Does Amazon.Com Steal from Private Business?
As the largest online retailer in the world, I thought I
could trust Amazon.com-not only with my inventory but with my business. After
careful consideration with my business partner and a few months of research, we
knew we wanted to start our e-commerce business with Amazon for a few reasons.
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| www.poetsandquants.com |
Our first reason was Amazon’s commonality and popularity
amongst retailers. People know Amazon like they know Google. In fact, no one
hardly says, “I’ll search on line.” Instead they say, “I’ll Google it.” Similarly,
Amazon.com is a popular and common place to buy online.
Our second reason was visibility. We could have constructed
our own website, but with having a new startup and building a brand from
conception meant that we would not likely get enough online traffic. Frankly,
no one knew our company or had ever heard of us so we wanted a platform that
would give us visibility.
Our third reason was convenience. Amazon.com offers
businesses shipping and handling. One ships its items to an Amazon warehouse
and Amazon will ship the items to the buyers and even handle any returned
merchandise.
Here we are, almost 3 months later and we still do not have
our highly visible and common Amazon market place . However, 3 months ago, we
did our due diligence. We called to check upon the status of our items every
week and to know why they were not online. Did our items get delivered to the
warehouse? Yes.
But then we got the news that no business owner wants to
hear: your items are missing. Missing?!
How can they be missing when they were delivered? Since Amazon.com did not have
that answer, we were put under pending investigation, which meant, we had to
keep calling them because outside of speaking to an Amazon.com agent on the
phone, we only received automated emails.
We were very frustrated as you can imagine. Our first
business was sitting somewhere for no one to see, not making any money- a
complete violation to the first rule of business. Further, since our
merchandise was seasonal for summer, time was just ticking away from in season
to out of season. We were certain that by the time Amazon got it together,
consumers will have moved on to a style more contemporary.
At the one and half month point, we had nothing- no online
space, no hyperlink- and the news got worse. We were then told that two of the
warehouse workers were caught on camera stealing our merchandise. We were very upset yes, but temporary relief
set in. At least we knew our merchandise have a home and we can start the
reimbursement process; process being the operative word.
The process of speaking to Amazon as a seller is a
monotonous one. You start by calling their 1-888 number also known as the
number to the front door. This number is not a direct number that designates
your relationship or the purpose of your call as a buyer or a seller or a prime
membership member. This number just calls Amazon and next you listen to the
automated operator. Then afterwards you get to speak to an agent to verify your
information. Only after about five to six minutes are you transferred to the
correct department. But this happens every single time we called to get an
update on our inventory. So you can imagine our level of frustration going on
for 3 months now.
As you can imagine, Amazon is still charging us its monthly
fee for work that it is not doing so we are livid. Finally we call back and get
more bad news: your items have been found. To our disbelief of this new
information that contradicts the Amazon thievery from the previous month, the
Agent assured us that he will send us photos of our items in the warehouse but
we have yet to receive them. It has been 1 week and counting.
I reached out to other entrepreneurs and business owners and
some of them recounted their horror stories with Amazon.com. Not only have others
experienced theft, but damaged items as well. When I asked about recourse, they
said it took a long time because Amazon likes to work on its own time. Imagine
that.
Is my entrepreneurial spirit dampened? A little bit. Amazon
has been so unprofessional in our business dealings. They have charged us to
lose money. We have no virtual market place as promised by Amazon and frankly,
we are not even sure if they still have our items.
So while we wait to figure out what our next move with
Amazon is concerning our merchandise, we have researched and found other online
market spaces where business owners can do business.
In no special order:
These are just to name a few but check out this list of 20
e-commerce shops here. Make sure to do some research about the market space and
find out the pros and the cons from people both buyers and sellers that have
used the service.
We are so done with Amazon.com.
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