I've seen this and yes there are false positives. It is unfortunate they have no reasonable appeal process. Amazon will ban you with no recourse if two selling accounts appear to login from the same network/same computer. It does not need to be a banned account. At least that's what appeared to happen in one case I've seen. Maybe it is cookies too, who knows.
Two internet merchants in the same family. Both have separate businesses, separate tax IDs, separate locations, etc. One family member is older and needs a lot of help with IT stuff. The younger family member comes over on the weekend to help with network/computer problems and happens to login and check their orders. Amazon sends an email to both of them demanding that one of the accounts be immediately closed or they will both be terminated. Again, they tried everything to get a human being to listen. No help from Amazon. The older family member closed his account and lost 50% of his revenues because he felt responsible for the entire situation. The younger seller 's account remained open. It was extremely heavy handed.
I have close relationships with both of these people and I am 100% sure neither of them are involved in any fraud.
Heaven help Amazon if merchants ever had the idea to do an entrepreneurial workshop and had dozens of accounts all logging in from the same area as part of the conference.
UPDATE: Amazon just reinstated my account (with an equally impersonal email). I updated the post to reflect this.
A partial victory, but it's still not really satisfying. Had I not taken the effort to blog about this, and gotten lucky by hitting the top spot on Hacker News, I don't think Amazon would have reinstated my account.
"Further correspondence regarding the closure of your selling account may not be answered. The closure of this account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well."
I would still consider doing the PR angle with this ending as the story hook. You went to all the effort of doing a blog post and you got everyone talking about it here. It would be unfortunate if this wasn't able to result in some reasonable systemic change to the Amazon practice.
It's disturbing to see that this is an all-too-common pattern with the large internet companies. Stories abound of companies like Google, eBay, PayPal, Facebook and Amazon closing down accounts with what I would characterize as "violence". No explanations. No recourse. No way to reason with a human being. The approach seems so "anti-internet" that it is hard to come-up with justification for the behavior.
One argument is that they have to deal with so much fraud that they have no choice but to be somewhat pragmatic and, yes, totalitarian about it. The counter argument to this is that if your company is so big that you have to hurt honest customers because you can't afford to do it right, well, maybe you are too big. I've red about cases where an individual's only source of income was summarily cutoff overnight with no recourse whatsoever. That's plain wrong.
It's a bit of a catch-22, though. People buying items on the Internet tend to prefer to buy via a well-established, highly-structured and secure marketplace. From a buyer's perspective, buying through the big companies you're talking about provides some measure of perceived safety in the transaction.
Sellers and buyers would both benefit from "small company" levels of customer service. However, marketplaces run by smaller or newer companies don't have the same perceived levels of trust and security as the bigger, more established marketplaces.
I know it's only a matter of perception but, in this case, perception is reality in terms of buyer comfort.
>It's disturbing to see that this is an all-too-common pattern with the large internet companies. Stories abound of companies like Google, eBay, PayPal, Facebook and Amazon closing down accounts with what I would characterize as "violence". No explanations. No recourse. No way to reason with a human being. The approach seems so "anti-internet" that it is hard to come-up with justification for the behavior.
it is doesn't matter internet or B&M as [quasi]monopoly is a monopoly. Just imagine how it would feel if your electric/gas company decided to "close your account forever". Because of such great power they weild, they are regulated as public utilities. The platforms you mentioned are formally not yet there [mostly i think because the standard metric of what monopoly on the Internet is hasn't been yet determined], so they allow themselves all kind of behavior that is no-no in the other well established areas of business.
What's the economic incentive to provide better support? You don't make Amazon much money, but an appeals process would cost them money. So why would they do it?
I'm an Amazon seller. I sell a small ebook. I think my wife sells a few things too.
So you guys are saying if she logs on to her account from my computer suddenly neither one of us can sell on Amazon ever again?
Does this seem a little draconian to anybody besides me? Random rules -- no doubt put in place for good reasons to prevent fraud -- haphazardly applied to people and resulting in a lifetime ban from being a seller?
