business minus thousands and thousands of dollars with bills commitments and absolutely no promises will add up and you will have a most unpleasant half year. Compound this with the fact that this will most likely happen somewhere a year or two into selling on amazon and most likely the as yet unprofitability of the endevour and you have the potential for nearly ruining your life or least your finacial life for years to come. We’re talking inability to repay financiers, distributors and leasors. What’s more, amazon seems to know what they are doing and if i didn’t know any better seems to time everything with a near cruel intent on making its sellers skid out into oblivion.
I’m telling you, I’ve been battling this thing for 8 years now. Just stay away. These guys are nuts. They basically hold the money of sellers for months at a time all the time. And if you think it’s perhaps because i am not dedicated enough or whatever. The exact same thing has been happening to a colleague.
I’ve even gone so far as to write major software to somehow overcome their compeletly impossible standards and expectations. But basically the upshot is, you will work for free, your stock will devalue quickly due to computerized reprising, you may finally begin making about half of a resonable living for your efforts and the minute they sense that you are at this point, the account closures will begin. You will have no one to talk to. You will be insulted with vacant emails sent from a machine that contain bizarre near orwellian statements such as, “we cannot tell you how we know or what we know” but we do, “and your account has been suspended for life.”
It’s a truely draconian and terrible company to work with. These guys basically sidestep all employment laws but you are really their employee since they are free to terminate you and will continually monitor your performance and generally have ways to control your actions. You will work without health insurance, without the prospect of unemployment, and you may recieve your final paycheck 6 months after your termination. Worse then than, you will continue to pay out of your pocket to basically keep your job, but I assure you once the first suspension comes, they have every intent to finally fire you. They are just squeezing even more money out of you before they do.
Basically in any reasonably oversighted situation they would be sued for what they do. But they have found the loophole and they candycoat the whole thing with phrases such as “community and professional merchant account.” But they act in a near insane manner basically forcing you into a position of financial submission where you are between the choice of how to screw yourself less. What’s crazier is that when the time comes to make this choice, you will be given no warning and you will have very little time to make it. This is because if you don’t continue operations out of pocket the poor ratings will come raining in. If you choose to continue the money will go raining out. And so a choice must be made and very quick.
This has been the most insane business situation that I have ever witnessed, and that most people have never heard of. Please save yourself the life strain. Stay away from this anethma!
I think the blogger here is being paid by Amazon. This sounds like a be good or God will punish you sermon I heard in Catholic School. Be sure, Amazon is a dysfunctional computer masquerading as customer service. Have you ever gotten one of those ridiculous emails back in which a computer has obviously scanned some keywords and sent the response, which has nothing to do with what you asked.
They are overwhelmed by their own lowball customer service and too many sellers. They have to be arbitrary and making up stories.
I was suspended because they thought I had two accounts, but I did not and never had. I proved that to them, then they went digging for other problems ,saying my feedback was too low (it was 96 percent, which was above the standard they gave).
Once you are on their radar, they do work to get rid of you.
They will retaliate if you complain, I believe. The truth is they are the BEST at marketing but suck at listing and selling books. Confusion comes in because there are dozens of copies of the same ISBN book in most cases.
My advice is NEVER contact them about anything. It gets you on their radar. Everything seems to be based in numbers, not facts and if you are a number for any reason, they screw with you. Im selling happily and not asking questions.
Cool site, love the info.
Great site…keep up the good work.