Obi-Wanma

I bought a Disney DVD of Bambi a few years back, while it was still "in the vault", and it was a decent fake, but the packaging gave it away. The cover art was too thick and not as glossy as it should be. Plus the case had the DVD's on the front and back of the case, instead of the first disc being on a middle swing, which I had never seen on a Disney DVD before. Probably would've fooled people who aren't avid Disney collectors.

So I called the guy on it, telling him that it was at best a repackage falsely advertised as new, and at worst (and more likely) a fake. Even though he countined to deny any knowledge that he sold me a fake (claiming that they get their DVD's from many different vendors, and he would have to look into those vendors), he immediately offered me a refund including paying for return shipping (presumably so that I wouldn't report him).

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I read that too but I'm not too sure I buy that. Why would a low level CS person at Warner or HBO be somehow more informed than a low level CS person at Amazon? There was also mention that a lot more restrictions started coming up with WB around the time Amazon and WB worked out a deal on letting Amazon stream their stuff.

Only thing thing this whole thing is going to do is start pushing people to other businesses that sell the stuff cheaper, since there's no artificial restrictions. It'll also push sellers back to places like ebay since they need to sell the stuff.

I'm just thinking it's a deal with Amazon and Warner and other companies where Amazon is getting something extra out of the deal for losing the extra cash they get from skimming off the sellers on the marketplace.

BKenn01

5 or 6 years ago there was a couple of guys that managed to duplicate Disney DVD down to the BV stamp. They had Security Seals, etc. They evidently got caught pretty quick but there was a flood of OOP disney vault titles that looked so authentic you couldnt tell. Someone gave me their contact info and after looking at them and going with my "to good to be true" gut I stayed away.

I would say most of these sellers know they are selling bootlegs because most of them probably buy them from Chinese outlets.

foofighters7

Screw Amazon and this bullshit. Whoever at Amazon is responsible for this should be dragged out in the street and shot.
If I have something to sell, who are they to tell me I cannot? Screw them!

I have a mint copy of 'Split Second' that I bought just to resell..can't list it.
I have a sealed copy of 'No Escape' with Ray Liotta...can't list it.
I have a mint copy of 'Last of the Dogmen' can't list it!

WTF is the deal with Amazon?? They have totally went to shit!

BuckNaked2k

Yea, this is really a sick joke. I sold a copy of Following about a month ago, and I went back to relist another copy, but the item is now restricted! There are plenty of other sellers listing the same item right now from feedback of 10 to feedback of 1,000, but I am blocked.

chanster

This is a bunch of baloney. I can't sell a Lincoln Blu Ray I have. But I can trade it in. What the heck? Makes no sense.

Obi-Wanma

You can list it as "Like New" and then put in the description that it is actually new. I've done that before and sold stuff.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

They've also been flagging those and shutting those listing down. In some cases they send an email telling you to stop or they'll shut down your account.

Al_Tahoe

Not on my account.

I get the following message... "**Please note: The item for which you have attempted to create a listing is a restricted item."

After which there is no way to list the item under any condition.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

It also depends on the item. Some items let you do anything but new, others don't let you do it at all.

bunkaroo

Yeah they're basically shutting out people trying to sell used recent releases. I'm done selling there.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

There's old stuff too, like the Everybody Loves Raymond set. Only those few approved sellers can sell it at all.

Al_Tahoe

Yeah, the last one I ran into was the Band of Brothers set... not exactly a recent release.

foofighters7

Once again, I hope Amazon burns!

I hope someone sues them for discrimination.

The fact that some ridiculous sellers are able to sell a restricted item while others cannot sure sounds like discrimination to me!

Amazon has been going downhill for awhile now. With the shipping raise and TERRIBLE Customer Service and Seller support they were already setting themselves up for a drop but the crap they are doing to GOOD, I REPEAT GOOD, Sellers is disgusting!

Amazon = Piece of Shit!

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I'd like to see that too since they'd get laughed out of the courtroom, assuming the judge doesn't just dismiss it when amazon throws out the motion that's it's a bs suit before anyone shows up for court.

People that aren't able to sell certain DVDs at an online store aren't a protected class. At least not the last time I checked.

The main problem I see with Amazon is that they don't have a good name you can twist around on them. Best Buy easily becomes Worst Buy but what can we do against Amazon? They pre-planned for just this event when they were deciding on a name.