I have no problem with Amazon running a clean shop. In fact, I wish they'd do more to make it that way. What I have a problem with is systems of rules that are put up without any feedback mechanism in place. So instead of some real, live person listening to complaints and eventually coming to an understanding that this is totally whacked, thousands get dumped in the trash can until somebody finally manages to make a public relations case out of it? Completely unsatisfactory.
This is just poor systems design, Amazon. This is exactly the same systems problem many are having with PayPal, and for exactly the same reason. Be as strict as you like, but always include the possibility that you might be wrong. Because if you have no self-correction mechanisms, people aren't going to like you much. I know I just started thinking very carefully about my relationship with Amazon. I'm sure a lot of other folks did too.
Assuming the story is correct (and based on how others have vouched for the OP here I have every reason to believe that it is) the crime that Amazon has appeared to commit here (I like to reduce things down this way) is that according to the story there is no reasonable appeal process.
We regularly get fraud orders and we follow a certain procedure to yank those but you can call us or email us and you will get a response.
We are actually very interested in knowing whether we've made a mistake so we can refine the process further. (As PG said he wants to know the future success of companies YC rejected for the same reason.)
This makes me scared to use Amazon for selling stuff. I don't think I have the web presence required to prevent my account being locked down because of false positives. It looks like there really is no other option if their automated fraud detection system flags you...
> Random rules -- no doubt put in place for good reasons to prevent fraud -- haphazardly applied to people and resulting in a lifetime ban from being a seller?
Well, you're both private parties entering into a contract on "mutually agreed" terms, so you get what you sign up for.
Of course, where there's such an imbalance in size and power, it's unlikely that the mutually agreed upon terms are going to be anything but unfavorable to you, the little guy, so your only real option is to simply not play the game.
As a seller on Amazon, do not expect the same level of service and efficiency you receive as a buyer. I had a client selling on Amazon that had all kinds of surprises. On one occasion, they took down listings because the product was selling too well - it took days to resolve, and the launch's momentum was killed.
Here's the key to getting these issues resolved:
1) Always use phone support, not email support. Email support will almost always paste the easiest reply - it may as well be automated. Phone support gets you a a real human being on the phone who will actually listen and understand what's going on.
2) Keep escalating. If they deny your appeal, appeal again. There is absolutely no consistency in how they handle these situations. One person may say there's nothing that can be done, the next will push a button and instantly make the problem go away. And the more you annoy them, the more it's worth their while to actually look at and resolve your problem.
I received a warning from Amazon about illegally having two seller accounts and they threatened closure. I believe they picked up on the fact that my girlfriend had a seller account and used my computer to update it. We ended up closing her account down rather than trying to explain to Amazon that they might possibly be wrong.
So depending on where you've managed your account from, you might be associated with all sorts of unsavory characters.
When a farmer drives his harvester through a field, most ears of corn get profitably harvested. [Work with me, I'm a city boy.] A few ears get trampled and destroyed. The farmer doesn't grieve for the trampled ears, and he does little to nothing to reduce trampled ears, because overall his harvesting method is the most monetarily efficient one available to him. He's happy, and doesn't give the trampled ears a single thought.
Amazon, Google et al. have discovered that millions of ears of corn will line up to be harvested. Virtually none leaves voluntarily.
I've been an Amazon customer for many years, several of those as a paying Prime member, and I've been generally happy ... until this past fall.
I don't know what's going on, but in the past three months I've had several issues and complaints requiring customer service intervention. The most recent of which was when I signed up for Amazon Student with time remaining on my paid (full price) Prime membership.
My Prime was cancelled without warning (more likely, simply overwritten by Student), which downgraded my privileges on their site (no more Prime video, for example). The service rep was unable to simply cancel student and reinstate my Prime membership for the remainder of the paid term. I ended up with in-store credit for a buck or so more than the difference.
Anyway, a company that had previously provided me exceptional service (for example resolving issues with a fraudulent 3rd-party seller) has really let me down this past little bit. With the negative reviews for the Kindle Fire and now this incident, I (hyperbolically) wonder whether this is the beginning of the decline of Amazon (not as a corporate behemoth, but as a 'good' company that cares for its customers)?
