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I work on the other side - as a manager of a 3rd party seller on Amazon (we have nothing to do with electronics and it would be almost impossible to counterfeit

I work on the other side - as a manager of a 3rd party seller on Amazon (we have nothing to do with electronics and it would be almost impossible to counterfeit our product, in part because it is custom made in the US and are heavy physical objects). They are doing their best to crank down on this by increasing the quality of listings and enforcing more stringent requirements for selling products of certain brands. They also introduced additional costs and barriers for creating multiple thousands of poor quality listings rather than a few quality ones. The fake electronics products are hurting us as well, because customers have become increasingly wary and return-happy, since they expect the quality of product to be low and returns to be friction-free, regardless of other factors. The chaos within categories is the biggest obstacle - it is nearly impossible to solve, simply because they are HUGE and removing bad listings is an almost manual process. It has to be and Amazon certainly can't take the leap of simply starting to remove 3rd party seller listings without angering them and making them quit.

andrenotgiant 9y ago
That's an interesting perspective to hear about. I am curious, do you (as a merchant) have an Amazon rep you can get in touch with about issues? How has that relationship changed (if at all) over the years?
- antisthenes 9y ago
  Unfortunately we are not a big enough seller on Amazon (it is our secondary sales channel and only accounts for about 5-8% of our yearly revenue), so we do not have a personal rep. Support related to seller issues is generally pretty bad and it may take weeks and multiple tickets to get 2-3 minutes of phone time with a representative based in the United States. Most of the time you will get someone from a call center in India, who is very good at telling you that what you need can't be done 5 different ways. I would imagine that once you get to a certain level of revenue, you can request to have a rep and will get more personal attention to your issues. I have no idea what the bar is, but probably at least $5 million of yearly revenue - which means Amazon makes $750,000 from you in fees.

andrenotgiant 9y ago

That's an interesting perspective to hear about. I am curious, do you (as a merchant) have an Amazon rep you can get in touch with about issues? How has that relationship changed (if at all) over the years?

antisthenes 9y ago
Unfortunately we are not a big enough seller on Amazon (it is our secondary sales channel and only accounts for about 5-8% of our yearly revenue), so we do not have a personal rep. Support related to seller issues is generally pretty bad and it may take weeks and multiple tickets to get 2-3 minutes of phone time with a representative based in the United States. Most of the time you will get someone from a call center in India, who is very good at telling you that what you need can't be done 5 different ways. I would imagine that once you get to a certain level of revenue, you can request to have a rep and will get more personal attention to your issues. I have no idea what the bar is, but probably at least $5 million of yearly revenue - which means Amazon makes $750,000 from you in fees.