Anyone ever hired a lawyer to fight amazon?

ILovePaypalNOT · #1 05-17-2010

I had a legit acccount , real info, listed three VERO items and BOOM suspended, with a nice little note explaining that theyll hold my money hostage for 90 days. I NEVER had any claims, no negs , Nothing. It blows my mind , somehow I thought that Amazon wasnt as bad as the evil duo of PP/EB

Anyhow the large chunk of change that their holding belongs to my fiancee , who happens to be an attorney, and he is , well , less than thrilled with them ... to say the least. We recently moved in together and to make room we cleaned out all his old junk and sold it on there.. and hes pissed...

I wonder if anyone has ever had any luck taking the legal road with amazon...

Thoughts?

GreenBean · #2 05-17-2010

Amazon= Goliath.

IlovePaypaletc=David
Amazon are worse than our nemesis. They are more devious. Realize that

You listed VeRo. Amazon will dig in and say that's a no-no. Tough you had no complaints etc but they will twist everything to go against you.
imo, a class action of many defendants would be needed. Ask yourself how seriously are you peeved? (& be careful of vErO

)

oge · #3 05-17-2010

3 items? I thought you said in another thread that you was selling more in 24 hours then in a week on ebay. Either way who uses real info anymore?

ILovePaypalNOT · #4 05-18-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by oge

3 items? I thought you said in another thread that you was selling more in 24 hours then in a week on ebay. Either way who uses real info anymore?

only three Vero items... the rest was completley legit , I had about 120 legits items amongst these few vero

Oh and I meant I was *Making* more in 24 hrs than in a week on ebay

This is my first Amazon acct, so I thought , why not use real info? well I got my answer now!

oge · #5 05-18-2010

Ohh now I understand you had me confused for a little bit. Wow just 3 vero = 3 strikes and your out?

ILovePaypalNOT · #6 05-18-2010

Yep... apparently. That is why I was so confused about it, and shocked! I had a good strong account, then all of a sudden ...

Oh what am I whining about , I should have known better ... sigh

Well , I now have a new stealth amazon .. but if I list the same books/ toys and games that I had listed before , I will probably get busted right again right?

I only sold about half of the things I had to sell before getting suspended, now I ahve a room full of stuff to get rid of ... its so easy to list on amazon , rather than ebay...

I guess ill give it a try ...

oge · #7 05-18-2010

Yea you might have some problems. I have a older Amazon but I only sold my textbooks on there. So I know you have to change your mac address or use a different computer. So once I get rid of my stuff for ebay (it will be a while a big storage unit full) then maybe I will have to try different products on ebay and Amazon.

catdaddy · #8 05-18-2010

I would say that you now have, primarily, two options with your new stealth account.

You could list the remainder of your "inventory" from the former account and hope to sell as much as possible before you get shut down again, and then just wait the 90 days for the money to come.

Or you could intersperse new items in with some of the old ones so that it isn't as obvious. This might be more effort than its worth for you, but its an option. I'm not sure I recommend it, but, technically, you could make listings for items that you don't actually have in your possession that are VERY overpriced, such that no sane person would ever even think to buy them, or, if some genius actually bought one, you could easily go out and purchase the item and still turn a profit.

I guess you have sub-options - amerazombie would say to open several stealth accounts and spread your items out across them.

You could change venues. You clearly didn't like ebay, but you could always use one of the smaller sites.

Limitless options.

Amazombie · #9 05-18-2010

Your finance would get better results suing himself

I have never seen a class action lawsuit against amazon for holding a sellers money though there is a lot of forum venting elsewhere about doing so.

As Catdaddy says, immediately create a couple of stealth accounts and start over. Good luck. BTW, buy the Stealth Book here if you havent done so.

ILovePaypalNOT · #10 05-18-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amazombie

Your finance would get better results suing himself

I have never seen a class action lawsuit against amazon for holding a sellers money though there is a lot of forum venting elsewhere about doing so.

As Catdaddy says, immediately create a couple of stealth accounts and start over. Good luck. BTW, buy the Stealth Book here if you havent done so.

Yeah I have the Stealth Book bought it a few yrs ago

I guess Ill just suck it up and wait.... Think Ill make another stealth account and jsut not list any vero at all on there .. I guess that would work ...

