$200K+/Month Amazon Selling Account Closed

[Vaporizer King]

It's a long post...

So here's the story and timeline:

June 8th - Received email from amazon notifying us that our account was being suspended for "conspiring with other sellers to raise prices on certain items".

I replied on June 8th with the responses below. Even though our suspension was for a policy violation, I filled out the appeal completely and addressed every section. In hindsight, I wonder if I should've just left the other boxes blank. Sorry it's really long... I tried attaching it instead but the max file size allowed is only 19kb.

Suspended for poor selling performance
In the text box below, please provide your Plan of Action outlining the steps you will take to correct the problems you identified. Providing a precise Plan of Action gives your account a better chance of being reinstated:

A lot of the recent negative feedback is due to Amazon FBA issues. We are diligently trying to work issues out with customers even though Amazon fulfilled the orders. If you check, many of the feedback are being removed because of the FBA reason. In either case, whether FBA or not, we contact each individual customer to resolve issues directly. We aren't satisfied until the customer is satisfied. If you look at our last 90 days feedback, we've been pretty consistent.

We are trying to identify any patterns with the recent customer issues so we can change our procedures accordingly and possibly even discontinue carrying certain products that are routinely causing problems for customers. The last thing we want is the customer returning merchandise back to us because they are unhappy with it.


Suspended for policy violation (Optional)
If your account was suspended due to a violation of our policies, please do the following:

Evaluate your selling practices and provide the reason for the violation(s).
Provide a Plan of Action for how you will prevent the violation in the future.

Over the years, we have received numerous requests from other sellers in the marketplace to raise selling prices together. My staff had no idea that this wasn't allowed. My staff gets paid a percentage of the gross sales so it's in their interest to keep prices higher vs. lower. They've seen these same type of emails from other sellers both on Amazon, eBay and also directly from competitors to change prices on our websites. We all thought this was a normal thing sellers did in the marketplace. Furthermore, Amazon never provided us with a warning regarding this issue. However, I understand that it is the seller's responsibility to understand and follow all the rules, and now that we know this is a prohibited practice on Amazon, we will definitely put an end to it and ignore all requests from other sellers in the marketplace.

This all started with unique_gear emailing us about raising the prices on amazon. He even called us and said he would dump all his units at $10 just to screw with us and liquidate. This sounded REALLY bad and as you know from above, my staff gets paid on a % of gross so it was in their interest to comply and raise the price. We wanted to avoid a price war, especially one that put our items below cost.

Then... on the NEXT DAY, the owner of Smoke Buddy calls me and begs me for a favor to help him repair his retail pricing on Amazon. The Smoke Buddy item is normally supposed to retail for $19.99 and it's currently going for $11 on Amazon. The owner's name is Greg and he's a personal friend of mine. He asked me for a favor if I could please help him contact the other sellers on Amazon to have everyone get the price up. The reason for this was because local brick and mortar stores and mom & pop shops could not compete with the online powerhouses selling on amazon. Brick and mortar/ Mom & Pop shops get the Smoke Buddies for around $8 a unit. There was no way for them to compete so Greg started getting those brick and mortar stores complaining and canceling orders with him. He was worried about his product being devalued so much so fast in the online marketplace. I've had 9 years experience selling things online so I told him this was bound to happen with the online marketplace. But he asked me for my help and since he's a good friend I agreed (Keep in mind, at this point in time, we still had no idea that contacting other sellers was an illegal practice). Luckily, 2 or 3 of the other sellers on the Smoke Buddy listings were my customers so I could easily communicate with them. I'm not in a position to tell my customers how to run their business, because they have bosses too. I just simply told them Greg's situation and what he wanted us to do about it. Whether or not we followed through with it was our choice.

After responding to unique_gear and a few of our own wholesale customers regarding the smoke buddy, my office manager Blake, gets the idea to try to fix the Volcano listings too. We've heard complaints from Volcano recently that they were going to start cutting off ALL amazon sellers because of their MSRP getting messed up on amazon. What's funny is that Volcano didn't mention eBay because for some magical reason, the sellers on eBay are able to collectively maintain MSRP. The Volcano units sell for $539 and $669. Again, Blake seeing a part of his paycheck at risk of getting cutoff by Volcano (because he gets a % of gross sales and Volcanos are our most high-ticket item), takes the initiative and contacts superduperdeals regarding MSRP. I believe this was done yesterday (before we knew this practice was prohibited).

