Chalk it up to another willing to sign on to a class action lawsuit against Amazon, we had our business account blocked Monday for a policy violation and they refuse to even give us the benefit of the doubt. We've had the account for 2 years, had 3,700 sales, maintained a 4.7 out of 5 feedback rating, kept our refunds to under 2% of our sales... Basically we had an account that was considered by their expectations great standings (and when I tell you their expectations are unreasonably high, I mean boy, are they high) until the policy violation. Now let's keep in mind a couple of things, we have had 3,700 sales, and we had a store inventory of 481 items at the time our account was blocked, we sold Video games & systems, boardgames, music cd's and movie DVDs and VHS tapes.
I don't want to turn this into a long sad sob story so I am not going to, our entire business didn't revolve around Amazon like some, we used it for moving higher dollar items or specialty items that wouldn't sell quickly in any of our stores, Amazon provided and outlet that brought buyers from all over the world...
It just really disturbs me at how ungrateful they are and how little they care about the people and business that put them where they are today, you have more rights as a terrorist in guantanamo in this country than you do as a seller on Amazon. And that is pathetic.
What give them the right to make (what could be) life changing decisions for some people on the drop of a dime without any care or sense of responsibility or any loyalty to it's business partners? (Yes the Amazon merchants should be considered just that. Business partners. You enter into an agreement to perform a service on their site, you get paid for that service, you should be given at least the opportunity to correct any problems that arise before being cut off and blocked from doing business) If you leased space from somewhere to open a business and the landlord had a set of rules for you to follow and you broke those rules, the landlord would'nt be able to just come to your shop and lock the door and tell you your now out of business, not to mention he certainly would not be able to say "oh and by the way, I contacted your financial institution and I blocked all money this business generated from going into your account for 90 days in case any customers return merchandise or don't receive merchandise you sent."
Anywhere in this country their actions would be illegal, I have been in retail business for almost 30 years, I have owned or worked at businesses in standalone stores, malls, shopping centers, flea markets & online and I have never come across anyone with business practices that are as disturbingly immoral and illegal as what Amazon has become.
Our case represents what is seriously wrong with them, we listed and sold an item that we had made a large bulk buyout of that was what we thought a legitimate item, we did a bit of research as we would always do when it comes to a product that is not in their database and found the item to be a legitmate product... We created an item page and listed the item on their site... Everything was fine for a few weeks and it was brought to our attention by another Amazon vendor or customer that the item might not be legitimate, we dug a little deeper and discovered there was a possibility the original information we received might have been tainted, so we made a decision to remove the item from the site until we could get a confirmation and be 100% certain it was OK to sell.By the time we got to Amazon to remove the item our seller account was blocked, we received a notification from them that it was blocked because we "may" be selling an unauthorized item and that they were closing all 481 items listed for sale, and blocking our account from any future sales, they told us we either needed to ship items that were already sold or provide refunds, and that the funds in our Amazon bank account were frozen for 90 days, they also told us there was nothing we could do about it, the decision was final.
We appealed the decision anyway and pointed out that we had an account in good standings for 2 years, we've never had any violations in the past for selling unauthorized products, we did some investigating prior to listing the product and found it to be a legitimate product, we provided links to all data to substantiate our claim, and we told them we were in the process of removing the item when it was brought to our attention it may not be legitimate, and that we had never had any intentions of violating any of their user guidelines or policies, and that we would be certain to take extra precautions in the future to make sure something like that didn't happen again. They didn't care, they wrote back stating the closure of an account is permanent and not to bother contacting them again about it because any future emails sent to them would be ignored.
As you can imagine, I am very piss... Er. Angry with the outcome of my appeal, and with the way I and my company have been treated through this whole process. Since when are you found guilty anywhere because you "may" have done something wrong? It's still questionable if the item is a legitimate product or not... I don't care about the fact we cannot sell the rest of the stock we have for that item, I am more upset that our account was blocked because we "may" have violated their policy.
Somebody somewhere has got to finally stand up for the others out there like us who have been wronged by this financial succubus and their customer service agents who seem to think they have every right to play God with the lives of countless numbers of people each year and the unbelievable disrespect they show to the very people who are the core of what they built today.
No one should be found guilty based on a "may have"done something policy, and they certainly should not be banished from doing business over 1 single error...
I truly hope sooner or later someone will have the balls to stand up for the sellers. Many of them good people, who have been wronged by them for making a simple error, and in some cases had their lives ruined because of it.
The "air" needs to be let out of their heads, and they need to brought back down to reality... Just like what's happened to Ebay over the last few years.
If anyone takes them on for a class action suit. Sign me up... I've kept all my records and emails from them. And I will for a long time to come just in case.
My fingers are crossed!
Lola
McDonough, Georgia
U.S.A.
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