Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless

Amazon fits every definition of a monopoly considering they have >50% market share, tyrannical control of the supply-chain in which they can flex their muscles with no repercussions and life-and-death control over sellers.

I think the most interesting thing here is that Amazon can effectively claim a seller's property is fake based on reviews that everyone knows are regularly gamed. Then they can refuse access to the inventory and make the claim, without having to provide any evidence, that the questionable inventory has in fact been destroyed and not just passed on to another seller behind the scenes.

Accountability is entirely absent here. On the seller side and on Amazon's side.

The fact that Amazon had physical control of the questionable merchandise and had no obligation to retain a small sample that would be useful for the owner to defend himself on the challenge of it's authenticity or for Amazon to demonstrate that it was counterfeit is troubling.

I don't have a problem with counterfeit merchandise being identified as fake. I think it is extreme to destroy it all. The existence of eBay, Harbor Freight, Walmart, and Amazon are proof that people will pay for inferior products that look like the originals but are not as durable or beautiful. Once a counterfeit is identified it should be relabeled for sale at a discount since it is a fake. Just like art.

The issue is due process which is missing

I fully believe this, and feel terrible for this seller, having had a similar experience.

For nearly a decade I ran a successful side hustle on Amazon from something that was just making beer money to making more than my day job (grew to $6.5 million/yr in sales at it's peak) and ran into the same thing earlier this summer.

Competitors attacking listings with false claims to try and shut your account, or listing down was a regular occurance(search for false 'used sold as new' -- the old version of this), and a headache that could be addressed although it often would take at least a weeks worth of effort and fights with the automated systems. This last series of attacks -- also counterfeit claims in my case -- no such luck -- the process has changed, the invoices from the same suppliers and letters of authorization from the manufacturer not accepted.

As it stands I am waiting on them to destroy roughly $120,000k in inventory that they refuse to release. Maybe more because their inventory tracking is garbage and it's not uncommon for items to be lost for months in their warehouse only to magically reappear... The tracking and inconsistent handling of returns is such a mess I can't exactly tell as anyone using FBA at volume just has to accept there will be variance between their known inventory and what Amazon says you have...

Fortunately, the market I targeted was heavily impacted by COVID so outside of a modest push associated with the back to school season I dodged a bullet as I essentially shut down on the 'buy side' when that all flared up and focused on getting back to cash.

I'm also lucky that I started scaling things back and looking to build out other channels about this time last year when they and WalMart started just automatically price matching one another, including prices from their respective 3rd party sellers, driving prices into the ground -- even below wholesale in some cases.

Amusingly, they have noticed I stopped sending new inventory in and some of their listings are now going unfilled and call at least once a week trying to get me back. (Amazon benefits tremendously from not tying up their cash on inventory and using 3rd party sellers to keep their stock.) When I tell them I'm willing to come back once they help me resolve this issues w/ a real person or even go and physically inspect the inventory they have impounded they go silent.

I thank them for helping to accelerate my long term financial goals, but to be honest, having been free of them for a few months now, the weight of not living in constant fear of jumping through their hoops has drastically improved my quality of life.

The first mistake was dealing with amazon.