Amazon and other sellers using your information

[DCP]

This is a strange situation...

I was contacted by amazon a few years back and they helped me setup on Amazon.
I sell car parts, and i remember it used all my experience and listing skills to mould my data so that it was suitable for amazon.

I had to buy barcodes etc and fit a whole load of info into a very small space (2000 characters for a description is very tight for me)

Anyway, I got a few of our brands and product lines listed on Amazon. It was always abit of a sideshow for us and I think amazon is totally crap for selling complicated things like car parts, so I never really paid it much attention. it was a reasonably steady revenue and the customers seemed nice.

Recently, they suspended me for duplicate listings. i knew duplicates were there and prior to this i was working on a way to try and list more conventionally i.e. one part=one amazon listing, and even had a call discussion with amazons development office about this. they could'nt offer me any real solution, so i put the whole thing on the back burner.

now i got a message saying our selling priviledges have been permanenly removed.

ok fine, i'm not crying about the loss, but whats really annoyed me, is that other sellers are using all the hard work I did years ago. i.e. i see my amazon listings, my photo, my description, title, barcode......sold by other sellers!

can they do this??

as an example type in "ptr5a-10" into amazon. those red background images are all mine, and they're being sold by other people.
type "ptr5a-10" and my title appears on amazon's site.. 1st page google! the cheek!

 

[danny156]

Anything you submit to amazon be it listing data - pictures etc as soon as its uploading into their catalogue they then own the rights and can do with as choose - which is allow other sellers to use them

One of the downsides of selling on Amazon

 

[SidRhyes]

If you are not having a major loss then you can you can drop the amazon and can go for other shopping carts such as E bay and Buy.com

 

[DCP]

If you are not having a major loss then you can you can drop the amazon and can go for other shopping carts such as E bay and Buy.com

ebay is one of our major channels, but its getting really hard now.

it's become obvious to me that ebay are favouring a few sellers/ bigcompanies who 'cream' it at the top of the best match results.

my theory is sellers are categorised in bands. some (like us) always float around the same turnover, and no matter what we do (e.g. more products, cheaper prices etc)...it doesnt make a difference. we're capped by the category band we're in.

imagine weight categories in boxing. ebay have classified us as a e.g. middleweight, but the no matter how much weight we put on, or however much traing we do, ebay ultimately decide whether we become a heavyweight.

basically they give seller preferences to specific (larger) companiesl; 'heavyweight' (multinational) brands like tesco, argos etc are given this seller preference when they start selling on ebay....it's like a 'golden handshake' welcome to ebay.

so although smaller concerns like ourselves are scraping a living on ebay....i can't see much hope of growth now. it's all downhill in my opinion (unless you're in ebay's priviledge club)

it's worrying for me

 

[greengecko]

ebay is one of our major channels, but its getting really hard now.

it's become obvious to me that ebay are favouring a few sellers/ bigcompanies who 'cream' it at the top of the best match results.

my theory is sellers are categorised in bands. some (like us) always float around the same turnover, and no matter what we do (e.g. more products, cheaper prices etc)...it doesnt make a difference. we're capped by the category band we're in.

imagine weight categories in boxing. ebay have classified us as a e.g. middleweight, but the no matter how much weight we put on, or however much traing we do, ebay ultimately decide whether we become a heavyweight.

basically they give seller preferences to specific (larger) companiesl; 'heavyweight' (multinational) brands like tesco, argos etc are given this seller preference when they start selling on ebay....it's like a 'golden handshake' welcome to ebay.

so although smaller concerns like ourselves are scraping a living on ebay....i can't see much hope of growth now. it's all downhill in my opinion (unless you're in ebay's priviledge club)

it's worrying for me

It's the way the entire world works..unfortunately. If you were on the other shoe and owned a big multinational I can guarantee almost everyone would do exactly the same as them.

 

[DCP]

It's the way the entire world works..unfortunately. If you were on the other shoe and owned a big multinational I can guarantee almost everyone would do exactly the same as them.

You're absolutely right. Survival of the Biggest is inevitable.

Livelihoods are increasingly being dictated by a search box and the results that appear below it. We're never really in control.

We've just discussed eBay, but I'm sure the same is/will happen with google.
We might think we've earned our high rankings/our big feedback scores, but the truth is that these things we think we've earn't can be taken away from us at any time and many of us will be left with squat.

In all walks of life, merit and success are drifting further and further apart.

 

[Esk247]

With reference to your original post. The images on Amazon can be used by other Amazon sellers, you've basically allowed Amazon to use your content, images, descriptions, barcodes and other people can now hop on.

We get it with our listings, when we run out of stock of a certain item someone else takes over.

As for eBay, it's dead to us as of start of this month. They've switched us off. We were doing 1/2k a month through them but we haven't sold anything for weeks even though we're a power seller. We too have uploaded dozens of new linse to no avail, those same lines have sold really well on Amazon.

 

[AbsolutNut]

Hi,

This is why always try and get our brand on our images one way or another. A good way to do this is to show the box/package next to the product - this is allowed as long as you also show the product without it's package next to it.

Presuming if you have trademark protected your brand (if not why not?) you can contact third party sellers and point out that they are infringing your mark and politely but firmly request they cease their infringement immediately.

Amazon themselves - I don't know. Is it true that you sign away all trademark rights in the sellers agreement when you publish your brand and images all over Amazon? I must admit to not testing this and if anybody can shed any light over this I would be interested to know?

We fiercely protect our IP and are always warning sellers off for attempting to sell our brand when we know for certain they have not been licensed for using it or passing off generic/other brand/non branded items as our brand.

Steve

 

[danny156]

Hi,

Amazon themselves - I don't know. Is it true that you sign away all trademark rights in the sellers agreement when you publish your brand and images all over Amazon? I must admit to not testing this and if anybody can shed any light over this I would be interested to know?

Steve

I cannot see how Amazon could ever get away with something like that so surely not ?

Danny

 

[serendipitybusiness]

The thing that sticks out here is the barcode, if you bought the barcodes for your products then how can people sell the same product under the same EAN unless they are buying for you. I don't have any experience in this issue but would it be worth contacting them on this basis as technically other market place sellers are not selling what is listed as their products will have a different ean number so the listings are redundant if you are not selling the products.

 

[COA_INC]

I'm afraid that you really don't have a case here. Content submitted to sites such as ebay, amazon and facebook become the property of these respective companies. In any event, is it possible for the individuals to copy and paste your content in their listing? If this is the case, amazon could simply say that they did not allow the content to be used and you would have to take it up with the individuals/ businesses using your content. Would it really be worth it to you to pursue such action?

 

[dingbat]

From what I'm aware the pictures don't comply with Amazon's criteria anyway using titles within them.