erichbergen

Well, I heard Amazon.com was horrible to their sellers, but I thought I would give it a try.

I am going through and getting rid of some of my DVD collection. I put it up on Amazon.com 3 days ago. Within 48 hours, alot of it had sold. Almost 25 orders. All of them sitting right here next to me, ready to ship out t'mow. Yet, I wake up this morning with an email from Amazon saying:

Hello from Amazon.com.

This message is to inform you that we have blocked your selling account. Your open listings have been cancelled and you may no longer sell on our site.

We took this action because it has come to our attention that this account is related to an account which has been previously blocked for violations of our policies.

While we do not provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, we have thoroughly reviewed our records and confirmed that we have significant evidence that this account is related to another account previously closed for policy violations.

If you still have items to ship, please take appropriate steps to resolve your pending sales. Your Seller Account will remain accessible and you are encouraged to refund or ship pending orders.

Your funds are being reserved in your Amazon.com account for up to 90 days from the date of your final sale. After 90 days, the funds will be disbursed minus any A-to-Z Guarantee claims or charge-backs. It is possible to expedite the release of these funds by providing sufficient proof of delivery and/or shipment for your orders to [email protected]. The order number should be included for each order you are providing this information about. If you have further questions about your disbursement, please email [email protected].

While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

Regards,

Alliance Program
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com

Well, I have never sold on Amazon before, I don't have another account there, and have no clue why they think that. Can anyone help me as to how to approach this? What can I say or do? Who do I contact?

And to anyone that asks why would you want to go back with them? Simply, if I can get that many orders in 48 hours, it's hard to beat that.

Pizza

Now, that would annoy the hell out of me. Do you have anyone else living with you that has sold on Amazon? Maybe someone else in your family? Or, is the email some kind of phishing scheme? I would call them up as I would assume someone can look up your account and give you some solid answers.

StealthStratos

I would assume you were flagged either by physical address or IP address. Anyone else in your household who would have had an account? Anything about your address that would cause you to be confused with someone else, such as a duplex/shared house, or did you recently move to that address?

erichbergen

No I have been at my address for 15 years. It's just me in here and always has been. Could I have someone's IP address? Is that even possible?

Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

they could have blocked a range of IP addresses that you happen to fall into

SI78

Are you on AOL? Don't they give out the same IP to multiple users?

DVD Polizei

Email Amazon and tell them THEY can contact the buyers since THEY made such a wise decision.

hindolio

as a general rule, i have read that amazon will block sellers temporarily under a few circumstances. selling a large quantity in a short period of time all of a sudden and selling multiples of large dollar amount items at once come to mind as examples. but ive never heard of amazon completely blocking a seller completely for the above. weird.

email them politely and try to resolve the situation in a professional manner. if you are on the right, im sure they will take into account reason

FusionX

I sold 54 items in 48 hours, no problems whatsoever. The fees are high, but I started on Amazon once EBAY announced the "improvements."

Peep

Sounds like they are worried that a new seller is selling so much.

CaptainMarvel

eBay pulled this same nonsense on me. They said my account was "linked" to another account that owed them money, but they wouldn't tell me any information on the other account because of "privacy concerns."

They were kind enough to do it while I had transactions running too, so all my buyers who had paid saw the "Not a registered user" tag and freaked the hell out.

Living Dead

Did you get it resolved, or do they just ignore any complaints that they've made a mistake?

CaptainMarvel

If you're talking to me, they fixed it after 4 or so weeks of me e-mailing them. I'd send an e-mail, they'd say "sorry, the decision is final", I'd send another e-mail, etc.

I finally decided eBay was maybe missing the obvious. My account had been hacked a few years back (there was a thread about it here at DVDTalk where a bunch of our accounts got hacked by people selling hundreds of pairs of shoes or other nonsense). The intruder had changed all my personal settings and contact information; once eBay restored my account (which they were incredibly quick about, to be fair), I changed those settings back.

When eBay accused me of having another account linked to mine, I was initially operating under the assumption that eBay would have notes that the hacking had happened, and that surely they couldn't be basing their accusation on information changed while my account was hacked.

Just on a lark, right before I was about to switch to mailing actual letters to eBay's head honchos, I sent an e-mail that basically said "You guys are aware my account was hacked a year or so ago, right?" A day or two later, they admitted they made a mistake and restored my account, although at that point the buyers for my auctions had long since moved on and didn't leave feedback.

