How I lost My Business
About four years ago I decided to sing up to Amazon and start selling small-size telephone accessories. I bought in large numbers cell phone accessorizes from China and sold them on Amazon for a profit.
Let’s just say that after a little bit of financial investment on my behalf, things quickly picked up and the business was going well. Until one day, when my Amazon account was suspended with absolutely no explanation at all.
Initially, I thought there was a mistake and I was just having problems singing in to my account properly. I tried to think of every possible thing that could have happen until I finally realized my Amazon account got suspended.
As every Amazon user knows, there are basically two main reasons why you can get an Amazon suspension. These two are the very simple to understand to many negative feedback’s and the very vague, very narrowly explained violation of their rules and policies.
Selling on Amazon for years it’s obvious that I was more than familiar with fees and always made sure to pay them on time in order to keep my business going and avoiding having my account suspended. Although there were very slim chances of that being the case, I made sure to double check hat all my seller fees have been paid and I’ve reimbursed Amazon for all the buyers they had to pay-back on my behalf. I spent ages looking on my Financial Information tab under my Personal Information page section. Everything was perfectly OK. I had no unpaid debts to Amazon whatsoever.
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In order to protect themselves and their image, Amazon claim that, in the case of your account being suspended you will be notified by e-mail and told what to do in order to reinstate it. They also claim that you can view this e-mail in the Messages tab of your My Amazon profile by clicking the Ask button. But guess what? Not only wasn’t I notified in my personal e-mail, but I also had nothing in my messages tab.
As instructed by the same lovely Amazon customer service team, I typed “My account was suspended” on the Contact us page and I obviously tried to contact them. After three whole hours of trying to get to speak to someone, endlessly pressing buttons in order to ‘narrow down’ the nature of my issue and recorded warning messages of not sharing the number I dialed with anyone because another customer eventually has to contact another customer support team, I finally got put though to a human being. After about another ten pointless minutes of giving her all the required information, I finally got asked to send an e-mail ‘in order for Amazon to investigate my issue further’. I can’t describe how furious I was! Still, with no other option at hand, I sent the e-mail. It’s been almost a week now and no reply in regards to my ‘investigation’!
Anyone that ever had an Amazon suspension knows that it’s not just about the money and listings you lose or in my case, the debt you end up in. I obviously lost a crazy number of bidders in a flash by not even being able to even message them. My reputation went down-hill and I lost all my regular leads and clients that were purchasing my items in large amounts and that I’ve spend months building my relationship with.
On top of all that, I’m still waiting for a response and reading through Amazon’s rules and policy section hoping to at least find some closure!