Amazon angers mom-and-pop sellers with 'arbitrary' suspensions

Andy Ayers was walking to his car in a Big Lots parking lot - cart brimming with cereal, dog treats, and Always brand feminine hygiene products that he planned to resell for a markup on Amazon.com - when he got a phone alert that his account had been suspended.

"Perfect timing," says Ayers, 32, of Athens, Ga.

An Amazon shopper had complained that one of Ayers's products wasn't authentic. Ayers disputed the claim and provided receipts to back it up. But about two weeks had passed by the time his account was reinstated, and the downtime cost him sales.

"I wasn't doing anything shady," says Ayers, who estimates he'll sell $500,000 worth of goods on Amazon this year. "It seems there are a lot of Amazon sellers who aren't doing anything wrong and are getting punished. There's an arbitrary nature to it."

He has plenty of company. Attendees at an annual gathering of online merchants in Seattle on Friday said merchants are "living in fear" that they'll be kicked off the site.

Most Amazon customers probably don't realize that almost half of the items sold on the site come from third-party merchants. That means a set of kitchen knives could have been plucked from a Walmart bargain rack in Nebraska by a mom-and-pop business looking to profit from a little retail arbitrage.

Amazon relies on more than two million merchants like Ayers to keep its website and warehouses stocked with an assortment of goods no brick-and-mortar store could ever match. But the company's relentless focus on customer service means that when Amazon receives a complaint, it's the shopper - not the merchant - who typically gets the benefit of the doubt.

"We treat sellers like customers," said Erik Fairleigh, a company spokesman. "The perfect seller experience is seamless self-service that allows the seller to independently run their business. If a seller needs to contact us, we have Seller Support associates available 24 hours a day worldwide, including support for urgent issues with a response in an hour or less."

But Ayers and other sellers maintain Amazon is too quick to suspend its business partners and too slow to review their appeals, cutting off their primary revenue source, leaving them saddled with inventory. That ties up thousands of dollars in Amazon accounts until the issues get resolved, they say. So many are reducing their reliance on Amazon by placing some merchandise on other sites, including eBay, one of Amazon's chief rivals.

The tension between Amazon and its sellers was on full display at the Seattle conference, which attracted 100-plus merchants and vendors. The suspension process has given rise to a cottage industry of lawyers, former Amazon seller account investigators and veteran online merchants who charge up to $3,000 to help sellers navigate the mysterious suspension appeal process.

Consultant Lesley Hensell was scheduled to lead an afternoon session on "hot button suspensions." She and her partner noticed the business of helping sellers deal with Amazon suspensions pick up a year ago, and they have a 30-person team working on it. "Amazon is getting harder and harder to persuade," she says. "There's no consistency. It's all by email with different people handling the case. This isn't how business partners are supposed to act."