Amazon sellers say online retail giant is trying to help itself, not consumers

washingtonpost.com

9 points·ikeboy··4 comments

I used to sell products on Amazon a decade ago and they were still pulling the same tricks.

I would sell products that had absolutely no listings in for months (I was the first one). Within a week or two, a listing would popup for Amazon at a cheaper cost and I would instantly lose sales...until they were gone for good.

I also still can't figure out why I was banned forever (I still can't create a seller account to this day and nobody at Amazon will help me) because of one customer complaint (I had 100% feedback before this). Yet, there are counterfeiters from China and India that continue to sell their goods on Amazon with impunity.

It's also pretty scary that as a seller, Amazon can and just use your selling data to compete against you and most likely always get a cheaper rate than you because they have deeper pockets.

Selling on Amazon may bring you some temporary cash, but will destroy your business in the long-run.

Amazon is a profit driven business beholden to investors. Is this something that is not fully understood by people in general?

Bewilderingly, many people believe in and have expectations of genuine corporate social responsibility, and view profit-incentive interpretations of public relations as cynical. Arguably, if this were not the case, much of PR as practised would be ineffective.

Yes, absolutely. Most people simply cannot understand true sociopathy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com