It's actually ironic that all 3 situations arose from altruistic intentions and the primary purpose was NOT to conspire with other sellers to maximize prices.
1. unique_gear threatened to dump units below cost. Blake was looking out for the company and decided it was better to raise prices than have unique_gear upset the entire market place for ALL sellers.
2. Greg, the Smoke Buddy owner called us and asked for a personal favor.
3. Again, Blake was looking out for the company so we don't get cut off by Volcano for the actions of another seller.


Suspended for related account
If your account was suspended for being related to another selling account, please explain why your account should be reinstated:

Earlier this afternoon, I received 2 phone calls from different customers of ours telling us their amazon accounts were closed. Initially, I just thought it was a very strange coincidence that we all did something wrong around the same time. Until one of them asked me if our Amazon account had any issues. That immediately raised a red flag in my head. I asked him WHY he would ask me that. Why would my account have anything to do with his? It was then that he told me the reason for his account suspension was because Amazon claimed his account was linked to another closed account, in this case, ours (Vaporizer King). It infuriated me even more when I found out he had received an email about this issue a month ago and didn't respond. By doing so, he could've potentially put our account at risk as well. I have told him to contact amazon ASAP regarding that issue and explain his case. His Amazon id is bestbuyclearance.

Apparently, I was never made aware of this "related accounts" issue since we never got those emails. I even asked my staff and Blake if they ever saw an email regarding this issue in the Vaporizer King inbox and they all said "No". To avoid any future misunderstandings, I will tell you right now that bestbuyclearance and smoke hero are both my customers. The owner of bestbuyclearance used to work for me years ago. I actually trained him on how to manage our eBay accounts. He then left to start his own eBay/online business and we became one of his major suppliers. About a year ago, he asked me to show him how to be successful on Amazon. Up until then, he didn't have much experience with Amazon at all. All he knew was eBay and websites since that's what he did for us in the past. So we started training him and showing him how to manage an Amazon selling account. We did this for him not only because he's a friend, but also because he's a customer of ours and allowing him to expand onto amazon would mean our wholesale business would grow as well. So it was in our interest to do this.

The situation with Smoke Hero (William) is similar, but instead of an ex-employee, he started off as just a regular wholesale customer of ours. He has a day job and runs his own eBay store in his spare time. As his ordering volume increased, I noticed it and personally talked with him about his business model. I found out that he was selling exclusively on eBay only. I told him that it was crazy to neglect Amazon. I gave him some tips to start off and recommended that he only start with FBA sales to test the waters and that would also give him an edge as a new seller against long-standing established sellers. Doing FBA would also alleviate a lot of the fulfillment stress, especially for a 1-man operation like his. It's funny.. initially he wanted to do both merchant fulfilled and FBA just like us, until I showed him my warehouse guys packing 100+ merch fulfilled orders a day and we both agreed that he couldn't possibly pull that off by himself. This was probably 6 months to a year ago.

So in a nutshell, that's the extent of our involvement with those other two sellers bestbuyclearance and smoke hero. I assume you guys detected the linkage of accounts either by logins from the same ISP or by the shipping addresses on FBA shipments.
1. I have no direct knowledge of them logging into their accounts from our office, but that's not impossible. They are both regular customers and are friends with many of my staff. We may have done initial training for employees from Bestbuyclearance on one of our office computers. I cannot say for sure. I don't think William has ever logged in from our office, but again I cannot say for sure. It's possible that he's logged in if my staff had to show him or teach him how to do something.

2. Since we supply them with a handful of items, we just offer to ship and receive FBA items for them directly from our warehouse. This saves them a trip from having to come pick up and reship things themselves. This gives me a HUGE competitive advantage against my wholesale competitors. Nobody else will offer sending/receiving FBA items directly from their warehouse for other sellers. We even handle their RMAs directly so they don't need to worry about it. This is why many of their shipments may come and go from our location.

