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Amazon is like a plantation owner for small and medium sized businesses. When you sell anything on Amazon, you have no way to build a brand as Amazon not only

Amazon is like a plantation owner for small and medium sized businesses. When you sell anything on Amazon, you have no way to build a brand as Amazon not only takes ownership of your customer, but they also forbid you from directly advertising to them. It can all be taken away in an instant and by withholding your money for 90 days+ (which is what happens when they take your account away), it can bankrupt a small business because they don't have the funds to pay staff or run their company. I had an Amazon seller account and they banned me 12 years ago over one disgruntled customer that I believe was just a competitor (I had 100% feedback from hundreds of customers before this) trying to shut me down. I've been banned for life. I not only can't sign up with a new seller account, but if my name is associated with any other seller account, it gets banned for life as well. I've tried to contact support over the years and it just goes into a black hole and I get automated responses with no help or no response at all. This needs to be part of a broader conversation: Do we really want to give big companies like Amazon this much control over what we can do online?

andreilys 6y ago
Sounds awful, my recommendation is to find a connection who can put you in touch with someone at Amazon. My experience with these huge companies is you can either get stuck in Algo Hell where you either get automated responses or are redirected to people who can't help you. Or try to get your story to the top of HN, that seems to work with Google
- AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
  > find a connection who can put you in touch with someone at Amazon. I was at Audible for many years, and at least within that section of Amazon this would have been very sound advice. If any complex legal procedures, economic regulations, or necessary international standards must be followed to sell your product, there is a strong chance that Amazon's policies are being handled by a single GM/PM type who can directly handle the internal tooling necessary to remedy the ongoing issue.
didibus 6y ago
Can't you open a normal online store that doesn't rely on Amazon? You could try shopify, or etsy, or sell on eBay? Or make your own? Otherwise I feel it's a chicken and egg. It's like saying we need Amazon or a similar big known marketplace so that customers can find you and buy from you, but at the same time, we don't like the concentration of power it brings. So if nobody tries to open an online store on their own anymore, what then?
- syshum 6y ago
  You can, but the fact that other large companies (like MonoPrice, and even newegg) sell alot of things on Amazon as well shows just much market Amazon controls. One should likely have both, their own store, and an amazon store
  - seastonATccs 6y ago
    I never go to Amazon to buy monoprice items. I go to monoprice and get guaranteed quality control over the items I will receive. If your products are compelling and your customer support is good I would prefer your own site vs going to Amazon.
    - syshum 6y ago
      While you dont, and I dont either we are not the only customers of Monoprice, and it seems monoprice gets enough sales from Amazon to justify having a store on that The fact that we do not shop at Amzn for those items do not really change the reality of ecommerce in 2020
    - castwide 6y ago
      I agree 100%, and often use NewEgg and Monoprice for specific needs, but there's a huge swath of stuff where I check Amazon first just because they're always competitively priced and ubiquitous. Recently, there was an appliance accessory I needed that was only available from Amazon. Their position as the first place to buy online is crazy.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
AbenezerMamo 6y ago
Ummm can’t help but feel like your comment started off a little tone deaf? Yikes.
- dvt 6y ago
  I only post this because you seem to have a history of low-effort comments like these. Please take this kind of clap-back nonsense to reddit, as it's not appropriate here on HN. The ethos of the GP was obvious, not to mention that many plantations were not slave plantations, but rather sharecropper plantations (which is most likely what GP means). So even looking at the metaphor from a historical context, there's no "yikes" to be had. Maybe instead of polluting one of the few remaining decent communities on the internet, your time would be better spent reading a history book or two.
  - jczhang 6y ago
    I'm only posting this because I've seen this type of response to responses many times. While it's good to encourage higher standards of communication and thoughtful response, there's no need to slam a different community and think people on HN are somehow better.
    - tengbretson 6y ago
      dvt made no claims about the people on HN being better than those on reddit. Simply that Reddit's community standards lead to it being a lower quality place for holding discussions compared to here. I find that point to be so obviously true I don't know what else there is to say.
      - alisonkisk 6y ago
        Reddit is home to both trashy discussions and also excellently broad and deep discussions, both due the large audience it intentionally cultivates. But anyway, it's not relevant. Here is here and justifying rules by comparing to Reddit is unhelpful.
robomartin 6y ago
I’ve been saying for a while that a serious class action lawsuit, government intervention, or both, is needed in order to curtail these practices. Amazon, Google and Facebook have laid a path of destruction far and wide through this practice of lifetime bans. Today these bans mean being excluded from the online business world (achieving scale is almost impossible without them).
bawolff 6y ago
Isn't this how its always worked? If you're a farmer selling to a grocery chain, they have all the power in how your product is sold and marketed. If they feel your product is subpar, whether rightly or wrongly, and drop you, you have essentially zero recourse.
- topkai22 6y ago
  The problem is no given retailer has the sort of market power Amazon does. There are at least a dozen grocery reatailers in my smallish city, and dozens nationwide. In fact, merging grocery store chains are frequently forced to divest of stores in order to ensure communities have multiple options.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    There are some who came close, though Amazon is in a league of its own. Sears Roebuck, in its day, aalong with Montgomery Wards (which long had a bad reputation with both sellers and customers), K-Mart, Walmart, and before them the railroads and AT&T. There are a few grocery chains with national reach (and they've been further consolidating), but none controls major markets (rural regions are often another story). Amazon is World - China.
felipemnoa 6y ago
Can't you create an LLC and obfuscate your name that way?
chrisbennet 6y ago
If you're in the US, could you contact your representative about your experience? The government is starting the wake up to abuses like this and you might find a receptive audience. At the very least, Amazon might suddenly talk to you or reverse their decision to ban you with a Congress person breathing down their neck.
schoolornot 6y ago
Amazon, like Uber and all the other companies criticized here gives me exactly what I want: a trouble free shopping experience without getting ripped off. No one else wants to enter the arena. No one wants to even come close. If there were viable alternatives, I would use them. I live in NYC where Walmart is banned so we're left with the Mom-and-Pop stores + the permitted national retailers like Walgreens and CVS both of which charge multiples over products available on Amazon. We're talking like 300% more for items like toothpaste and other toiletries. And in-store experiences that flat-out suck. Everyone knows this and that's why practically no one cares about Amazon's bad PR or their questionable HR practices behind the scenes. In one ear and out the other. Execution and customer service is everything and right now and Amazon's execution for customers has been amazing for a long time now. This isn't like a 37Signals space where you can one-down the competition. You one-up or go bust. I can't sympathize with your situation without more details being shared. Whatever your response was to that case must not have been up to Amazon's standards. It seems unlikely they would randomly pick on revenue generating sellers without cause.
yread 6y ago
> I've been banned for life. Why would you even consider associating with them again? Ban them for life as well and do your business somewhere else.