"The only idea that came up was to plead your case to [email protected] (Jeff Bezos’s email address), with plenty of detail including the reason my account might have been banned."
If that gets no response I would fax to that department.
If still no response fedex copies of the above two attempts to Bezos or some high up VP. At some point someone will take notice.
If not it will make a good story during the holiday season. I've had good luck with holiday and event specific interest by the media. Timing is everything.
If it were me, after trying the above, I would package the story and send it all over actually.
Edit: When you send to the media make sure to package with choice HN comments to, um, make their job easier.
What makes this story extra silly is the fact that so many non-Amazon APIs have banned (either temporarily or in some cases permanently) the entire block of AWS IPs because of a few bad actors who have abused APIs from AWS instances.
You'd think Amazon of all companies would be hip to the dangers of assuming that everyone behind a certain IP block is the same person, but I guess not.
The scariest part of all of this is that they can tell which physical computer you log in from.
Sounds like a business opportunity: a proxy not only for your IP address, but for your browser / cookies / history / operating system. I look forward to the day when all billion of us appear to be arriving from the same place.
Expecting unique client machine/network profiles for each seller account seems fundamentally incompatible with a web-based access model. Then again, maybe it's merely incompatible with a Good web-based access model.
Modest proposal: Distribute smart cards and readers to sellers, and use mutual-auth TLS for everything. Or offer this as an option to anyone willing to pay $xxx for their initial sign-up fee.
Why would you want that? It seems like both Amazon and the user come out ahead. Anyway you could just use a whitelist for cookies and set your user-agent string to something really generic.
They did more or less say why: that their algorithms determined he was a dupe account of another banned seller. Presumably they don't want to give more details so people who really are making illicit duplicate accounts can't use the data to tune their avoidance strategies. But if there are false-positives, that's definitely super-frustrating.
Terrible. I've been thinking about selling a few items on Amazon but now I'm wary. Thanks for sharing your story, I hope you can somehow get your situation resolved.
I've acquired a growing distrust of Amazon's seller accounts in the past year. For a while, I was making my rent on used books I'd acquired over the years. However, I found Amazon was more likely to side on the buyer side, even when there was a preponderance of evidence that I had done nothing wrong. So, Amazon closing a person's account and giving no reason is right up their alley.
" There was a listing on Amazon.com for the X220 with a couple of other used listings, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. I listed it Sunday night for $725."
I am not sure if the author means there was a listing for 'the X220' or 'a similar X220'. Whatever the case, it is really appalling that big internet companies refuse to treat their users like how they wish to be treated.
However, I have had only very excellent experiences with Amazon customer care. Maybe they value customers more than suppliers?
Unlike eBay or craigslist, items on Amazon are listed under fixed, pre-existing products, with variations (in condition, included accessories, etc.) noted in its comments field. On a baseline seller account, it's not even possible to create a listing for a new item that doesn't already exist on Amazon.com.
So I found an X220 listing with different specs, and noted the specs of mine in the comments. The other two used listings had done the same.
Sounds like the old suppliers' adage about WalMart applies here: "Not doing business with WalMart is awaiting death. Doing business with WalMart is inviting death."
"Amazon.com staff — seriously, just look at this from the customer’s point of view, and try to tell me this is a customer friendly process."
I don't believe Amazon views any seller, let alone someone selling used items occasionally, as a customer. The buyer is their customer. 3rd party sellers are mostly interchangeable. If you are a professional seller with enough volume however, you have a direct human account rep who can at least provide more insight into processes such as this.
My experience with them. First they close your account, than they keep your money for six months (you agreed to such terms). Few months down the road, Amazon will start selling the product you were selling themselves.
Companies like this are turning the world further into a Kafkaesque nightmare every day. In this case there isn't even a labyrinth of bureaucracy to navigate as last resort, it is a permanent action and they're unable to even tell you why.
The only thing that works is getting a lot of attention behind you in the media on a site like this, it appears. I don't like this at all. It also reminds me very much of that recent Paypal "fraud detection" mess-up.