If Amazon has issue with any of the above, we can address it but I don't see why it would be any kind of problem. Bringing other sellers onto amazon and providing some logistical services for them is all we're doing. In the end, customers benefit from expanded offerings because there are more sellers available in the marketplace. Having more sellers provides customers with more choices and additional options. It generally also results in lower prices as well. Please clarify what Amazon wants us to do in this case.
1. Do you want us to stop supplying these two customers because they are selling on Amazon? If so, I will consider doing this, but I will not stop supplying them completely. I will have them sign a contract saying they will NOT sell the products on Amazon.com. But this will still allow them to sell the items on eBay and their website. I will not be responsible for putting them out of business.
2. Do you want us to stop referring sellers to Amazon? We supply dozens of sellers on eBay. The reason we've kept Amazon a secret is because we don't want the market to get flooded with competition on Amazon. This is the reason why we've only helped a very few select people become successful on Amazon.
3. Do you not want the FBA shipments coming from our location? This one is silly... I don't think this is any issue at all but I'd like clarification just in case it is.

I have one more point to add. Both situations above are small business success stories that we are actually proud of. In BestBuy Clearance's example, I've watched them grow from a garage-operation to getting their own small warehouse. Their business has increased probably 5x and this is a direct result of our mentoring and partnership with them along with Amazon providing a successful platform for them to sell products. William's business is steadily increasing as well, he's also talking about leaving his day-job and doing the online business full-time. Or at least he was... In my opinion, it's unfair that you shut them down for the reason of "related accounts". The specifics of our relation are detailed above. The nature of this relationship is Supplier -> Customer.


June 9th, we get a response from Amazon - Thank you for writing. As you know from the notification that was sent to you, your selling account has been blocked due to violation of the Amazon.com Participation Agreement. While we appreciate your interest, we will not reinstate your account.

If you have questions about the blocking of your account, please address them to our Legal team at:

Amazon.com
Legal Dept.
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
Fax: 206-266-7010


June 9th - I respond via email asking why I am no longer able to access my Amazon account. My login and password no longer work. I'm able to successfully reset/change my password, but logins continue to fail. When attempting to login, I get the following message "The e-mail address and password you entered do not match any accounts on record."

June 9th - Amazon responds with "We regret that your account has failed our review process. Your account has been closed and you are no longer eligible to sell on our site.

Please note that we will be unable to correspond further about this situation."

June 9th - I reply via email once again asking why I cannot login and I also ask what I'm supposed to do with the $100,000 worth of merchandise sitting in their FBA warehouses.

I have yet to receive a response back.

My first impression was that Amazon was greatly overreacting. For them to so abruptly suspend our amazon selling account w/out any kind of warning was ridiculous. We are not a small time garage operation. FBA and merchant-fulfilled combined, we do about 300+ orders a day, totaling $100K+ every 2 weeks. Amazon is a very significant portion of our business, about 50%. I have 11 employees total and our Amazon workload required 4 full-time employees. In the account's 2 year history, we have always had stellar performance and never any kind of serious policy violations. As stated above, my staff genuinely had no idea messaging other sellers to raise prices was a prohibited practice. This was the first time they've ever sent that kind of email and it was at the request of the manufacturer! Shutting down our Amazon account cuts our business in half and potentially puts 4 people out of work. All without any kind of warning!

Another issue is the inability to login to our account. June 30th is approaching and I need to get in there to get sales tax data. And I'm worried about what's going to happen to our FBA inventory. There's no way Amazon is seizing that stuff right? If so, that's outright theft. It's more likely that I'll have to pay them thousands of dollars in FBA fees to get my own inventory shipped back to me. Should I start talking to a lawyer? What kind of lawyer should I talk to?

A byproduct of this whole situation is that two of my good customers got their accounts closed as well. They too have FBA inventory stuck at amazon warehouses, but the difference is that they are still able to log into their amazon accounts.

If I could just speak to a live person on the phone, I believe this situation can be resolved. However, seller-performance only communicates via email. I've read on other forums that some sellers are able to get a manager on the phone though the normal seller-support interface and have ended up getting their accounts reinstated. I'm thinking about giving that a shot.

What do you guys think I should do? Any and all responses are appreciated.

Thanks.

[getbackonamazon]

I'd recommend, if there is any personally identifiable information in your post, delete it, and look up the Sherman Anti-trust act.

I'm sorry to hear that your account was closed, but what you describe is a very serious offense, and saying you didn't know it wasn't allowed probably won't get you far.

Price fixing results in jail time.

