Prime and Punishment: Dirty dealing in the $175 billion Amazon Marketplace
Last August, Zac Plansky woke to find that the rifle scopes he was selling on Amazon had received 16 five-star reviews overnight. Usually, that would be a good thing, but the reviews were strange. The scope would normally get a single review a day, and many of these referred to a different scope, as if they'd been cut and pasted from elsewhere. "I didn't know what was going on, whether it was a glitch or whether somebody was trying to mess with us," Plansky says.
As a precaution, he reported the reviews to Amazon. Most of them vanished days later — problem solved — and Plansky reimmersed himself in the work of running a six-employee, multimillion-dollar weapons accessory business on Amazon. Then, two weeks later, the trap sprang. "You have manipulated product reviews on our site," an email from Amazon read. "This is against our policies. As a result, you may no longer sell on Amazon.com, and your listings have been removed from our site."
A rival had framed Plansky for buying five-star reviews, a high crime in the world of Amazon. The funds in his account were immediately frozen, and his listings were shut down. Getting his store back would take him on a surreal weeks-long journey through Amazon's bureaucracy, one that began with the click of a button at the bottom of his suspension message that read "appeal decision."
When you buy something on Amazon, the odds are, you aren't buying it from Amazon at all. Plansky is one of 6 million sellers on Amazon Marketplace, the company's third-party platform. They are largely hidden from customers, but behind any item for sale, there could be dozens of sellers, all competing for your click. This year, Marketplace sales were almost double those of Amazon retail itself, according to Marketplace Pulse, making the seller platform alone the largest e-commerce business in the US.
Long read about manipulation in Amazon's marketplace, featuring various stories like the one above.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2018, @03:11PM (6 children)
Reviews were posted.
Reviews were removed.
Account was shut down.
Is Amazon support just that crappy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2018, @03:57PM (4 children)
Yes, next question.
This isn't that much different from when they randomly ban customers from the store for returns.
This also shows why businesses shouldn't be using Amazon as their store front. Maybe use it as part of their web presence, but it definitely shouldn't be their whole web presence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2018, @04:23PM
these lazy minded, cheapskate, sell outs will do anything to keep from having to pay someone to write a custom web app for them, even though there are hungry devs that would do it for cheap if they just looked around a little. not me anymore, but i used to would have.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday December 21 2018, @04:26PM
Well, some huge portion of web shoppers go to Amazon first. So the seller has the choice between missing much or all of the market and a devil's bargain. The real lesson is that if you do business through Amazon, move your income into accounts they don't control every day so that if your Amazon seller account has a problem you've only lost a tiny bit of previous revenue.
I debated the same kind of thing with an iOS application developer a few years ago. I pointed out that Apple could shut his company's product down for no reason at all, and with no legal right to appeal the decision. He (or she, whatever) agreed, but said that at the time the overwhelming percent of money spent on mobile applications was spent on iOS. So they could build a product and distribute it separately and retain 100% owner control, and then never reach a large enough set of potential customers to turn a profit. The iOS app store had all of the risk but also all of the reward. That was four or five years ago, I imagine the Android application store has some larger portion of mobile application spending. But all of the same risks apply with the Google app store, Google is simply so far less willing to burn app developers than Apple.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday December 21 2018, @04:40PM (1 child)
"This also shows why businesses shouldn't be using Amazon as their store front."
Lots of them have their own presence, but what if 75-90% of your sales come through amazon? Getting bumped off amazon is a huge blow to these businesses.
The only thing worse is when amazon decides to sell the same thing as you directly, and then undercuts you out of the market... at least you can appeal stuff like this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @10:49AM
I'd like a huge blow
(Score: 4, Informative) by urza9814 on Friday December 21 2018, @04:32PM
YES. As far as I can tell, Amazon support is some kind of very poor A"I" algorithm that picks out one or two key words from your complaint and sends back a form response. Last couple times I contacted them they literally responded to a completely different question than what I'd asked. I don't shop there anymore...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2018, @03:34PM (1 child)
Amazin is letting Chinese marketplace vendors sell their fakes to customers who are looking for genuine products. The Birkenstock company has decided to withdraw themselves from the Amazon platform, because they have been unhelpful in making a real effort to keep the fakes out.
(Score: 3, Informative) by crafoo on Friday December 21 2018, @04:26PM
That's my experience too. Amazon is full of fake trash and unlicensed knock-offs. Amazon does nothing about it. It makes them money. It's a minefield for anyone else trying to use amazon to buy something. I tend to go elsewhere now.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Aurean on Friday December 21 2018, @03:35PM (2 children)
“It was crazy,” he says. “I felt like I was in prison for a crime I didn’t commit, and the only way out was to plead guilty.” (seller talking about Amazon seller account review process)
..so just like the real judicial system, then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2018, @04:44PM
yeah, except faster and fairer probably. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @10:55AM
Sounds like what happens when you get thrown into a low level mental asylum or holding place.
