I am a hard working entrepreneur that has recently been wronged by Amazon. Here is my story:
I started as a successful eBay seller and began to look for ways to expand. I quickly found Amazon and through a vendor of ours got in contact with a rep. Shortly after they gladly approved us as a Merchant and encouraged us to add as many products as we could. From this point on we were an Amazon Merchant. Amazon constantly constantly sent us e-mails providing tips and new ways to increase sales and continually encouraged us to add inventory. So we did and we were successful. Our Amazon business grew from $1,000/month to $30,000/month in just 6 months. Based on this success, I focused more company resources toward amazon and hired an additional employee to handle the increase in sales volume. Amazon quickly began to become our most valuable sales channel and continued to steadily grew for over 2 years.in the second year, our average sales grew to $40,000/month and broke $100,000 during the December holiday season in 06 & 07. This is success was based on countless hours of hard work my a number of individuals in our organization and our entire organization evolved because of it.
Then one day out of the blue, the worst thing imaginable happened. I came in on a Monday morning, logged in to our Amazon account and saw the following message, "Your Amazon account has been Suspended for policy violations...". I quickly checked my e-mail to see if they sent details for why they did this. The vague e-mail stated no facts and stated that this was a permanent action and they will be holding all my funds for 90 days. My balance was over $12,000. The worst part was that there was nobody to call, nobody to talk to, and nobody that cared that an entire organization had be crushed for no good reason. They only provide an e-mail address to the "Amazon Alliance", which is useless and only sends generic, pre-written responses reiterating that your account is suspended forever and they will never change their mind.
Needless to say, as our business was cut almost in half, I had to fire 2 people with kids and families to support and I had to reorganize the entire operation. And keep in mind, we did absolutely nothing wrong, and we showed steady growth and continued success. Our feedback rating was also well within their standards and we made it a point to even lose money if it meant keeping a customer satisfied. I still do not understand why they did this to us? Here I am, a successful entrepreneur who has built a successful e-commerce business from scratch, crushed for no reason at all by a "Hitler-Like Organization". After doing a bit of research online, i discovered I am not the only person who this has happened to.
I have spoken with an attorney and have began to pursue legal action. Their actions and their contract are in violation of several laws and statutes and I will not rest until this is brought to a judge. Anybody interested in joining this fight in a class action suit is welcome.
0 comments