[+] [-] solson|14 years ago|reply
Two internet merchants in the same family. Both have separate businesses, separate tax IDs, separate locations, etc. One family member is older and needs a lot of help with IT stuff. The younger family member comes over on the weekend to help with network/computer problems and happens to login and check their orders. Amazon sends an email to both of them demanding that one of the accounts be immediately closed or they will both be terminated. Again, they tried everything to get a human being to listen. No help from Amazon. The older family member closed his account and lost 50% of his revenues because he felt responsible for the entire situation. The younger seller 's account remained open. It was extremely heavy handed.
I have close relationships with both of these people and I am 100% sure neither of them are involved in any fraud.
[+] [-] DEinspanjer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akavlie|14 years ago|reply
A partial victory, but it's still not really satisfying. Had I not taken the effort to blog about this, and gotten lucky by hitting the top spot on Hacker News, I don't think Amazon would have reinstated my account.
[+] [-] larrys|14 years ago|reply
After all they did say:
"Further correspondence regarding the closure of your selling account may not be answered. The closure of this account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well."
I would still consider doing the PR angle with this ending as the story hook. You went to all the effort of doing a blog post and you got everyone talking about it here. It would be unfortunate if this wasn't able to result in some reasonable systemic change to the Amazon practice.
[+] [-] daenz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nvictor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] algoshift|14 years ago|reply
One argument is that they have to deal with so much fraud that they have no choice but to be somewhat pragmatic and, yes, totalitarian about it. The counter argument to this is that if your company is so big that you have to hurt honest customers because you can't afford to do it right, well, maybe you are too big. I've red about cases where an individual's only source of income was summarily cutoff overnight with no recourse whatsoever. That's plain wrong.
[+] [-] khill|14 years ago|reply
Sellers and buyers would both benefit from "small company" levels of customer service. However, marketplaces run by smaller or newer companies don't have the same perceived levels of trust and security as the bigger, more established marketplaces.
I know it's only a matter of perception but, in this case, perception is reality in terms of buyer comfort.
[+] [-] VladRussian|14 years ago|reply
it is doesn't matter internet or B&M as [quasi]monopoly is a monopoly. Just imagine how it would feel if your electric/gas company decided to "close your account forever". Because of such great power they weild, they are regulated as public utilities. The platforms you mentioned are formally not yet there [mostly i think because the standard metric of what monopoly on the Internet is hasn't been yet determined], so they allow themselves all kind of behavior that is no-no in the other well established areas of business.
[+] [-] jrockway|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blake8086|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|14 years ago|reply
So you guys are saying if she logs on to her account from my computer suddenly neither one of us can sell on Amazon ever again?
Does this seem a little draconian to anybody besides me? Random rules -- no doubt put in place for good reasons to prevent fraud -- haphazardly applied to people and resulting in a lifetime ban from being a seller?
I have no problem with Amazon running a clean shop. In fact, I wish they'd do more to make it that way. What I have a problem with is systems of rules that are put up without any feedback mechanism in place. So instead of some real, live person listening to complaints and eventually coming to an understanding that this is totally whacked, thousands get dumped in the trash can until somebody finally manages to make a public relations case out of it? Completely unsatisfactory.
This is just poor systems design, Amazon. This is exactly the same systems problem many are having with PayPal, and for exactly the same reason. Be as strict as you like, but always include the possibility that you might be wrong. Because if you have no self-correction mechanisms, people aren't going to like you much. I know I just started thinking very carefully about my relationship with Amazon. I'm sure a lot of other folks did too.
[+] [-] larrys|14 years ago|reply
We regularly get fraud orders and we follow a certain procedure to yank those but you can call us or email us and you will get a response.
We are actually very interested in knowing whether we've made a mistake so we can refine the process further. (As PG said he wants to know the future success of companies YC rejected for the same reason.)
[+] [-] sbochins|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|14 years ago|reply
Well, you're both private parties entering into a contract on "mutually agreed" terms, so you get what you sign up for.
Of course, where there's such an imbalance in size and power, it's unlikely that the mutually agreed upon terms are going to be anything but unfavorable to you, the little guy, so your only real option is to simply not play the game.