[Gamefreak]

Quite honestly, you are making the situation WAY worse with your crazy response! It really does look like you are intentionally trying to raise prices for these items. Also remove all references to sellers names please. U never want to include your or other sellers name in a post.

Your responses really didnt address anything directly to amazon and if your account got deleted then that is some serious stuff right there. Amazon really isnt playing with you and quite frankly there are too many ppl that u mentioned that seems to be working together.

Sucks that you lost such a valuable account but you should know the rules. I get these all the time and never respond. I simply report these sellers to amazon for my own safety.

Do what you have to do to get your account back.. simple as that

[jeffweico]

I think you can pretty much forget about selling on Amazon. If it were me, I would get an attorney who specializes in business law, preferably one who is familiar with Ecommerce issues.

I don't see Amazon seizing your inventory. You most likely will, however, have to pay a fee to have it packed and shipped back to you.

Any money in your account may be held for 90 days. However, we have seen that when Amazon "deletes" an account (you know that has happened when your user name and password no longer work) they do not always return the money - ever.

Your goals with hiring an attorney would be to get your inventory back and to make sure that you get your money from them after the 90 day holding period. If you want them to try to get you back on to Amazon they probably will, but I don't think there is much of a chance of that.

Newly banned sellers tend to make the mistake of thinking that they have some sort of a "right" to sell on Amazon. However, as the website owner, they can ban whomever they like as long as they do not run afoul of the anti-discrimination laws. Their argument would be this is NOT anti-competitive as you are free to set up your own website and advertise it however you like.

The more recent trend of Amazon withholding money, possibly forever, has people arguing that it is illegal. And they are probably correct. Keep in mind, however, that corporations violate the law all the time. It is a civil manner, not a criminal one. So, until a judge rules that they cannot do that, they don't "have to" do what you want them to do. If you have an attorney contact them, they will probably release the money.

The fact is, your responses admitted that you violated the rules, albiet unknowingly. As a business owner, you are responsible for the actions taken by your employees while they are working on your behalf. Arguing that it was your employees mistake makes it look like you have little control over what is happening in your business. It also seems like there are a lot of problems recently with the merchadise in terms of chargebacks. Not to mention, that while what you are selling is perfectly legal, the typical activity it used for is not and that is probably working against you as well. So, I don't see them giving you the account back.

Please understand that I am NOT judging you, or what you sell. I am not trying to upset you or make you angry. I am only trying to point out the reality of how Amazon works these days. Also, for the record, I am NOT an attorney and this is NOT legal advice. If you need legal advice, you should seek the services of a licensed attorney who can help you.

Good luck!

[cherrqell]

If you have this much at stake, I would plan a trip to Seattle, spend a few days, and see if there is any way you can schedule a meeting, or speak to someone at Amazon that can help you out with this situation.

Sorry that it turned out this way, but this situation seem to be that you need professional help to resolve this problem. Good luck.

[Vaporizer King]

Thank you for the responses. I am currently talking with a lawyer. Please post if anyone has any other ideas.

[KingDog]

It's not a coincidence. They banned you because you were taking a chunk of amazon's business way. What they really meant to say was..Your prices are much lower than ours and we finally found a way to **** you.

You were blocked not by the Amazon team in India that deals with little fish like "GAMEFREAK" over here who thinks he is righteous even though he is stealth and violating all of amazon's policies, a whiteknight? surely not. You were targeted by Exectuive Team here in the USA since your a bigfish. The fact that they deleted your account is troubling..They really want to **** you. They never have any hopes of restoring your account unless you give them serious pressure from media/lawyers and only then it's still not in your favor since you admitted to price manipulation. It's over and your employees need to start looking for part time work asap. The clock is ticking...

On a side note, its funny amazon can delete whole accounts but they can't find a bank account # aha..They are liars and your dealing with some higher-ups who targeted you.

Most likely you were cutting into their pockets,that they realized they can do better without you on their seller platform.

[Vaporizer King]

@KingDog

Wow.. that's troubling to hear. How do you know this is going on? Is there any proof anywhere that they have two different teams suspending people?

[jeffweico]

I don't know about everything KingDog said, but I do know that he is at least PARTLY correct. Amazon, like many other companies, has many functions outsourced or they have their own employees in lower-cost countries like India.