I've been so gunshy about the incident that I'm reluctant to list there again. With these new changes upcoming, I probably won't.

sideshow23bob

Wow, nearly the exact same thing happened to me, though it was after 1 month(i think it was my address as I live in a rental), does anybody have recommendations on being able to sell on Amazon now. I have a bit of inventory(DVDs mostly) I'm looking to offload.
How can I get a bank account that won't be related to me to be able to transfer funds to? Thanks

sideshow23bob

bump, no advice for reopening an Amazon Seller Account somehow? either with same account or new account

lotsofdvds

Same thing happened to me at Amazon a couple months ago. Same exact email, basically saying "oh we have proof, we just can't tell you what it is". I sent them an email a day for a month, never got a response.

ginger

I've been a Marketplace Seller on Amazon for about 8 years. Between my boyfriend and I somewhere about 60,000 transactions with 96% positive feedback. That's pretty good.

During an inventory move, I couldn't find a few books that got shifted and refunded. Mostly small, probably totaled about $60 of merchandise. Amazon froze my funds and then informed me that my account was terminated.

I tried to talk to Seller Support. I wrote them an explanation, etc. Tried to work with them. But each time they would send me
"after very careful consideration" you are still permanently terminated. Please keep in mind this is forever."

....After a couple of weeks I thought this is the universe's way that I shouldn't be sliding books in envelops for Amazon any longer that the good Lord was tapping on my shoulder with bigger things...(an arc maybe?).

So I took 2,000 of my books and listed them on Craigslist. i got a couple low ball offers from Amazon sellers, then got a similar offer from a construction worker who needed to earn some additional income. I told him I would teach him how to sell on Amazon.

I helped him open an account, hook up to his bank account, list a couple of sample items and wished him well.

I am not a partner with him. Never was. I am not involved with him, I am not related to him, I don't participate in these sales. He purchased my books from Craigslist.

Within a few hours of opening his account, Amazon, blocked his account for 90 days and won't allow him to sell.

I just wanted to take a moment to salute, Amazon's incredible sleuthing skills. Not only have they blocked a struggling poet. Hindered a hardworking honest man from an opportunity for a 2nd income. But no matter what...darn that inventory of 2000 rare and hard to find books, just can not cross their threshold.

I've tried to relax during this whole thing. Somewhere at the vortex of this is some 26 year old eager Barney Fife kid that's trying to create drama where there is none...As a great movie once said..

"Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain..." or something similar.

When I was a management consultant, we use to say, "Here, let me hold the bullets, so you can reload and shoot yourself in the other foot."

2 Sellers with potential that only wanted to sell..

If only the Alliance Department would talk directly, they can figure out the good and bad. Maybe they don't have humanoids in the department?

Animals for my Arc, please email. Looking for male pomeranian.

Meanwhile Amazon has been successfully privileged to take away a lot of business from bookstores, publishers, authors, and great market share in many media and products. Perhaps their clout is going to their head. Check out Overstock. They're now at least 5% under Amazon with a huge inventory of everything you could want.

Needless to say, they lost me as their loyal customer.

Sincerely,

Ginger

beesonosu

Funny post ginger. I'd buy from you! Ah, that's right, I only buy from Ama...

big whoppa

25 orders in 48 hours? Damn, that's good. It's a good week if I sell one or two things there.

dx23

I thought I was the only one having problems. Two weeks ago I recieved an email from Amazon stating the same thing you mention above: account terminated, Please keep in mind this is forever. I have perfect feedback (over 160 perfect) and only had problems with 2 transactions in the past 6 month were the buyer had filed a complaint. Suddenly, I recieved that email and I thought that it was some phishing scheme, so I didn't pay attention to it. Then last week, I check my seller account and see that they have taken out all my listings and frozen the payments made to my account. I blasted an email wanting an explanation and then suddenly, without any apologies or anything, the sent me an email stating that I can sell again.

Also,a friend of mine wanted to sell his Wii and Mario Kart and the amazon.com system sent him a message stating that only pre-approved sellers could sell video games and systems and that they are not accepting any more sellers at this time. Does anyone know what the heck is going at amazon?

foxdvd

something tells me that a few of your books are blacklisted or banned....

behzaad

Amazon considers the SAME inventory between accounts as well. Be careful about that also.

OmahaStar

Well that was certainly worthy of registering just to bump a two year old thread.

islandclaws

Seriously. Why do some n00bs do that? The OP is probably dead by now.

d2cheer

Funny I didn't even realize that this was an old thread and came to comment about my situation. I opened a Market Place account last year and sold about 50-60 old and rare CD's in about 3 days and didn't have this problem. Maybe it was a phase they went through?