I’ve been selling used stuff on Amazon.com off and on for well over three years now — mostly used video games, movies, accessories and such. Despite fairly hefty seller fees, it’s been a lot better than the other alternatives for me. Compared to eBay, the listing process is dramatically faster and simpler, sales prices are often higher, and items stay listed (at fixed prices) until sold. Compared to craigslist, Amazon.com gets you a much wider market (helpful for obscure games & accessories), and a simpler sales process. (coordinating a meeting time just to sell a $15 game? No thanks.)
So over the weekend I was cleaning out my office and listing some old games and controllers. Then I thought about this Lenovo ThinkPad X220 I’ve been trying to sell for months. There was a listing on Amazon.com for the X220 with a couple of other used listings, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. I listed it Sunday night for $725.
That ThinkPad listing must have triggered an automated account check (due to the dollar amount, no doubt) that the last 3+ years of listings did not. Hours later, close to midnight, I got this cordial email from Amazon.com (emphasis mine):
Hello from Amazon.
We are writing to let you know that we have removed your selling privileges, canceled your listings, and placed a temporary hold on any funds in your seller account.
We took this action because our records indicate that this account is related to another selling account that was closed by Amazon. Once selling privileges have been removed, sellers are not allowed to establish new accounts.
Due to the proprietary nature of our business, we do not provide detailed information on how we determine that accounts are related.
We encourage you to take appropriate steps to resolve any pending orders. Note that any amounts paid as a result of A-to-z Guarantee claims and chargebacks may be deducted from your seller account.
After 90 days, any remaining funds will be available per your settlement schedule. Once the hold has been removed, balance and settlement information will be available in the “Payments” section of your seller account. If you have questions about these funds, please write to payments-funds@amazon.com.
While we appreciate your interest in selling on Amazon.com, the closure of this account is a permanent action.
Regards,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com
The tone of the email didn’t give me a lot of hope. It’s clear that Amazon is not willing to provide details on how they made this determination, or leave an opportunity for appeal. And to be clear, I’m certain that I’ve tripped a false positive of some sort. I have never used another seller account on Amazon.com.
I logged into the seller account to see what it looked like. There was a glimmer of hope: an Appeal button. I dutifully filled out an appeal as follows:
I have never had another seller account with Amazon.com. I’ve been using this account to sell stuff off and on for over three years now, without any issues. I can only assume that this was due to an automated false positive. Please review and reinstate my account.
Amazon replied less than twelve hours later with this:
Hello from Amazon.
Thank you for writing. After a review of your account by an account specialist, we have decided not to reinstate your selling privileges.
We regret we are unable to provide further information on this situation. Further correspondence regarding the closure of your selling account may not be answered.
The closure of this account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well.
Regards,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com
So that’s that, it seems. It’s clear from the tone of these emails they are not especially sympathetic to the concerns of sellers whose accounts have been mistakenly flagged.
eBay & Paypal have received a lot of well-deserved flak over the years, but compared to this, they come out looking good. They have email addresses and online chat systems and phone numbers answered by actual humans who provide actual details about your case. In many of the Paypal horror stories that circulate, the worst material comes from bad customer service reps. But when you deal with Amazon.com, at least as a seller, there’s no customer service rep to talk to. Cold emails like this are all you get.
I hope this will be helpful to two groups of people:
1. Sellers — look for other alternatives. If you sell on Amazon.com, don’t put all of your eggs in that basket. For me, this just meant a harder time clearing out the closet. But for someone doing a lot of sales on Amazon.com, this could cause a serious loss of business.
2. Amazon.com staff — seriously, just look at this from the customer’s point of view, and try to tell me this is a customer friendly process. More transparency is in order. Your secret fraud detection system is fallible, and it should be treated as such.
If nothing else, this has left me seriously second-guessing my loyalty to Amazon.com. They’ve been far and away my favorite Internet retailer for years, but I’m not going to be quite as eager to shop there any more, especially in categories with strong competition.
Update
Amazon just reactivated my account at 12:15 pm today (AZ time). I did not make any further attempts to contact Amazon after the above account, so I imagine that this was only done as a result of my post hitting the front page of Hacker News. The email regarding the reactivation was as follows:
Hello from Amazon.com.
Thank you for writing regarding your Amazon.com selling account. We have reviewed this situation and have reactivated your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. In our efforts to protect our community, we sometimes err on the side of caution.
We appreciate your interest and wish you the best of luck selling on Amazon.com.
