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I work with Amazon sellers (including on getting suspended sellers reinstated). I am not sure that his story is the actual story. If the glasses were counterfe

I work with Amazon sellers (including on getting suspended sellers reinstated). I am not sure that his story is the actual story. If the glasses were counterfeit, obviously his suspension was justified and he might have committed a felony. If they were authentic but just unsafe, he was foolish to have listed them when buying in such quantity and it's not surprising that Amazon would suspend him for trying to sell them. However, Amazon is very inconsistent and capricious in how it enforces snake oil rules on supplements and similar kinds of products. In many cases legitimate sellers with authentic FDA-approved GMP-compliant stuff get into trouble while snake oil vendors manage to skirt the rules and get away with selling ineffective stuff. Amazon does have all kinds of escalation features and different levels of seller support to deal with a suspension. The real issue he had was just buying a lot of highly speculative products that could pose a danger to customers with no sales history at all. There are so many other cases in which Amazon acts unjustly or inconsistently enforces its (often arbitrarily applied) rules. This is not really one of them. It is false that anyone can sell anything on Amazon. Most frequently counterfeited (like Jewelry) or otherwise problematic/hazardous categories are 'category gated' and require you to submit a bunch of documentation to sell in it. While there are a lot of problems with the way Amazon does these reviews, it does make it challenging for bottom tier scammer types to pass review and to maintain their right to sell in that category.

yahna 9y ago
> he was foolish to have listed them when buying in such quantity and it's not surprising that Amazon would suspend him for trying to sell them. The fuck are you talking about? They operate a business which specifically allows people to sell stuff. Why would he expect to have his account suspended. Have you been paying attention to these problems? They fucked up by binning counterfeits with real glasses, and now people like this guy got caught up. It's pretty indefensible when you consider how long they have had a counterfeiting problem they haven't dealt with. This should end up with them getting sued, honestly. It's ridiculous.
- j-c-hewitt 9y ago
  It's not clear from the article whether this was a counterfeit issue or if the issue is that the glasses (allegedly) don't work and can cause people to damage their eyes. There's nothing in the article about co-mingled inventory. Totally legitimate multi-million dollar sellers get suspended for dumber reasons and even by mistake.
oasisbob 9y ago
> Most frequently counterfeited (like Jewelry) or otherwise problematic/hazardous categories are 'category gated' and require you to submit a bunch of documentation to sell in it. I find it surprising that Amazon doesn't gate protective products that can injure people when there's so much focus on counterfeits which primarily injure brands. This time they got burned by simple category 1 PPE and made a big stink about sunglasses, but still allow non-conforming category 3* PPE to be sold. example: https://www.amazon.com/YXGOOD-Treestand-Harness-Climbing-Firefighting/dp/B011K7FUUG/ https://www.amazon.com/YXGOOD-Treestand-Harness-Climbing-Fir... There's no way that this product would withstand any sort of scrutiny if Amazon actually requested the conformity documentation before selling it. Returned it and reported it - still for sale. Seems insane that luggage is gated when safety products aren't. * I'm using the European terminology here because it gives a pretty sane way of thinking about and handling the certification for PPE. Compliance in the US is way more fragmented across different product classes.
- j-c-hewitt 9y ago
  Yeah Amazon doesn't review any stuff like that. They may respond to reports after the fact and have a pretty low threshold for suspending a product, but they aren't going to inspect it or test it.
nfriedly 9y ago
> Amazon does have all kinds of escalation features and different levels of seller support to deal with a suspension. Hah, my amazon seller account got automatically suspended due to at $0.12 balance that Amazon had added retroactively and never notified me about. I paid it and figured it would be automatically un-suspended, but nope... I reached out through every support channel I could find. All of my seller account tickets were automatically closed as "resolved" without any human response. Twitter gave me the run-around. Someone on the forum said they'd look into it, but nothing changed. But you know worked? Canceling all of my AWS services and explaining that it was due to shoddy treatment from other parts Amazon. My seller account was un-frozen a few days later. I let the last item of mine they had sell and haven't looked back since.
makomk 9y ago
Amazon have apparently panicked gone a bit wild with this. People have been reporting that they've got similar recall emails about high-end solar telescopes and similar equipment from reputable, established manufacturers and sellers: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/508537-pst-recall/ https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/508537-pst-recall/

yahna 9y ago

> he was foolish to have listed them when buying in such quantity and it's not surprising that Amazon would suspend him for trying to sell them. The fuck are you talking about? They operate a business which specifically allows people to sell stuff. Why would he expect to have his account suspended. Have you been paying attention to these problems? They fucked up by binning counterfeits with real glasses, and now people like this guy got caught up. It's pretty indefensible when you consider how long they have had a counterfeiting problem they haven't dealt with. This should end up with them getting sued, honestly. It's ridiculous.

j-c-hewitt 9y ago
It's not clear from the article whether this was a counterfeit issue or if the issue is that the glasses (allegedly) don't work and can cause people to damage their eyes. There's nothing in the article about co-mingled inventory. Totally legitimate multi-million dollar sellers get suspended for dumber reasons and even by mistake.

oasisbob 9y ago

> Most frequently counterfeited (like Jewelry) or otherwise problematic/hazardous categories are 'category gated' and require you to submit a bunch of documentation to sell in it. I find it surprising that Amazon doesn't gate protective products that can injure people when there's so much focus on counterfeits which primarily injure brands. This time they got burned by simple category 1 PPE and made a big stink about sunglasses, but still allow non-conforming category 3* PPE to be sold. example: https://www.amazon.com/YXGOOD-Treestand-Harness-Climbing-Firefighting/dp/B011K7FUUG/ https://www.amazon.com/YXGOOD-Treestand-Harness-Climbing-Fir... There's no way that this product would withstand any sort of scrutiny if Amazon actually requested the conformity documentation before selling it. Returned it and reported it - still for sale. Seems insane that luggage is gated when safety products aren't. * I'm using the European terminology here because it gives a pretty sane way of thinking about and handling the certification for PPE. Compliance in the US is way more fragmented across different product classes.

j-c-hewitt 9y ago
Yeah Amazon doesn't review any stuff like that. They may respond to reports after the fact and have a pretty low threshold for suspending a product, but they aren't going to inspect it or test it.

nfriedly 9y ago

> Amazon does have all kinds of escalation features and different levels of seller support to deal with a suspension. Hah, my amazon seller account got automatically suspended due to at $0.12 balance that Amazon had added retroactively and never notified me about. I paid it and figured it would be automatically un-suspended, but nope... I reached out through every support channel I could find. All of my seller account tickets were automatically closed as "resolved" without any human response. Twitter gave me the run-around. Someone on the forum said they'd look into it, but nothing changed. But you know worked? Canceling all of my AWS services and explaining that it was due to shoddy treatment from other parts Amazon. My seller account was un-frozen a few days later. I let the last item of mine they had sell and haven't looked back since.

makomk 9y ago

Amazon have apparently panicked gone a bit wild with this. People have been reporting that they've got similar recall emails about high-end solar telescopes and similar equipment from reputable, established manufacturers and sellers: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/508537-pst-recall/ https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/508537-pst-recall/