It is interesting to read some of these accounts. We have several hundred clients who sell on Amazon. I can probably say we hear horror stories on a daily basis.
If I were to summarize the stories and reach a conclusion it would be that Amazon (retail side) exists as a set of silos characterized by incompetence mixed with a solid dose of indifference and total lack of consideration for sellers.
I've seen sellers damaged to the point where they lost everything. Business, home, cars, everything. Why? Well, in the one case I can think of we heard from this seller who had been doing millions of dollars per year on Amazon for about four years. One morning he wakes up to an email from Amazon telling him that his "Selling privileges have been revoked permanently". And, in the true style of a lot of large internet companies there was no way to engage with someone at Amazon to try to solve the problem that led to the permanent suspension. In fact, apparently he was only given one opportunity to send and email. It was rejected. He was told they do not discuss the reasons for these decisions.
This person lost everything they built over four years of hard work and had to file for bankruptcy when the commitments made by the business to support a multi-million-dollar-per-year supply pipeline caught-up with what had happened. If you ask me, that says a lot about Amazon and the people who work there. They are willing to make decisions that can destroy families and don't seem to care enough to engage in a proper business-to-business discussion aimed at solving problems. Instead it's "off with their heads" and that's it. Businesses are not machines, they are people. What Amazon is doing to families with businesses is sick and disgusting.
The latest trend we've been hearing has to do with their ads platform. Apparently click fraud is rampant and Amazon is doing exactly nothing about it. And, if what I am reading is correct, it is entirely possible they aren't even equipped to deal with click fraud at all. A number of our clients are reporting click through rates that are 10x to 60x historical rates and no sales whatsoever out of thousands of clicks per day/week. Their experience isn't far different from that of the people who face suspensions: Amazon refuses to discuss what is going on. Advertising on Amazon, for some sellers, has turned into the equivalent of throwing dollars into a bonfire.
I could go on but I don't think it's necessary. My conclusion based on what I've read here and experienced through our clients is that it almost makes sense that the third party seller side of Amazon seems to be as messed-up as it is. If portions of their operation are as caustic and abusive as some of the accounts on this thread relate nothing good can come out of that. As I said before, business, ultimately, is about people. And if the people who are the business are not happy, the business isn't going to run well. That's what our clients are seeing out of the side of the Amazon monster they face every day.