JeffTheAlpaca

I can't list the game of thrones season 1 blu-ray (George Bush footage) and Water for Elephants DVD.

I don't to sell game of thrones for $20 for some loser at Craigslist since all the people at craiglist are cheap bastards.

mickey65

Apparently it's mostly HBO shows/movies, A bunch of Disney (not all), and Warner movies. I have a bunch of DVDs listed on Amazon, but the ones I can't sell, I just dump on eBay to sell for a few bucks.

Randy Miller III

I haven't attempted to sell anything on Amazon for months and I'm considering listing some things over on Half.com (eBay, however, I'm pretty much done with). I wonder if Amazon realizes how much easy income they're losing with this stupid policy! Sure, they're missing out on a few "new" sales, but there's also no extra work on their part: most sellers ship and pack the items themselves!

mhinrichs

It looks like Half.com (which is owned by Ebay) is putting restrictions on sellers as well, not letting people sell promo items with holes punched in the barcode and such. It's annoying and frustrating. What other options do we have?

I might have to learn to bring more of my stuff to the local used music and movie emporium for store credit.

TheBang

How is that unreasonable or new? Punched promos have been disallowed for a long time by their policy:

http://pages.half.ebay.com/help/policy/pricing.html

The Wayback Machine shows that that change in policy happened sometime in 2007:

http://web.archive.org/web/200709210...y/pricing.html

That'sAllFolks

Amazon allows you to list new items with slashes or punchouts as "Like New".

I've always thought there was too much difference between "Like New' and "Very Good". Perhaps an intermediate rating or loosen the "Like New" to "Near Mint" or something like that. Last I talked to ebay about this you could list punchouts or slashed items as new as long as you specified it in the desc. But I've also heard they are starting to put more restrictions on the conditon. I did have a blu-ray listing terminated because I said "no slip cover". I could never get eBay to admit that that was a legitimate thing and was just giving the buyer more info. Half also terminated a listing because I mentioned that the cover art changed. They also would not back down or be reasonable about it. I just stopped giving additoinal info and put a generic disclaimer in my listings to prevent anyone who might bitch about slipcovers, etc.

PhantomStranger

These type of services want the buyer as ignorant as possible about the item.

g

I noticed this problem on Amazon has gotten a lot worse. Now many more than ever new releases are blacked out. Before it was only a few lables like Fox or HBO. Now no Disney new releases and I couldn't list even some new shout factory or Image releases as well. A lot of Warner and Paramount new releases are locked out as well. I noticed Deepdiscount and moviemars can sell them. It is really bad. With Disney they are restricting quite a bit. The muppet show tv seasons couldnt be listed and they aren't recent releases.

zyzzle

Solution: Just do your selling business elsewhere. It's clear which side Amazon is on, so speak with your wallet and refuse to sell your merchandise there. Probably Amazon's being in bed with the studios gets them kickbacks or worse.

Adboy151

Besides the blackout of items, I think the basic shipping rate of $3.99 on media is driving third-party shoppers away.

I had about a half dozen discs up at Amazon since the first of the year and not a nibble. Moved those same items over to ebay (same price, fair shipping cost) 85% sold in the first two days and all items gone in about five days.

Vipper II

I think Disney is just an asshole when it comes to their titles.

PhantomStranger

Both the studios and Amazon want to sell as many copies as they can at inflated retail pricing. The used copies were simply driving down prices too fast on new copies. I assume by allowing official distributors like Deepdiscount to sell copies, Amazon sidesteps having to answer FTC questions about market fairness when they block individual sellers.
That shipping charge on Amazon is outrageous and was mostly a way for Amazon to increase their net fees on a third-party sale. It's definitely hurt third-party sales on Amazon, most of the sellers there also sell on other websites that charge a more normal fee for shipping. I bypass Amazon whenever I can now.

zyzzle

This x1000. Amazon made a grievous and unpardonable blunder when it increased shipping to $3.99 per media item. Adding salt to the wound, they refuse to offer a shipping discount when more than one DVD is ordered from a marketplace seller. All in the "great" business move of adding $1 more of *pure profit* to their coffers from each marketplace DVD sale. That's skimmed off the top, a pure gravy train for Amazon. Disgusting.

I used to buy 20 or 30 DVDs from marketplace sellers per year. I haven't bought a single one since the outrageous $3.99 shipping charge was implemented.

BuckNaked2k

Now we see in today's notice what this was all about. This was step one in cutting out the smaller sellers to placate the massive companies who sell on Amazon. They must have been crying a river to Amazon to change their policies, and Amazon had now fully rolled over.

littlewarhola

I had no idea! All of this is just so ridiculous!

PhantomStranger

My earlier words ended up being very prophetic. This is the next step in eliminating Amazon's marketplace and almost certainly will result in third-party sellers abandoning Amazon. People are missing the forest for the trees. This will eventually affect the power sellers as much as individual sellers. Amazon doesn't want their competition directly undercutting them. It will be virtually impossible now for third-party sellers to sell new releases at costs below Amazon.

BuckNaked2k

To me, this makes very little business sense. When you can take a cut of your competitors' sales without having to touch a single aspect of the supply chain (order, receipt, warehouse, fulfillment, shipping, damage, returns, etc.), you have a pretty darn good business model, IMHO.

PhantomStranger

It's about Amazon's vision for their future business model. They are planning for the death of physical media and hoping to have an Apple-like ecosystem around Amazon digital goods. Amazon eyes Apple's fat margins with lust in their eyes.