Victory? Well, partially. I’m not totally satisfied until and unless Amazon admits to problems with their fraud detection system, and puts in place a better process for recourse. Failing that, others who don’t get this level of publicity will continue to get shafted.
Update 2
Here’s my blog’s visitor count by service provider, per Google Analytics. Looks like a few people at Amazon have taken notice.
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Well, it sends clear message that relying on any single platform or vendor is ultimately futile approach.
You’re web developer though – create your own product and sell it! -
Keep escalating. Also, try the payment developer forums. Some Amazon risk assessment employees are there. Good luck.
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why are you only questioning your loyalty to amazon? … it should be well and truly smashed.
Its almost a shame you are not a business so you can sue them for your loss.
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You should check out Swap.com. There’s no fees. Buy/Sell/Trade/Barter
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Thanks for this. I will learn from your lesson and not use amazons seller account. I wish someone had told me the same about googles adsense and a few other services as well, but I thank you.
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I have a rather paranoid hypothesis — you were undercutting the other sellers and one of them demanded your removal. It’s based on the principle of “follow the money.”
Because neither of us have access to Amazon’s determination criteria, we can’t prove anything conclusively, but just for laughs, I ran a search for “Lenovo ThinkPad X220″ a few minutes ago and here’s what I found –
2 new from $909.99
1 used from $762.68
1 refurbished from $699.9928 new from $899.99
feature listing at $1499.99
4 new from $1078.00
1 used from $1149.00feature listing at $1349.00
3 new from $1349.00
2 used from $690.00feature listing at $1299.99
36 new from $1299.99
1 used from $1499.99feature listing at $1398.98
27 new from $936.00feature listing at $1399.99
36 new from $1399.99
1 used from $998.00feature listing at $1657.07
36 new from $1619.00I’m not sure which x220 most closely fits the one you own but most of them are priced higher. That would support the hypothesis.
But some of the x220s are priced comparably or lower. That would undermine the hypothesis.
That Amazon does not disclose their determination process, and they expel instead of suspend (to preclude the chance of retaliation?), seems to support the hypothesis. Such behavior also would support an alternate hypothesis — that Amazon is “firing” you because you don’t generate enough volume.
I wish I’d encountered your post sooner — I just dropped a couple hundred clams on Amazon for Xmas gifts!
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I ran into the same problem with an ecommerce site I used to run.
I had my account closed, enter the ‘appeal’ process, and waited. After being denied once I pressed further and received an email that stated that amazon would “No longer be replying to my further correspondence”.
After 90 days they promptly paid the $15,000 I had in unpaid claims, but it was awful. They earned interest on that money, and if they had no paid it to me there was little or NOTHING I could do short of suing them. Which, if I had would probably have a snowballs chance in hell of going anywhere.
I shut down the eCommerce business after that incident, it placed too much of a short-term cash flow problem and I had to pay vendors.
When your king you get to decide just how much power others have I guess. I didn’t really see any way around it.
Just disappointing that small businesses can be so quickly ‘snuffed’ out of existence when they are beholden to the policies of a much larger ones (eBay, Amazon, Paypal).
I guess I had to tell myself: “You don’t own Amazon, or a meaningful share of their business, so get over it…”
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You are not the customer, you’re the product.
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Via the “executive bomb” [dot com] website, the following “executive customer relations” listing came up:
Company Phone: 1-800-201-7575
Company Contacts:
ecr@amazon.com (Executive Customer Relations)
Date added (DD/MM/YYYY): 9/12/2008I’m not sure if it is still accurate, but you can try that out and see if there are other such websites providing similar information.
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Jeff, I was actually brainstorming a site to buy/sell used goods over the weekend while I was listing stuff, right before this went down. There may be an opportunity here. There would be some hurdles to overcome though — most significantly, the network effect.
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meanguy, I browsed the forums before writing this post. A few others had the same experience; I didn’t see signs of Amazon employees in the threads I read through, or a good avenue for appeal.
The only idea that came up was to plead your case to jeff@amazon.com (Jeff Bezos’s email address), with plenty of detail including the reason my account might have been banned. Oh great, now I’m supposed to divine what may have caused Amazon’s flawed system to divine an account association where none existed!
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Matt, thanks. I’ve never heard of swap.com before; I’ll check it out.