Literally either sit there and wait them out showing aggression in a situation which is high agitating or sue them or go through the process of mental evaluation for which for normal sane people results in them declaring you have a mental problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by etherscythe on Friday December 21 2018, @06:56PM (8 children)
So is there even one decent marketplace site out there for general widget shopping? Newegg was my go-to, but they've been bought out not too long ago and I've had any number of problems with their 3rd party sellers since then, and the customer support might as well be granite for all the transparency I had into the process. Don't even get me started on eBay. I've been avoiding Amazon because of personal boycott reasons, but it sounds like a somewhat practical choice now as well.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2018, @08:40PM (2 children)
We don't by all that much, no kids, getting close to retirement age and have most of what we want. For general/cheap widgets I like shopping Walmart online with store pickup (on most items). The store pickup means I can open and make a keep/return decision on the spot. Also, I can give them the packaging to recycle (I believe they have a good recycling connection that picks up at the stores--can anyone confirm?)
Walmart was once the great satan that put small town center shopping districts out of business. But that phase is over and, imo, Walmart behaves reasonably ethically now (waiting for the firestorm of comments, but this is the impression I've been getting in the last few years).
For anything more specialized, I try to get as close to the source as possible -- books from publishers, specialty items from the makers or the USA importers.
Sears online aka "Shop Your Way" is sometimes OK for larger things (we have many appliances and yard care items from Sears), but with Sears going under I have no idea what the future looks like for their online division.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday December 21 2018, @11:15PM (1 child)
Walmart is still terrible to their business partners and their employees. But in a world of bad choices, I may have to settle for something. Food for thought, at least.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @11:19AM
I remember when I ordered a pair of snow shoes from Amazon. I got ONE(1) snow shoe.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday December 22 2018, @03:54AM (4 children)
Ebay is still pretty great. Why should I not get you started on them?
The thing about Ebay is that there's no such thing as "fulfilled by Ebay"; it's all 3rd-party sellers, and they never let you forget that. No two sellers are alike. So just treat Ebay like a big public square where a bunch of unrelated vendors have all come in and set up shop, and the only thing the public square is doing is providing space and handling credit card transactions. When you buy on Ebay, look closely at seller reviews and history, and where the seller is located. If the seller is some guy who's been on there for 15 years with 100% feedback who sells a handful of items a year, then he's probably trustworthy. If it's someone who sells tens of thousands of items per month and lots of the reviews are negative, well you'll probably get something for your money but I wouldn't buy anything too expensive there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @11:03AM (3 children)
Paypal. They suck. Badly.
The straw that broke the cow's back was buying something from ebay with an Australian credit card that was loaded with US dollars. The item was displayed in US dollars. The payment went through in US dollars. Paypal converted it from US to AUD dollars charging a fee and adding that to the amount. My bank received the request on my credit card for an amount in AUD so they automatically converted it from AUD to US and charged a fee adding the fee on top.
Long story short, I accused Ebay/Paypal of fraud. The item was shown in USD. They charged my card in AUS.
They argued that since my credit card was registered in Australia they rightfully converted the charge to AUD.
I argued that the price was shown and charged on the checkout page in USD. I never asked nor wanted it converted to AUS dollars.
They argued that since I am in Australia they can charge my card in AUS dollars.
I asked them for absolute proof that I am physically currently in Australia. They failed to do so.
Ebay said it was a Paypal problem.
Paypal said it was an Ebay problem.
In the end Ebay refunded the full amount.
Never again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @11:23AM
PayPal has a very explicit currency conversion option. You really should read it. It's on every checkout. It tells you from where the money comes from and in what currency.
PayPal markups tend to be higher than CC, so it's generally best to just let them charge your CC without any conversions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @05:02PM
you don't have to use pp on ebay now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @10:54PM
Sounds like you were too clever for the programmers at PayPal? In other words, they never anticipated your particular combination of location and currency. If the coders didn't allow for this edge case, then you are going to land in the hands of customer (dis)service who also may have a problem figuring out just what you did. An account (credit card or regular bank account) in Australia, denominated in USD must be pretty rare, it's not like you can pop across the border to go shopping...
I'm in USA, near the Canadian border. It's common for Canadians to have a bank account in USD if they cross the border often and shop in USA. When the exchange rate has been reversed (historically) the reverse was also common. Our local merchants and banks understand this.
Question if you are still watching, this didn't really make sense to me, but it may be a question of definitions:
> ... Australian credit card that was loaded with US dollars.
Does this mean that you carry a positive balance on the credit card? Credit cards here are normally negative balance, that's what I pay off each month to avoid interest charges.
A few times a returned item has credited to my card and then there is a positive balance, until I buy some things. Once I remember there was a small (~$2.00) credit balance on a card that I wasn't using--after a few months the card issuer mailed me a paper check to take the balance to zero, they didn't want to hold my money any longer.