In my experience, the Seller Performace team in India takes care of a lot of the run of the mill stuff - like watching newer accounts, detecting new sellers hawking counterfeit goods, watcing the technical aspects of accounts (browser fingerprinting, beacons, IP logging, etc.). That would be the team that closes out newer accounts where the evidence they have is excellent that Amazon would prefer the person sold elsewhere.

I very much doubt the team in India would have the authority to close your account, given the volume you are doing and the length of time it was open. Those cases are referred to Seller Performace HERE, in the USA for their review.

Whether or not Amazon suspended you because they wanted to take over selling vaporizes? I doubt it. But they HAVE, in the past, squeezed smaller sellers out of the market. There have also been some larger companies that have left Amazon because they were afraid Amazon would eventually use their sales data to compete against them. So what KingDog said, COULD have at least SOME validity to it.

Will the media take up your case? I doubt it. If Amazon WAS looking for an excuse to get rid of you, the price fixing thing gave it to them in spades. However, if Amazon really wanted you gone, they could just kick you off without explanation - they don't NEED an excuse. If they were taken to court over it, I'm sure they could figure out how to make your business trigger some "theoretical risk model" and use that for an explanation as to why you were booted. But a business law attorney told me that the owner of a venue - ANY type of venue, online or offline - can basically do whatever they want to do with their sellers, unless you were to have a non-compete agreement in place. And that is something Amazon would not likely ever sign.

Either way, however, the end result is the same.

[Gamefreak]

Originally Posted by KingDog

It's not a coincidence. They banned you because you were taking a chunk of amazon's business way. What they really meant to say was..Your prices are much lower than ours and we finally found a way to **** you.

You were blocked not by the Amazon team in India that deals with little fish like "GAMEFREAK" over here who thinks he is righteous even though he is stealth and violating all of amazon's policies, a whiteknight? surely not. You were targeted by Exectuive Team here in the USA since your a bigfish. The fact that they deleted your account is troubling..They really want to **** you. They never have any hopes of restoring your account unless you give them serious pressure from media/lawyers and only then it's still not in your favor since you admitted to price manipulation. It's over and your employees need to start looking for part time work asap. The clock is ticking...

On a side note, its funny amazon can delete whole accounts but they can't find a bank account # aha..They are liars and your dealing with some higher-ups who targeted you.

Most likely you were cutting into their pockets,that they realized they can do better without you on their seller platform.

Dont put me in your mouth if you dont know how much I make. I might not make as much as him but I make more than my fair share and FYI my account is actuall legit so know what you are talking before you say stupid sh!t!

[mercurial333]

Originally Posted by KingDog

It's not a coincidence. They banned you because you were taking a chunk of amazon's business way. What they really meant to say was..Your prices are much lower than ours and we finally found a way to **** you.

You were blocked not by the Amazon team in India that deals with little fish like "GAMEFREAK" over here who thinks he is righteous even though he is stealth and violating all of amazon's policies, a whiteknight? surely not. You were targeted by Exectuive Team here in the USA since your a bigfish. The fact that they deleted your account is troubling..They really want to **** you. They never have any hopes of restoring your account unless you give them serious pressure from media/lawyers and only then it's still not in your favor since you admitted to price manipulation. It's over and your employees need to start looking for part time work asap. The clock is ticking...

On a side note, its funny amazon can delete whole accounts but they can't find a bank account # aha..They are liars and your dealing with some higher-ups who targeted you.

Most likely you were cutting into their pockets,that they realized they can do better without you on their seller platform.

Lmao, funny.

[EbanYtsa]

you should not put in risk your golden account these days, what is your total lost ?

[potofgold23]

You may be able to negotiate some of your money back but there is no way in hell you are getting your account back. Whether knowingly or not, you engaged in price-fixing, which is a felony and can carry severe consequences. Amazon, most assuredly, does not want even the slightest whiff of such actions taking place on their site. If the feds caught wind of that, they would have a field day if evidence was found that Amazon 'let it slide'

Since they have referred you to the legal dept, you may want to hire a lawyer of your own. What you have been doing is very serious indeed.

[rsot]

All the best - I dont have any ideas to offer but jeffweico is wise on this. AZ is getting more and more dangerous these days.

[download3000]

lol gamefreak lets not get mad over whos a big fish.