Judging from what I’ve been seeing reported over in the NSFE & related discussion venues in recent days, I suspect that one or another of the PCRP*-policing Amabots tasked with preventing Amazon’s bottom line being subject to yet another regulatory fine (domestic or foreign as the case might be), on the score of current International Sanctions (of various flavors), just may’ve recently been ‘tweaked’ to the point that any reference to the pre-1935 appellation for Iran could be falsely-flagged, through no fault of your own.
It would seem that rug- and jewelry-merchants are currently those who are most-affected (perhaps probably, in the latter case, simply because they feature lapis lazuli in their goods???) - but whenever I smell smoke, I’m compelled to look for the fire, and further constrained to make sure I have the means at hand to keep it from spreading to my detriment - and to that of others, because we’re all manning oars in the same boat.
*
An ‘Amazonese’ acronym for “Product Compliance - Restricted Products”
This situation got out of hand because Amazon did not anticipate, and never anticipates the simple work arounds to Amazon policies which sellers will use.
There is no one at Amazon who knows enough about anything to act before the deviant methods have been disseminated on social media to thousands of lowlife sellers who have no ethics or respect for law.
Searching for ‘Persian’ shows a variety of products: Books on Persian cooking, bags of food for Persian cats, Persian perfumes, Persian currency…
…wait
…what?
On ASIN B08Q7YQHP3, an ‘Amazon’s Choice’ BTW, the seller offers five million Iranian Rials for a mere 129 US dollars. And the seller claims that it is legitimate.
On the world currency markets, the market value is 118.79 US dollars. By the time that this seller pays Amazon’s referral fee, he should be losing money on the transaction.
How on earth are Amabots giving “Amazon’s Choice” badges to outright prohibited items? SMH