[II] Amazon’s “coercion” and “betrayal”

This figure is undoubtedly very attractive for any company that wants to expand its business into the cross-border e-commerce circle.

If you want to choose a platform as the starting point for entering the cross-border circle, I believe most people would choose Amazon first. After all, it is the industry leader, and its founder Jeff Bezos has been at the top of the Forbes rankings for many years. Is there any more effective endorsement than this?

How many people entered Amazon after seeing the stories of “ explosive orders ” and “ getting rich quickly ” around them?

How many people have stepped in only to find out that it’s not so easy to make money on Amazon?

In the previous article, we talked about some stories of sellers who went bankrupt overnight on Amazon and witnessed the "horror" of consumers on the platform. In this episode, let's talk about the " evil deeds " of the Amazon platform itself .

First of all, even if we sell products on Amazon as a third-party seller, we cannot fully control our own pricing. Amazon’s previous terms of service clearly stated that the price of products sold by sellers on Amazon must not be higher than any other platform.

Amazon’s “ patrol team ” comes out to conduct raids every day, and once they discover that your product is priced higher than other websites’ prices, they will “ deprive ” you of your sales rights .

Although Amazon later lifted this restriction due to antitrust review , some sellers still said that if Amazon found that their prices were higher than other platforms, it would secretly reduce the popularity of their products.

In addition, a seller friend shared his experience with me.

He sold one of his high-profit products at a discount during a promotion. After the promotion, he wanted to adjust the product price back to the original price, but Amazon did not allow him to do so. In the end, he could only sell the product at a price close to cost , and now this product basically cannot bring him any profit.

In addition to "forcing" sellers to lower product prices , Amazon also "forces" sellers with good sales to become suppliers .

A seller who encountered this situation shared his story:

Initially, the seller's company made mobile phone holders. He supplied accessories to Amazon at wholesale prices, and then sold the products to consumers on the platform at retail prices. After long-term and stable cooperation, Amazon has become an indispensable part of this company's business.

When everything was going in the right direction, an email from Amazon was like a bucket of cold water, pouring cold water on the seller and his company.

The email said:

Amazon focuses on the customer experience and your brand has opportunities for improvement, which can be achieved by moving your entire business to Vendor Central, therefore, we have decided to sell your products exclusively to Amazon and your existing Seller Central account will be closed within 30 days of receiving this email.

This means that this seller will no longer be able to sell goods to consumers on Amazon as a third-party seller, including controlling the selling price of goods, conducting price promotions, obtaining more data about product performance or consumers, etc. In the future, he can only sell products to Amazon at wholesale prices , and then Amazon will sell them.

Although we have always known that Amazon's own stores are the " own sons " of the platform, it is indeed too much to "feed" its own stores by exploiting the blood and sweat of sellers. Moreover, this is not the first time that Amazon has done such a thing. " Copying sellers' best-selling products and selling them with self-operated labels " or " stepping on the traffic of a number of well-known brands to push unknown self-operated brands to the top of BSR ." Amazon often does these operations. Even if there is an antitrust review and being named by the government, Amazon may restrain itself on the surface, but it is still hard to guard against in private, and sellers still have no way to deal with it.

Later, after suffering from " exploitation ", the seller chose not to sell his products directly to Amazon anymore, but instead found a distributor to sell them. The two parties also signed more appropriate contract terms, but obviously, Amazon did not intend to let him go.

Not long after, Amazon notified the seller again that it prohibited its distributors from selling his products on Amazon. Finally, in September last year, the seller completely ended his three-year partnership with Amazon.

Amazon’s “evil deeds” against sellers include not only “ coercion ” but also “ betrayal ”. But this time, the mastermind turned out to be an internal employee of Amazon, and the platform only said lightly “ ineffective supervision ”.

Some time ago, there was a lot of controversy over an Amazon employee stealing sellers’ data to open a store. However, in the eyes of veteran sellers, this is nothing new. Before this, there had already been a “ scandal ” in which an Amazon employee sold sellers’ data.

This is the price of Amazon accounts on the black market

Some unscrupulous sellers will purchase Vendor Central accounts on the black market to access other sellers’ listings. Because VC accounts allow suppliers to edit other sellers’ listings, these unscrupulous sellers take advantage of this to “ sabotage ” other similar sellers and engage in malicious competition.

Not only that, Amazon also uses third-party data to operate its own brands. Although Amazon has a policy that explicitly prohibits employees from using the data of specific sellers to help increase their sales, as Bezos said in a public statement: " I can't guarantee that anyone will violate this policy ."

For many veteran Amazon sellers, being “oppressed” may have become commonplace , because everyone knows that on Amazon, the dominance of “ that man ” is unshakable, and they also know that for Amazon, third-party sellers have never been their top priority .

As for new sellers, it is a good thing to see this " truth " earlier and adjust sales strategies in time to avoid being left with no way out when being exploited by the platform.

After reading this, as an Amazon seller, do you also recall the Amazon " shameless operations " you have encountered? Welcome to leave a message in the background to discuss , or directly add Uncle Mai's personal WeChat to communicate and confide .