You scammed Amazon out of a minimum of several hundred dollars, maybe much more if this was going on for years. And now you are asking them to believe that everything will be OK because when you sell things the money goes to your bank account, and you would never, ever, let some bad person use your account .... whoops

Amazon has the right and the responsibility to protect themselves with these policies.

However, their "scorched earth" style policies with regard to banning of accounts and accounts associated with those accounts is just awful.

Plus there is the sham of an appeal process which just spits out an insulting form letter.

Amazon is great for a lot of things but I do think some of their policies need revision or at least a warning system. They do seem to prefer banning over correcting problems, though.

Anyone supporting Amazon in this situation has obviously not dealt with them when problems arise as a seller. Trust me, there are s--t buyers, and Amazon doesn't seem to recognize this.

Originally Posted by mguiddy In my experience Amazon Seller Support is total ass. I had an issue with an A to z decision and it took over a year before I got a straight answer out of them. Granted, I never called them, only emailed, but should I really have to call to get a simple answer out of them? Customer Support... they're pretty good, but Seller Support is a whole different monster.

There is no point in calling. There is nobody to talk to. You get the initial support people but there is literally nobody to talk to about the "account reviews" or problems that happen.

Originally Posted by lilchao44 I got banned because someone didn't know how to turn on their PS3 and assumed I sold them a broken one and demanded a refund. Before I could respond, they filed a claim and I got banned from selling. Called them up to tell them what happened, and they basically said "Oh, too bad."

More to this story than you are telling. You don't get banned for 1 a-z claim. I guess possibly if it was your first sale or something, but still not likely.

Originally Posted by donkeydrop You scammed Amazon out of a minimum of several hundred dollars, maybe much more if this was going on for years. And now you are asking them to believe that everything will be OK because when you sell things the money goes to your bank account, and you would never, ever, let some bad person use your account .... whoops

Maybe I am missing something but where did you get this info from?

Originally Posted by schuerm26 There is no point in calling. There is nobody to talk to. You get the initial support people but there is literally nobody to talk to about the "account reviews" or problems that happen.

Good to know...
Just mentioned it because when people complain about Amazon Support (probably specifically Buyer Support) not being helpful, seems a lot of people will mention calling is a lot more effective.

Originally Posted by schuerm26 Anyone supporting Amazon in this situation has obviously not dealt with them when problems arise as a seller. Trust me, there are s--t buyers, and Amazon doesn't seem to recognize this.

Yep. There are buyers ing them over and they ignore it.

You have to remember that Amazon's margin is around 3%. Which means that if they have to float the bill for one bad sale, they have to sell 30 of those items to get back to even. Thus, the scorched earth policy. It's well known that Amazon will ban your account if they find out a banned user is using your account. Thus, I can't say I feel too badly for you. If anything, be mad at your potential wife for not telling you she had a banned account.

The scorched policy is tough, but fair. They give rock bottom prices to the consumers. Could they give you a second, third, fourth chance? I'm sure they could. But as others alluded, that would require them to raise their prices on their own goods because instead of an automated email they would have to have a bigger customer service staff, better IT tracking software for customer complaints, and more manager oversight to rule on the process. It's just not worth it to them. And they are going gangbusters as noted by their Christmas sales. So as sad as it may be that you won't be able to buy items from them, they'll make it up.

Yes, Amazon leans heavily towards the customer. But other bad sellers get on the site. I stopped buying "new" items from the marketplace unless the price was good enough for a used item because I've gotten clearly used items from that before. And these are sellers with 95+%. It's also really impossible to prove the seller was correct which is why they go in the buyer's favor. I mean, I could find a picture on the internet of anything in perfect condition, and send it to them. Same thing with the buyer, they could find a picture of an item broken into 1,000 pieces. There is just no way to prove who is actually telling the truth other than if the buyer says they didn't receive anything and you had delivery confirmation. But even then, they could say you send them a pen, and there is no real way to prove you sent them a game.

Originally Posted by smallsharkbigbite But even then, they could say you send them a pen, and there is no real way to prove you sent them a game.

Video tape yourself packing the item into the box at the post office then handing it off to the post office.

Originally Posted by smallsharkbigbite You have to remember that Amazon's margin is around 3%. Which means that if they have to float the bill for one bad sale, they have to sell 30 of those items to get back to even. Thus, the scorched earth policy. It's well known that Amazon will ban your account if they find out a banned user is using your account. Thus, I can't say I feel too badly for you. If anything, be mad at your potential wife for not telling you she had a banned account. The scorched policy is tough, but fair. They give rock bottom prices to the consumers. Could they give you a second, third, fourth chance? I'm sure they could. But as others alluded, that would require them to raise their prices on their own goods because instead of an automated email they would have to have a bigger customer service staff, better IT tracking software for customer complaints, and more manager oversight to rule on the process. It's just not worth it to them. And they are going gangbusters as noted by their Christmas sales. So as sad as it may be that you won't be able to buy items from them, they'll make it up. Yes, Amazon leans heavily towards the customer. But other bad sellers get on the site. I stopped buying "new" items from the marketplace unless the price was good enough for a used item because I've gotten clearly used items from that before. And these are sellers with 95+%. It's also really impossible to prove the seller was correct which is why they go in the buyer's favor. I mean, I could find a picture on the internet of anything in perfect condition, and send it to them. Same thing with the buyer, they could find a picture of an item broken into 1,000 pieces. There is just no way to prove who is actually telling the truth other than if the buyer says they didn't receive anything and you had delivery confirmation. But even then, they could say you send them a pen, and there is no real way to prove you sent them a game.

