Seriously, no one is going to mount a glass breaking device to a steering wheel as a storage location.
But Aneja didn’t market the item that way.
That’s nice, talk to the spice grinder sellers.
“It’s like selling a knife,” he told me. “Someone could use it for cooking, and they could also use it for a crime. You can’t control what the end user does with the product.”
There is a difference between a kitchen knife and a switchblade.
That’s the first thing that popped into my head when reading the article. Followed by this “And now, Aneja added, items that will fool Tesla’s Autopilot computer have popped up again” but those people are doing it, why can’t I?
The author has a lot more sympathy for this guy than I do. But then, the author clearly knows less about Amazon, and the people who abuse it, than I do.
I think that’s why the seller went with a local paper. The seller clearly has a hustle mentality and nothing wrong with that, but doesn’t seem to understand rules all that well.
AirBNB’ing out a leased apartment would be a violation of most leases, but that’s how he started.
$15k for a lawyer and no action tells me, maybe you have the wrong lawyer OR there is more to this story.
15K on a lawyer tells me that the lawyer’s just taking him for a ride instead of saying “yeah, you sold something illegal and/or dangerous, your account’s staying suspended for good.”
If one of his buyers crashed their car, he could easily be facing a lawsuit since his product prevented tesla’s autopilot from detecting that the human isn’t paying attention anymore and stopping the vehicle.
Why they’re holding the rest of his inventory instead of letting him remove it beyond me though. Usually they only hold inventory for the specific ASIN(s) that are problematic. The storage fees being claimed in the article sound wrong though, if these are small items (they say “low cost” so I’m assuming small) they shouldn’t take up much space.
That was my first thought too.
Lawyer knows this is going nowhere and doesn’t care.
This is when they shut down an ASIN. When they deactivate the entire account (for more severe violations) they hold… the entire account, even if the violations were more limited.
In this case, I think Amazon has just had enough of this guy. Don’t forget this isn’t the first item he has sold designed to get around laws. The article itself points out that one of his previous items was a silicone sleeve to hide the fact that people are drinking alcohol in prohibited public spaces. I strongly suspect that these “glass breakers” were not his first ASIN to get into trouble.
As far as his claims that it’s OK because he didn’t market the item that way, that argument is patently ridiculous and everyone knows it. "But I sold that nuclear explosive as a pesticide! The instructions clearly state ‘Do not use on humans!’ " Sorry, but we all know what it’s for, and it’s not allowed on Amazon.
I’m sure SWMNBN can help him write an appeal.
15k on lawyers is a pittance if they are not your local attorney with an office over a store.
That’s less than the retainer I paid when I was sued for copyright infringement.
Its no secret that Amazon reads news reports and hunts out contributors to Scamazon reports.
But this sounds like a googled lawyer that wrote a letter to Amazon, nothing more.
Hardly worth $15k, and it sounds like even after he has spent all his money he has not started the arbitration process, his only hope and something he should have done BEFORE hiring said lawyer, or at least something said lawyer should have told him to do
I agree, but I’m also not motivated to point that out to this seller.
As far as I am concerned, sellers deserve legal advice of a caliber with the quality of the business they run.
I agree. Which is why I would be likely to hire the cheapest shyster I could find, having experienced the ineptitude of many high priced law firms.
That is true, maybe his other items had issues associated with them as well, but I would think it’d be in the best interests of all parties if the suspended seller could remove as many items as possible from FBA. They probably want their products back and Amazon doesn’t need crap clogging up their warehouse for months for no reason.
It did sound like some of his other stuff toed the line, but none if it’s even close to being on par with selling a product designed to circumvent a safety feature that’s there to prevent car accidents.
I think I questioned things when they described the business model.
Software detects what is popular, it is then found and sourced from foreign suppliers (alibaba) and sometimes even patented.
Yeah, that’s only an issue though if you’re jumping onto other people’s brands or “brands.” If you’re buying white label products and selling it under your own brand that shouldn’t cause any policy violations (as long as the product isn’t violating some kind of patent or copyright). That was (and I guess still is) a very popular Amazon strategy, to private label popular products and try to promote your branded version of it.
Depends what the items are. If the items are legally problematic in any way, Amazon may not be allowed to return them until the issues have been resolved.
If any criminal enterprise is suspected or being investigated, Amazon legally can not return any goods or money because then they would be part of it.
Sellers aren’t always the first party to be aware that such an investigation is ongoing, so they are confused about why their money and goods are held.
While this is true, that if a govt agency is investigating they could have a court order ordering a 3rd party to freeze certain assets, this is a rarity. In most cases Amazon withholds funds/inventory they are doing so by exercising their right to do so under the business solutions agreement.
Agreed.
There’s a reason why Amazon does not skimp on costs for deploying World-Class talent in its OGC (hence that team’s ensconcement, largely, in its own Seattle skyscraper) anywhere-near as deeply as its demonstrable scrimping for other departments in its support infrastructure.
It is much more common than most Sellers are aware of. Definitely not a rarity.
Two things can be true–and at Amazon, often are.
Y’know, when I play Clue, and someone makes a guess for which I have two or three cards, I either show a card that I’ve already shown someone else, or I show a room card.
I keep some information to myself, strategically, until I’m absolutely forced to reveal it. Sometimes I’m never forced to, sometimes it becomes known (or unimportant) by other means, and sometimes that undisclosed info serves me well.
ETA: @GGX to be clear–just because you don’t know about it, or just because another Seller doesn’t know, does not mean that it’s not part of the equation. More often than not, the Seller never knows.
This story is a much desired positive article on Amazon action to stamp out bad behavior by an Amazon seller.
Taking the harshest actions permitted by the Business Services Agreement is a major enhancement to this publicity. Would not surprise me if Amazon suggested a court order to the government agency.
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