Hi Guys,

I am an ex-Amazon seller as I decided to close my Amazon store recently after having a truly terrible experience working with them. I came to the conclusion that they do not respect their sellers at all.

I had a fully functioning US store, set up with legal LLC company CPR - Fully compliant etc. I opened a Japanese store to investigate the option of selling into Japan. I immediately got hit with a section 3 which took down both my stores. The reason was "we cannot identify your identity."

It took me 3.5 weeks of daily back and forth, uploading of documents etc before they finally reopened my accounts. I had done absolutely nothing wrong, but Amazon is set up in such a way as to make it EXTREMELY difficult to appeal a section 3. What should have taken 4 minutes, took 4 weeks.

In the time my store was closed:

- Amazon removed my right to sell my 3 most expensive listings. So stock totalling thousands of dollars that I would have sold was immediately stranded and unable to sell.

- 90% of my store's products fell in price below profitability, and had to be sold at a loss.

- Despite not being able to sell, or get a reasonable response from Amazon, they continued to charge their monthly seller fees.

After the above debacle, I decided that there was no future selling on Amazon, so I cut my prices on all my products further and liquidated my stock. I figured it was better to get some money back for all that I had put in.

At this point, Amazon began asking me for a Tax number and threatening to cut my account within 10 days if I didn't produce it. The only way to get this number is to contact a government agency and have them send a physical document via mail - a process which takes up to a month. As a result, I am unable to even receive the money that I paid for my products.

Amazon destroyed my business. They showed zero real interest in helping me to resolve the issue. Then when it came to pay out some of the money that I could get back, despite being a full compliant VAT registered Ltd UK company, I have to enter into a battle with this faceless entity.

Amazon is a monopoly. They do not care about you, your livelihood, your situation, or solving any issues that may come up when working with them. You can DO EVERYTHING TO THE LETTER, you can spend thousands of dollars getting legally compliant, pour hundreds of hours of work into your business and one day, you can wake up and find out that they have pulled the entire rug from underneath you for no reason whatsoever.

It's one of the worst experiences I've ever had in business. A monopoly abusing their power, destroying people's businesses and lives.

For the few people that are reading this that are considering getting into Amazon FBA, or even growing their FBA business, do yourself a favor.... Liquidate your stock and find something else.