Amazon floats the bill? No they don't. They either take it out of your disbursement or charge the card you have to put on file. Whatever they do have to foot gets written off.

The scorched earth policy is ANYTHING but fair. My account got banned because a person bought a used printer that worked and the idiot couldn't figure out how to set it up. He complained. 2 people bought blockbuster DVD's that were marked as rentals. The left 0 out of 5 and complained eventhough they were clearly stated as rentals. Nothing about it is fair.

With your last statement, you are basically saying, what the hell is the point of selling online. Sellers can be dishonest, buyers can be dishonest. Ridiculous. There is a way to tell. Look at the sellers history, compared to some random buyer making a claim.

Their customer service towards sellers is not too swell. I wasn't banned or wiped from the system, but I had a customer pull a series of stunts. They wanted me to ship to a different address from the one they confirmed with. It's against policy, and you can be banned. It's scam territory for those unaware. I refused and refunded in a matter of about two hours when I got the "change my addy" e-mail from them. I apologized and told them it was against policy. I pulled the item and never re-listed it since it had perishable codes. A week later, they left a two out of five and left some bs statement that the other sellers did it and I wouldn't accommodate.

Amazon refused to support me in any way when I contacted them. Even though they could pull up the e-mail where he was proven to have asked me to violate their policies, they wouldn't do jack unless there was obscenity in the feedback message. I sent the customer two e-mails and a couple of weeks later, they recanted in guilt.

Somewhere along the way, in a blind rage, I left a one out of five feedback for them. They'll probably never know since they're too stupid to access it. Sellers can leave negative feedback on Amazon and see it in the proper subsection to know buyers are pulling shenanigans.

Originally Posted by kodave Video tape yourself packing the item into the box at the post office then handing it off to the post office.

Really still doesn't prove much. You could pack two boxes the same size and hand them the box with nothing in it. You could know friends at the post office and as soon as you've taped yourself handing it over ask them for the package back because you've made a "mistake" with the address and hand them the fraudulent package.

Also, let's say you send a "like new" disc based game. You can't see scratched even on some really scratched up games unless you hold it at the right angle in the light. It would be hard to prove condition on a video camera. Then sometimes it's just hard to explain. I bought a disc based game one time that looked in relatively good condition. I try most games immediately, but I was busy so placed it on my backlog. Well, it wouldn't load. I tried it on multiple systems that never had disc read errors and subsequently haven't had disc read errors. So I'm not sure why that disc wouldn't work, but I was out on that one since I sat on the game a few months before trying.

Originally Posted by schuerm26 Amazon floats the bill? No they don't. They either take it out of your disbursement or charge the card you have to put on file. Whatever they do have to foot gets written off. The scorched earth policy is ANYTHING but fair. My account got banned because a person bought a used printer that worked and the idiot couldn't figure out how to set it up. He complained. 2 people bought blockbuster DVD's that were marked as rentals. The left 0 out of 5 and complained eventhough they were clearly stated as rentals. Nothing about it is fair. With your last statement, you are basically saying, what the hell is the point of selling online. Sellers can be dishonest, buyers can be dishonest. Ridiculous. There is a way to tell. Look at the sellers history, compared to some random buyer making a claim.

There is risk to selling online and you should know that. Dealing with people with good reviews is one way to mitigate the risk but doesn't remove it. On ebay you can't give customers feedback so obviously they could rip off a bunch of sellers and have nothing to show for it. Sometimes people build up feedback to just rip things off. I bought an item from someone with a 50+ ebay feedback at 100%. Next thing I knew he had 20 negative comments within a week. Needless to say I didn't get my item, but at least ebay refunded me.

Fair is in the eye of the beholder I guess. They come down hard on people that make them look bad and even if they don't cost them money up front have the potential to cost them money because people don't believe items on Amazon are accurate. So they make moves to protect themselves. Yes, consumers are largely unfair with expectations, but Amazon has been known to ban buyers that argue too much too.

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Originally Posted by smallsharkbigbite Really still doesn't prove much. You could pack two boxes the same size and hand them the box with nothing in it. You could know friends at the post office and as soon as you've taped yourself handing it over ask them for the package back because you've made a "mistake" with the address and hand them the fraudulent package. Also, let's say you send a "like new" disc based game. You can't see scratched even on some really scratched up games unless you hold it at the right angle in the light. It would be hard to prove condition on a video camera. Then sometimes it's just hard to explain. I bought a disc based game one time that looked in relatively good condition. I try most games immediately, but I was busy so placed it on my backlog. Well, it wouldn't load. I tried it on multiple systems that never had disc read errors and subsequently haven't had disc read errors. So I'm not sure why that disc wouldn't work, but I was out on that one since I sat on the game a few months before trying.

Plus the fact they're not going to let you record video inside a post office.