[+] [-] aaronf|14 years ago|reply
Here's the key to getting these issues resolved: 1) Always use phone support, not email support. Email support will almost always paste the easiest reply - it may as well be automated. Phone support gets you a a real human being on the phone who will actually listen and understand what's going on. 2) Keep escalating. If they deny your appeal, appeal again. There is absolutely no consistency in how they handle these situations. One person may say there's nothing that can be done, the next will push a button and instantly make the problem go away. And the more you annoy them, the more it's worth their while to actually look at and resolve your problem.
Good luck.
[+] [-] kjurka|14 years ago|reply
So depending on where you've managed your account from, you might be associated with all sorts of unsavory characters.
[+] [-] kokey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xer0|14 years ago|reply
Amazon, Google et al. have discovered that millions of ears of corn will line up to be harvested. Virtually none leaves voluntarily.
Welcome to the produce section.
[+] [-] alttag|14 years ago|reply
I don't know what's going on, but in the past three months I've had several issues and complaints requiring customer service intervention. The most recent of which was when I signed up for Amazon Student with time remaining on my paid (full price) Prime membership.
My Prime was cancelled without warning (more likely, simply overwritten by Student), which downgraded my privileges on their site (no more Prime video, for example). The service rep was unable to simply cancel student and reinstate my Prime membership for the remainder of the paid term. I ended up with in-store credit for a buck or so more than the difference.
Anyway, a company that had previously provided me exceptional service (for example resolving issues with a fraudulent 3rd-party seller) has really let me down this past little bit. With the negative reviews for the Kindle Fire and now this incident, I (hyperbolically) wonder whether this is the beginning of the decline of Amazon (not as a corporate behemoth, but as a 'good' company that cares for its customers)?
[+] [-] larrys|14 years ago|reply
I would write to PR at amazon [email protected].
If that gets no response I would fax to that department.
If still no response fedex copies of the above two attempts to Bezos or some high up VP. At some point someone will take notice.
If not it will make a good story during the holiday season. I've had good luck with holiday and event specific interest by the media. Timing is everything.
If it were me, after trying the above, I would package the story and send it all over actually.
Edit: When you send to the media make sure to package with choice HN comments to, um, make their job easier.
[+] [-] georgemcbay|14 years ago|reply
You'd think Amazon of all companies would be hip to the dangers of assuming that everyone behind a certain IP block is the same person, but I guess not.
[+] [-] edw519|14 years ago|reply
Sounds like a business opportunity: a proxy not only for your IP address, but for your browser / cookies / history / operating system. I look forward to the day when all billion of us appear to be arriving from the same place.
[+] [-] feralchimp|14 years ago|reply
Modest proposal: Distribute smart cards and readers to sellers, and use mutual-auth TLS for everything. Or offer this as an option to anyone willing to pay $xxx for their initial sign-up fee.
[+] [-] freehunter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gus_massa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] maximusprime|14 years ago|reply
Yeah nothing bad could happen there could it rolleyes
[+] [-] tuananh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _delirium|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaitari|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Drakeman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|14 years ago|reply
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
[+] [-] OoTheNigerian|14 years ago|reply
I am not sure if the author means there was a listing for 'the X220' or 'a similar X220'. Whatever the case, it is really appalling that big internet companies refuse to treat their users like how they wish to be treated.
However, I have had only very excellent experiences with Amazon customer care. Maybe they value customers more than suppliers?
[+] [-] akavlie|14 years ago|reply
So I found an X220 listing with different specs, and noted the specs of mine in the comments. The other two used listings had done the same.
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benvanderbeek|14 years ago|reply
I don't believe Amazon views any seller, let alone someone selling used items occasionally, as a customer. The buyer is their customer. 3rd party sellers are mostly interchangeable. If you are a professional seller with enough volume however, you have a direct human account rep who can at least provide more insight into processes such as this.
[+] [-] revscat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rshm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
The only thing that works is getting a lot of attention behind you in the media on a site like this, it appears. I don't like this at all. It also reminds me very much of that recent Paypal "fraud detection" mess-up.