andreilys 6y ago

Sounds awful, my recommendation is to find a connection who can put you in touch with someone at Amazon. My experience with these huge companies is you can either get stuck in Algo Hell where you either get automated responses or are redirected to people who can't help you. Or try to get your story to the top of HN, that seems to work with Google

AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
> find a connection who can put you in touch with someone at Amazon. I was at Audible for many years, and at least within that section of Amazon this would have been very sound advice. If any complex legal procedures, economic regulations, or necessary international standards must be followed to sell your product, there is a strong chance that Amazon's policies are being handled by a single GM/PM type who can directly handle the internal tooling necessary to remedy the ongoing issue.

didibus 6y ago

Can't you open a normal online store that doesn't rely on Amazon? You could try shopify, or etsy, or sell on eBay? Or make your own? Otherwise I feel it's a chicken and egg. It's like saying we need Amazon or a similar big known marketplace so that customers can find you and buy from you, but at the same time, we don't like the concentration of power it brings. So if nobody tries to open an online store on their own anymore, what then?

syshum 6y ago
You can, but the fact that other large companies (like MonoPrice, and even newegg) sell alot of things on Amazon as well shows just much market Amazon controls. One should likely have both, their own store, and an amazon store
- seastonATccs 6y ago
  I never go to Amazon to buy monoprice items. I go to monoprice and get guaranteed quality control over the items I will receive. If your products are compelling and your customer support is good I would prefer your own site vs going to Amazon.
  - syshum 6y ago
    While you dont, and I dont either we are not the only customers of Monoprice, and it seems monoprice gets enough sales from Amazon to justify having a store on that The fact that we do not shop at Amzn for those items do not really change the reality of ecommerce in 2020
  - castwide 6y ago
    I agree 100%, and often use NewEgg and Monoprice for specific needs, but there's a huge swath of stuff where I check Amazon first just because they're always competitively priced and ubiquitous. Recently, there was an appliance accessory I needed that was only available from Amazon. Their position as the first place to buy online is crazy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

