Well I've decided Amazon isn't for me, for now. I have a dedicated website for my business but I don't know what is the right way to drive traffic.
Could you mind explaining what your approach has been?
Then somehow sell those SKU codes for the items onward where the item information (description, photo, title, etc) are swapped out - so now you have an instant "best seller".
This can also of course be done by an individual seller - they just get a good product, sell it, get some great ratings on it, then change out the information for another product but keep the SKU the same. Works best if the products are very similar (I've seen this too - where the reviews, if reading them carefully, seem to refer to say a USB thumbdrive, but what is being sold is an actual hard drive, or memory, or sdcard, etc).
The other way, of course, is to sell multiple products with different "colors" (but each is actually a different product). Then you have reviews all over the map, all for the same SKU - or at least in the same general comment mix for the product being sold. So now you don't know if the comment is referring to the product you want, or some variant of it...
All of that said, I can kinda understand why this is possible, even desirable - for Amazon to give that kind of control to the sellers. They could try to police it, but how do they police and enforce SKU usage and such, without also busting legitimate uses? That's probably the difficulty.
There's a similar problem with some sellers posting items up with insanely large prices (like a pack of gum for $10,000); from what I understand, this is done to prevent an item from being purchased when it is out of stock, or to keep the reviews (maybe in conjunction with SKU swapping?), or a few other reasons, with the idea that nobody will buy that product with such a strange high price on it (plus sorting moves it to the bottom usually). Unfortunately, this also screws up when you want to sort high to low prices, to find a possible "better product" that is priced higher because it is made differently and better than "regular ole' generics" (I faced this recently while looking for a shielded audio cable).
Here again, though, policing it would be nearly impossible - how is Amazon to determine that a particular package of gum isn't worth $10,000? For that matter, maybe there's a buyer out there looking for an elusive pack of gum and is willing to pay the higher price? Seems incredible, but I am certain there's at least one person out there ready and able to do so.
One of the other reasons is bots outbidding each other and escalating prices.
> sort high to low prices, to find a possible "better product" that is priced higher because it is made differently and better than "regular ole' generics" (I faced this recently while looking for a shielded audio cable).
Or in this specific instance, they're just targetting audiophiles who believe a $3,000 RCA cable will "enhance the depth and warmth and soundstage"...
Wow, that's amazingly shitty. I had no idea that Amazon allowed the fraudsters to hijack the reputation of legitimate sellers in this way [1]. I always figured they could only pull these switcheroos on listings they created.
[1] I know Amazon lets fraudsters hijack reputation through inventory commingling.
Don’t rely on third party platforms for your core business.
Check it out button leads to 404.
Going from homepage to 404 is NOT GOOD
I would have done the same for my business, but I didn’t want to risk getting a huge bill later when they figure it out.
Am I understanding correctly that Amazon will not allow me to buy something off their site with prime shipping if i intend to resell that product?
Is the the scope of this limited to only include me taking orders for item X at price y on my own Amazon marketplace account and then placing my order with an FBA partner who's price for X is below y?
Otherwise wouldn't you run into all kinds of issues with first sale doctrine? Who is amazon to tell me I cant sell something I bought through them?
It has nothing to do with the first sale doctrine. If you are reselling the item, then you owe Amazon shipping charges for 2-day shipping.
Maybe Amazon won't try to collect, but you have violated the contract you have with Amazon.. and they could come back to you later and send you a bill for all of the shipping charges you owe them. Maybe they won't do that.. if you want to risk it, that's up to you.
Not so fast. Amazon would like this to be true, which is why they put that provision in their TOS. The NFL does the same thing when they state in every single broadcast, "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited." Merely expressing a sentence in legalese doesn't create a binding contract.
A decent lawyer in a Common Law jurisdiction (and IANAL/this is not legal advice) could probably argue that such a "no-resale-for-Prime" provision constitutes restraint of trade along with any other similar statutory prohibitions that would render such language unenforceable. (I don't know, but I'm guessing Civil Law jurisdictions have their own such restraints.) Amazon for its part would argue that if it allowed resale, it couldn't offer Prime services at all to anyone. If I were to guess, the real purpose of this provision is to kick people out who might do something like purchase up an entire supply of some particular Prime-eligible item and then immediately resell the entire stock at around the same price but with paid shipping (including a small profit cushion). That kind of behavior actually would ruin the Prime brand/program and itself constitutes a form of market manipulation.
In no way would anyone owe Amazon money for reselling products purchased on Prime. At worst, Amazon could kick a person out of Prime or completely ban them as a customer (and the courts might even frown upon that). Amazon might even try to "collect" money, but unless the resale constituted actual abuse (cf. the scenario above), a strongly worded letter CC'd to the person's lawyer, Congressman and FTC might help Amazon stand down.
Again, IANAL and this is not legal advice. If it were me, I'd try to follow the TOS as a matter of prudence/respect. However, I don't like people thinking that they're under legal obligations that are at best a stretch.