Amazon Marketplace
Fulfillment By Amazon Extortion to get "Buy Box", Refusal to give "Prime" stamp

This is a WARNING to any small business thinking of selling their product on Amazon. Especially if you are the original manufacturer of that product with only a few items for sale.

I run a small company in Pennsylvania. We produce a consumer dental product that has sold well for 20 years both on and off our website. I have also been a loyal Amazon consumer for years. They always had great customer service, great prices, and a rock solid privacy policy. After one of our distributors started selling our product on Amazon, we saw that we could sell it cheaper and use fulfillment by Amazon to provide faster, cheaper shipping to our customers.

The plan sounded solid, but there are a few things that the Amazon rep I talked to before hand left out. First and foremost was the issue of getting the "buy box" which includes buttons to add the product to your cart and the one click buttons. More nefariously, the rep left ourt the fact that if we used Fulfillment by Amazon (Amazon ships directly to the customer) we also would not get a Prime stamp on our product page (The full detail page for a product) or the product listing page (the list you get when you search for a product).

They gouge the sellers of all profit by charging a monthly fee and extorting the Sellers with the Buy Box and Prime stamp until they sell the product for a rock bottom, bargain basement price. Which makes it especially difficult to get started selling anything at all being that the consumer must click through the "from these sellers" button.

Bottom Line: Unless you sell a lot of products, it will be next to impossible for you to gain the buy box or the prime stamp. You will loose money, it's not worth it. Amazon treats it's sellers like shit.

As a consumer I am also angry, as there were many other options for prime shipping on a product that I had no idea about because of this particular seller restriction, meaning that sometimes I do not always get the most out of my prime membership.

Company: Amazon Marketplace
Country: USA
State: Washington
City: Seattle
Address: 1200 12th Ave, Suite 1200
Phone: 2062661000
Site: amazon.com

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