AbenezerMamo 6y ago

Ummm can’t help but feel like your comment started off a little tone deaf? Yikes.

dvt 6y ago
I only post this because you seem to have a history of low-effort comments like these. Please take this kind of clap-back nonsense to reddit, as it's not appropriate here on HN. The ethos of the GP was obvious, not to mention that many plantations were not slave plantations, but rather sharecropper plantations (which is most likely what GP means). So even looking at the metaphor from a historical context, there's no "yikes" to be had. Maybe instead of polluting one of the few remaining decent communities on the internet, your time would be better spent reading a history book or two.
- jczhang 6y ago
  I'm only posting this because I've seen this type of response to responses many times. While it's good to encourage higher standards of communication and thoughtful response, there's no need to slam a different community and think people on HN are somehow better.
  - tengbretson 6y ago
    dvt made no claims about the people on HN being better than those on reddit. Simply that Reddit's community standards lead to it being a lower quality place for holding discussions compared to here. I find that point to be so obviously true I don't know what else there is to say.
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      Reddit is home to both trashy discussions and also excellently broad and deep discussions, both due the large audience it intentionally cultivates. But anyway, it's not relevant. Here is here and justifying rules by comparing to Reddit is unhelpful.

robomartin 6y ago

I’ve been saying for a while that a serious class action lawsuit, government intervention, or both, is needed in order to curtail these practices. Amazon, Google and Facebook have laid a path of destruction far and wide through this practice of lifetime bans. Today these bans mean being excluded from the online business world (achieving scale is almost impossible without them).

bawolff 6y ago

Isn't this how its always worked? If you're a farmer selling to a grocery chain, they have all the power in how your product is sold and marketed. If they feel your product is subpar, whether rightly or wrongly, and drop you, you have essentially zero recourse.

topkai22 6y ago
The problem is no given retailer has the sort of market power Amazon does. There are at least a dozen grocery reatailers in my smallish city, and dozens nationwide. In fact, merging grocery store chains are frequently forced to divest of stores in order to ensure communities have multiple options.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  There are some who came close, though Amazon is in a league of its own. Sears Roebuck, in its day, aalong with Montgomery Wards (which long had a bad reputation with both sellers and customers), K-Mart, Walmart, and before them the railroads and AT&T. There are a few grocery chains with national reach (and they've been further consolidating), but none controls major markets (rural regions are often another story). Amazon is World - China.

felipemnoa 6y ago

Can't you create an LLC and obfuscate your name that way?

chrisbennet 6y ago

If you're in the US, could you contact your representative about your experience? The government is starting the wake up to abuses like this and you might find a receptive audience. At the very least, Amazon might suddenly talk to you or reverse their decision to ban you with a Congress person breathing down their neck.

schoolornot 6y ago

Amazon, like Uber and all the other companies criticized here gives me exactly what I want: a trouble free shopping experience without getting ripped off. No one else wants to enter the arena. No one wants to even come close. If there were viable alternatives, I would use them. I live in NYC where Walmart is banned so we're left with the Mom-and-Pop stores + the permitted national retailers like Walgreens and CVS both of which charge multiples over products available on Amazon. We're talking like 300% more for items like toothpaste and other toiletries. And in-store experiences that flat-out suck. Everyone knows this and that's why practically no one cares about Amazon's bad PR or their questionable HR practices behind the scenes. In one ear and out the other. Execution and customer service is everything and right now and Amazon's execution for customers has been amazing for a long time now. This isn't like a 37Signals space where you can one-down the competition. You one-up or go bust. I can't sympathize with your situation without more details being shared. Whatever your response was to that case must not have been up to Amazon's standards. It seems unlikely they would randomly pick on revenue generating sellers without cause.

yread 6y ago

> I've been banned for life. Why would you even consider associating with them again? Ban them for life as well and do your business somewhere else.