As of March 22, 2010, Amazon.com's seller performance department suspended my selling account with no prior warning of my violation. In addition to my online business being totally wiped, they are keeping the money that is owed to me for an additional 90 days. This is money that I earned by selling my personal belongings that I paid for; in addition to the commission they make when the products sell. It is one thing to suspend a seller's account if they are dishonest, fraudulant, or providing poor customer service, but for the following reason I will describe is completely unethical and unfair. My profile name is "Tony's Name Brand Supply Liquidators". If you click on my profile you will see that I have perfect customer feedback from many satisfied customers (if they have not deleted my account by the time they read this).
I have been selling with them for a year and a perfect track record of mailing product on time and the products are exactly as described. On two occasion, the customers were not satisfied with the functionality of the product so I told them to keep it for free and I refunded them the full amount.
I received the first warning the day prior to my suspension (at the bottom of this report I copied and pasted the email warning along with my correspondence in chronological order). The warning states, more or less, that "I am not allowed to sell the same items in two different stores and please delete immediately." Therefore, I took action immediately to comply with this rule and tried to delete my listing. On my inventory management page, I see that amazon.com already fixed the problem by deleting the duplicate product listings. In response, I emailed seller support and asked if everything is OK and resolved. There was no response from them expect for the follow up message stating that my account was suspended. In their statement of suspending my account there reason was for a completely different reason from which they warned me in the prior email. They suspended me on the grounds of speculation that I was selling unauthorized software. Amazon.com has a filtering system that will not allow you to sell certain items; in addition, items have to match exactly the items listed in their database. Therefore, the software I sold was an exact match of the software name/brand and their system allowed me to sell it. In other words, amazon.com's system is set up to block you from selling unauthorized product in the first place. So how am I supposed to know that this item is grounds for suspension when they let me list it in the first place? I automatically assumed it is OK to sell if it allowed me to list it.
Are these justifiable reasons to suspend me without warning? Maybe, if they have policies in writing which I did not see the fine print.
Do they have the right to keep $800 that I previously earned for 90 days? HELL NO!! I have a family and kids to feed and mortgage payment to pay on time; they should not be able to take away my hard earned money
As I write this report, there are currently two customers who have placed orders and capable of confirming and mailing, except I won't get paid in 3 months. Therefore, I am not mailing the ordered product to the customers; instead, I will refund the customers and direct them to this link. In this case, Amazon.com's behavior will be creating customer dissatisfaction and will be hurting themselves. Who does this hurt? -The customer, they will not be able to receive the order they wanted and will have to reorder and wait several more day.
Part of the problem is that amazon.com's is probably reacting to the complaint of a competitive seller's complaint. It creates a snitch selling enviroment-instead of focusing on what they need to do, they want to eliminate the competition who is selling the better product at a lower price.
Please, everyone, take a stand against amazon.com. We the sellers and customers are who make amazon.com who they are today. They get a large commission for everything sold. Their employees are basically policy enforcer and in this case they suspended my account for reasons that they have no evidence of and with no prior warning. I am a father of three and rely on the site as a main source of income. I can't even contact seller support on the phone. A faceless person behind email can make such a decision at their own will at a click of the button, without looking at the character and honesty of a seller
I welcome the media and lawyers to contact me as I have all the supporting evidence to back up the case. Here is the official letter from amazon.com stating the reason for my suspension without prior warning:
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Hello from Amazon.com.
Upon further review, we have blocked your Tony's Name Brand Supply Liquidators and Tech Ranger selling accounts. Your open listings have been cancelled and you may no longer sell on our site.
We took this action because it has come to our attention that you may be selling software that is unauthorized or not-for-resale. As per our policies, only full retail versions of software may be sold through Amazon.com. Recopied, OEM, academic, promotional, beta, NFR, back-up, and freeware & shareware versions of software are prohibited.
If you still have items to ship, please take appropriate steps to resolve your pending sales. Your Seller Account will remain accessible and you are encouraged to refund or ship pending orders.
Any remaining funds will be reserved in your Amazon.com account for 90 days from the date your account was blocked. After 90 days, the funds will be disbursed minus any A-to-Z Guarantee claims or charge-backs. If you have further questions about your funds please write to payments-funds@amazon.com.
While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.
---- Original message: ----
I am assuming that everything has been taken care of regarding the following matter, right? Because all of my listings have been deleted from one of my account that match the other account. Please advise if the same item sold in two different places are taken care of. It looks like you all have already taken care of it. Thank you.
Hello from Amazon.com.
We are writing because it has come to our attention that you are operating multiple accounts.
Our policy allows merchants to have Marketplace accounts only if they do not sell the same items.
In accordance with this policy, please cancel all listings on your "Tech Ranger" account, and limit your selling activities to your "Tony's Name Brand Supply Liquidators" account.
Please note that failure to comply with this request may result in the blocking of all of your selling accounts.
We appreciate your cooperation.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
FreeCo Inc
FayetteVille,North Carolina,
United States of America
FayetteVille,NC
#2Consumer Comment
Tue, April 13, 2010
Hello,
I was just reading your post about Amazon, I also i'in fayetteville,nc and amazon got me for about 4,000.00 on March 19th due to my roommate having a seller account. if you would like to work together on filing a lawsuit we are up to it i also have 5 other seller that our in the NC/SC area
Thanks,
FreeCo Inc