I just listed on overstock ... one item .. trying it out... we'll see ....

ganbala · #11 05-18-2010

I thought about the same thing when Amazon held my fund from my first account beyond 90 days hold. It's more than a year now and still counting (last sale on 1/29/09) and I have over $10K held on this one. I wrote countless e-mails and even called their head office in Seattle to chase for my money, but all are being either ignored or blocked. I thought about hiring a lawyer but then given up upon it because of the following analysis, and I hope you can relate it to your case as well.

Out of all the money Amazon held from me, only $5k is "out of my pocket" cost. Luckily, I was able to disburse around $10k, apart of around $16500 held, before my account went in for the second 30 days review. This covers part of my cost of items sold and bring down the total loss to $5k. If I was to hire a lawyer, I would be expecting at least another $2 ~ 3k up front, also out of my pocket, and additional cost ranging in thousands depending on how long the case goes. So, I would be looking to get maybe $8k to $12k back IF I WON the case and IF the full amount was paid back.

So what was my chance of winning? After a bit of researches, I recognize it to be NONE.

First, Amazon changed its seller terms on May, 2009 and added a very powerful weapon against the sellers. It summarized that Amazon has absolute rights to hold sellers' funds as long as they suspect their terms and/or policies are being violated. This is very tricky because when they hold your money beyond normal time, they may not tell you the specific reason why it's still being held and when will it be released. In my case, Seller Performance says they are investigating my account and my money will not be released until they are done. However, they do not tell me WHAT/HOW they are investigating and WHEN it will be done. Of course, my further requests are being ignored.

Second, Amazon definitely has their own lawyer(s), and they will definitely be better than the one I hire. The only thing they need to do is to drag my case long enough that I would eventually have no more money to pay my lawyer and drop the case. If I push them, they can always bring out their golden seller terms and say they are "investigating and it's not done yet".

So if I wanted to hire a lawyer for this, I was looking to pour in additional thousands to fight a battle that I would probably loose. Therefore, I would rather eat up my $5k lose (with bleeding heart) and consider it as tuition for selling on Amazon. After all, Amazon did not beg me to sell with them and they definitely did not care if I got screwed.

One day they might just e-mail me and tell me my account is cleared, and I will get my money back, yes, one day..........

ILovePaypalNOT · #12 05-18-2010

I would never even think of actually *paying* an attorney to fight amazon or ebay , I do know it would not be worth it lol They cost to dang much .

OfficialGenius · #13 05-18-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILovePaypalNOT

I would never even think of actually *paying* an attorney to fight amazon or ebay , I do know it would not be worth it lol They cost to dang much .

Are your VERO items real or f ake? Also, how much were you listing at an account? I think someone mentioned listing 1 or 2 per account and spread the stock across accounts.

#14 05-18-2010

Several things:

Could be due to suddenly listing a multitude of items. Maybe list fewer. You can list more than 2.
Could be due to reaching the velocity limit with the items that did already sell. Dollar amount.
Could be due to a few items tickling a bot (what people keep calling VERO - note* Amazon does not have VERO - VERO is a specific ebay term) because Amazon could consider them high risk. It would be an error, of course. But hey....

ILovePaypalNOT · #15 05-18-2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by OfficialGenius

Are your VERO items real or f ake? Also, how much were you listing at an account? I think someone mentioned listing 1 or 2 per account and spread the stock across accounts.

I PMed you ...

catdaddy · #16 05-19-2010

For the record, I would like to point out one thing. Amazon (and ebay and whoever) can change their hidden policy terms all they like. They can claim to be able to hold your money indefinitely for violating their invisible rules, without any notice to you. They can write whatever they want in there. However, those "policies" are always trump by the ACTUAL law, and anyone who has played the amazon guessing game for a while clearly has to realize that their policies do just that.

While everything said about the difficulties in dealing with Amazon legally (they would play legal games until you had to give up), they could be beaten in court. Again, let me point out : paypal/ebay thought they were invincible; they thought they could do whatever the hell they wanted with their "policies", and that no one could do anything about it. They were wrong, and they lost....big. Amazon is slicker and trickier, for sure, but they can lose.

Its really a catch-22 though. A giant class-action lawsuit (which is the only kind that would have the financial backing to compete) might cause them to go under, and then everybody loses anyway because they can't sell there anymore.

Still, one of the smaller sites may ascend at that point and the world would be better for it, but who's to say?