Seller Support is bad but really bad cases like yours are very rare.
No, they're not. Look at the so-called support forums. Thousands of people screaming in the dark.
cases get escalated to real people if you persevere.
Real people with poor Engish and no power to solve anything other than "forwarding it to the relevant department" - who then do nothing.
And the 15% commission gets you enormous exposure.
It's not just the 15-16%, though, is it? On FBA, when you factor in all the hidden fees, and if you pay them for "exposure", storage, returns, returns of returns, etc., it is more like 40%- 50%.
"returns are massive" - if this is the case then either the product has a problem or the listing does.
No. You can craft a nice listing, and the AI bots or Chinese hijackers come along and remove all your bullet points. People then buy three different things that look similar, as there's no compatibility information (or if there is, they don't read it), and return the two that they don't need. They then misrepresent the reason for the return so you get stung with that cost. And that's before those who return used stuff, other peoples stuff and empty boxes. Buyer fraud is rife.
"They’re quick to freeze your account or hold your money for no clear reason" - not true, unless you break rules you don't know about, which is common.
Disagree. Look at the seller forums. I recall having mine frozen for two months because the VAT certificate "didn't match". It did, of course. It took them two months to agree it did. Then there's all the other cash grabs and delays. The business model is holding onto your money as long as possible.
"often demanding documents that don’t even exist and freezing your account when you can’t provide them" - never heard of that. What kind of documents?
I'll give you one example: certified bank statements. Not a thing in the UK. I had to buy a rubber stamp to get around that one.
"They once took a significant amount of my FBA stock" - why did they take it?
I'll give you one example of this: competitor buys items from a listing, claims they are fake (despite being our own brand), listing gets suspended, they won't reinstate it, FBA stock is then not orphaned but locked up and cannot be returned without listing being reinstated - catch 22. That one took a court action to solve.
I'm not a neophyte to selling on Amazon. So the suggestion that I don't understand the rules doesn't apply to me.
However, there are simply no avenues to solve some things. A good example being brand names getting changed. I've half a dozen listings that the brand has been changed to something obscure; probably Chinese. I can't get it changed back. Certainly not without paying them even more money for brand registry. And even that doesn't solve it. Its a way of the Chinese to hijack listings and get you thrown off them. Again, rife.
How about listings getting edited and the creator cannot edit them back? Or if they can, the edits don't take.
How about the half a dozen listings I have suspended because of "trademark abuse" and they won't accept a letter in their own specified format from the CEO of the brand itself? Just more AI drone refusals week after week.
I could go on. The system is badly broken, with no account managers and zero native English language support. It's rife with fraud and bad actors, and stacked heavily against sellers. You are obviously a fan of Amazon, so I doubt I'll convince you. My advice to the OP however, is don't bother selling on Amazon. Unless you want to be in what amounts to an abusive relationship. Each day, you will open your inbox to threats, problems, cash grabs, listing suspensions, and more. If you have margins of 80% and very thick skin, you might be able to make it work. A pal of mine who sells a lot on Amazon had to hire a woman whose only job is to spend all day countering Amazon's continual demands. That's all she does.