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Why should we believe you. How can you be sure none of your friends or relatives havent misused your identity? As per me, amazon is holding the final word because, it is answerable it its customer. I have also heard amazon is the most customer friendly retail website till date. No offense. Just a thought
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simha, I can’t really be sure, thanks to Amazon.com — they will not provide any details about the other account that was closed.
In my experience Amazon does answer to the shopper, but not to the seller.
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Did you move your address? It is possible that somebody else at your address once had an Amazon account. They use a variety of criteria to detect whether somebody who they have banned in the past is trying to set up another account. Address, SSN, bank account, name, company name are all clues they use to keep scammers off their site. There are probably other things too.
You could set up a new business entity with a new EIN and new bank account and new mailing address and you should be able to resume with another account. Unfortunately you would have to build up your reputation again.
If you think it is just a mixup with the address you should keep trying for reinstatement.
This has happened to me and I had to start over.
Good Luck!
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Mark, I did move earlier this year. A closed account associated with a previous tenant was the only possible cause for this that I could think of.
If that’s what did it though, it’s a pretty crude association — wouldn’t my history with my previous address filter out that association in any competently designed fraud detection software?
I’m not about to set up a new business identity and mailing address to start selling there again; it’s just not worth it for me. I doubt the new mailing address could even be done without faking it — do they allow PO boxes?
Based on what I’ve read, I’m not sure there are any avenues open now for reinstatement.
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Yeah the real takeaway is to make sure you have multiple channels for sales if you want to keep selling. Amazon + eBay + Craigslist required. Otherwise you run the risk of being left stranded. Sad to say.
So are you going to stop making purchases from Amazon because they screwed you. I would.
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I wouldn’t open a new account, that would only make things worse, particularly if they manage to make an association between that one and your current one. Amazon has made it pretty clear that they want nothing to do with you from now on, and they don’t have much interest in debating the issue. If you want you can try some of the suggestions given here for escalating the issue, and the publicity you’re getting off this might actually cause someone in PR to take notice. Baring that I’d say find someone who doesn’t treat their customers (and you are a customer, you’re consuming a service they provide and paying for the privilege) like scum. Admittedly the list of companies that won’t treat you like scum is getting pretty thin on the ground, but maybe this latest bout of corporate shaftings will be an opportunity for someone. This sort of thing is exactly what something like bitcoin was supposed to help protect against by cutting out the middle man, so maybe it will take off again, or maybe not (it’s barely limping along right now), who knows.
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I’d like to shop at other stores where I know of good alternatives (ex. Newegg, Crutchfield), but it’s hard to walk away from them 100%. The experience is still fantastic as a shopper (huge selection, reviews, great prices, free & fast shipping over $25, etc.). But I won’t have the warm fuzzy feeling about Amazon any more if they don’t resolve this.
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I recently had this same type of thing. Amazon used to be a very good company, but these “account closures” are pretty mean with no real room for appeal. Like you I just did it to sell my school books back and clean out my closet from time to time. Amazon needs to wake up before Google starts theirs and we all go there.
Personally after this email I can not wait until there is a competitor. I love my Kindle but no appeal is not very polite. -
SHAMED BY AMAZON
For the last 4 years i have been selling various things on Amazon. Sometimes i sold very little for long periods of time. Recently i realized that I could make money buy selling items quite frequently. Today I proceeded to email most of the people that have ever purchased for me over the last 4 years (about 100 people). I understand the actions that Amazon took, but the ODR rate can be impacted by negative feedback. However someone can leave negative feedback because you cancelled the order which has nothing to do with a defect. So I decided to make a website to share the status of this claim. If i only had 200 dollars in my account i wouldn’t mind but i have almost 2k, and i was hoping on getting that money. Im taking the necessary actions to let the BBC now as well at the CEO of Amazon. Thanks for your support. My email is Amazonrobbedme@gmail.com. I would love your support. Thanks -
Even though your account has been reinstated, your experience is a wake-up call. I depend on Amazon for my living. I have for almost 10 years. But I recently received 2 negative feedbacks and, consequently, a warning from Amazon to improve my performance. I may sell my more valuable books on ebay and etsy now. Or I might give up selling used books altogether and try another business. Too bad.
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Same thing just happened to me. I created a seller account for the first time a few months ago, sold one item (well over a month ago) and poof, the account was shut down yesterday with the same “multiple seller accounts” as others. Their fraud detection algorithm needs significant work.
The email they sent is below. It’s a nice cold response to a customer who uses Amazon as his primary shopping source, has made nearly 500 lifetime orders and owns an insignificant number of shares in the company.