Obi-Wanma

What about Shamazon?

foofighters7

I don't agree. If they are offering a service yet discriminating against many by not allowing them to use this service without any posted reason I think it would be looked at by a court and the bad publicity alone would do the trick.

It's not a BS suit by any means. The items that people are trying to sell are being sold by random sellers on Amazon and they have provided no reason as to why the vast majority of sellers (who, like me have 100% feedback) cannot sell an item. These are not items illegal to sell.

What they are doing seems akin to a type of Collusion. Now who the other parties are, I couldn't say, but they themselves like to lie and say it's the production companies.
Who knows!

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

Amazon doesn't have to allow a particular person to sell a particular item. Is it discrimination? Yes. Is it illegal discrimination? No.

If two places offer the same product but Amazon chooses to buy it from one distributor over another, they've discriminated against one of the distributors. It doesn't mean it's illegal.

If you can find something in the marketplace seller agreement that says you can sell any item that Amazon has listed, then you have someplace to go. Unfortunately, that is not the case. They don't have to give a reason why but they do say that they're only allowing certain sellers to sell certain items. When the holiday season comes, not everyone gets to sell toys and games either.

If you had a consignment shop, a physical store, do you think you would be forced to take anything in that was brought to you? Of course not.

Tarantino

lol wut

TheBang

onebyone

I miss being able to sell dvds & blu rays on amazon. These days, about 3/4th of the stuff I want to sell is restricted in some way, and it's not all new stuff either.

I don't want to go back to selling a lot on ebay either, so I don't know what to do. I guess it is time to try out a buy or trade forum somewhere.

zyzzle

Ironic as it is, the glory days of individuals being able to sell things on the 'net for a fair shake, are long behind us... The greed of "big business" has killed off the laizze-faire of selling as an individual. The deck is stacked, and the people running the bank are crooked. There are only so many pieces in the pie of a $10 Blu-Ray. Everybody else but the seller himself has eaten the pie...

Now, we are basically "stuck" with all our media purchases, unless we want an insult low-ball offer from an internet vendor. They've become commodity items, worthless on reseller market, with so many hands in the pie.

I guess it's back to Garage sales for those who want to *try* to make an honest buck... I'm so glad I sold all my vaulable (OOP) DVDs 8 to 10 years ago, when I could average $30 to $40 for most of them.

That'sAllFolks

Very true. It is not illegal and Amazon can do what they want. They may not be criminals, but they are assholes.

Some people use Amazon as their main, if not only, source of selling their items. Suddenly restricting the selling of certain items could put a significant dent in their income. Also, Amazon "suddenly" raising the postage to 3.99 has further decreased sales. They just wanted some reason to raise their referral fee from .80 per transaction to 1.35.

With any other company, I would just think they were making a bad decision. After all, less sales means less commission for Amazon. But Amazon has always been smart. They just don't give a fuck. They are slowly driving some sellers out for whatever reason they have. It is hard to get anything from any CSR that is not total bullshit. On this topic, is there anywhere on the internet where this is being discussed. If you google the info, you get nothing (I assume Amazon is paying off the search engines to suppress the results) and all the Amazon forums are full of shills that totally back up and let Amazon do whatever they want.

/end rant

PhantomStranger

I think more and more people are noticing that Amazon has decided to start abusing their quasi-monopolistic position in the Internet space. Anyone that has been around Internet retail for any length of time can feel the changes.

I don't think Amazon particularly cares, I see them heading more and more in Target's direction as a retailer in the long run. Cater to the upper-income brackets and become the shopping destination for soccer moms across the country.

BKenn01

I would still say there is a lot to the argument that Amazon is tired of competing with Boot Leggers and Thieves. Just look at Ebay, there is no damn way small sellers can legally get new releases that MSRP $59.99 cheap enough to sell for $20 plus free shipping. They are Boot Legs. Same goes with the Bluerays, small sellers cant legally get multiple copies of New Release Blu-ray and sell them cheaper than Amazon with Free shipping. Maybe they just got tired of competing with some of these people.

You also have to account that it could be the studios. Unlike ebay where the studio has no leverage on them, Amazon has to be a cooperative partner because they have business arrangements together.

I hate that it has come to this but I also would love to see those waste of humanity dealing in stolen property and bootleg dvd's to get shut down.

As with any rule, those of us who are innocent pay the price. I have never sold on Amazon, I just never had the time, resources and stock to develop a 2nd market. So hopefully Ebay wont follow this practice.