“Thank you for writing. We are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts.
However, we have thoroughly reviewed our records and confirmed that we have significant evidence that your account is related to another previously blocked account.
While we appreciate your interest in selling on Amazon.com, please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent selling accounts that are opened will be closed as well.”
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Yes, I am in *exactly* the same position. I have had an amazon account and an amazon seller account for several years, although I hadn’t used the latter for a long time. Yesterday, I made the great mistake of trying to update my contact details which were all out of date. Shortly after that, I got exactly the same messages, I sent a very similar appeal and got a very similar reply.
I am astounded that their behaviour is even permissible in law. It feels like I have been violated; how dare they justify themselves by linking me to some other entity I have never heard of, presenting this as though it were a proven fact, without saying what this entity is and why they think this? Police states operate like that.
I am now wondering how Amazon can be legally forced to reveal this information. I am completely sure that this is also a result of what you termed a ‘false positive’. As I see no reason to believe that anyone else has used my account, at that point their case would collapse. There are laws coming in the EU soon that I believe will allow exactly this. -
Do you think that if you used FBA services this would avoid Amazon shutting down a seller’s account? I wonder if they are more favorable to sellers that exclusively use FBA since this lessens the chance of fraud and protects Amazon and the buyers. Just a thought…
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@Shizant Could be, I have no idea.
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Our four year old business just got shut down yesterday. We’ve gone through two appeals, both have been denied. For us, this is our living, and unfortunately up until yesterday, Amazon made up 70% of our sales. Yeah, that means 70% of our company revenue just died yesterday in a matter of moments.
We have no choice but to try and start a new store and “hide it” somehow but I’m feeling pretty hopeless. Our other option is to create an entire new company with new bank accounts and everything so that we can sell again. All because our Order Defect Rate went up to 2.14%.
What a nightmare. -
I’ve been selling on Amazon.ca for years and have hundreds of feedbacks. My feeback rating is 99% positive. I started listing as well on Amazon.com about a year ago and have 4 feedbacks, all positive. About 6 months ago I sold an expensive textbook to someone in the US on Amazon.com. The next day he asked if I had a tracking number. No one else has ever asked for a tracking number, so I suspected it was not going to go well. He then put in an A-Z claim saying he never received the book, but the tracking number said something about it not being accepted and being returned to me. It was never returned to me, and it has been months now. His A-Z claim was denied, which I understand is quite rare. He must have pulled this stunt too many times. But now I had a bad mark on MY record. Then I received an email, 3 months to the date of shipping, from a buyer in New Zealand who said he never received the book. I suspected he had, given the exact timing of the email. I refunded his money no questions asked. Then a few days later he said the book DID arrive, and I managed to get my money back from him. But now I had 2 bad marks on my records, no fault of mine. Then a buyer said a book I mailed arrived, “heavily damaged”. She gave no details, just that she wants a full refund. The book left my possession in perfect condition and was shipped in a book mailer. I told her I would not give a refund. Then she put in an A-Z claim, again no specifics, just that the book was damaged. Not a single word on what type of damage, I suppose it would have taken too much effort to flesh out the lie. Amazon granted the A-Z claim but paid out of their own pocket. Then my account was suspended! Due to 1 repeat scammer, 1 probable confused customer, then another scammer. Fortunately my Amazon.ca account is not affected. Amazon sent me an email saying I need to send them a business plan saying how I am going to improve my sales record and maybe in 3 months they will re-instate me! I’m not interested. With hundreds of sales over at least 5 years on Amazon.ca I’ve only had one scammer. They emailed me saying they did not receive their book. I ignored them and that was the end of it. I don’t know why there are far fewer crooks on the Canadian site, maybe people are not so desperate for money here.
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I don’t know what is the problem with Amazon. I made an account for the first time with email address neelharia99@gmail.com. I am not very good with computer and it was my cousin who insisted to step up an account. So i told him to do the process with my email. I am selling in traditional way to major universities all over the world.
Suddenly I receive a message from Amazon after 15 days that my account is closed because my account is related to another selling account that was closed by Amazon.
I just don’t understand all this and only thing I need to say is that we are huge wholesalers and retailers for books with over 10 retails outlets named as book selection centre.
If Amazon is seeing to this than I need to tell you that my account could have yield great commissions to you because my inventory is over 9 lakh books valuing $ 45 million.
With Amazon closing such big banners, inviting competition and a bad name in my territory.
Regards,
Neel
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