I'm writing you because you've previously written about Amazon business practices. Below is my story about being a seller on Amazon and my belief that they took my inventory from me to compete with me.
I wrote a book called Why Are Conservatives Always Wrong? It's a book of quotes about what conservatives said about slavery, women's rights, Jim Crow, Social Security, interracial marriage, gay rights, etc, at the time the issue was being debated. I self-published the book and decided to sell it on Amazon Marketplace, using Amazon as my distributor with Fulfillment by Amazon.
I started advertising my book on Facebook after Christmas 2015 and got over 100 likes, 10 shares, and 800 clicks to my Amazon book page.
Despite those numbers, I noticed my inventory was not changing. In other words, no one was buying my book even though 800 people had clicked on the link to buy it.
I reached out to people who "shared" my book link on FB, asking them if they bought my book. One wrote me back, saying he bought my book. He sent me his Amazon purchase confirmation. His purchase didn't show up in my seller's orders page.
I finally noticed that Amazon was selling my book on Amazon Advantage. In essence, they were competing with me. However, there was no other place they could get my book other than me. I had chosen to use Amazon Marketplace because I owned all the copies of my book. Amazon had gotten inventory of my book without my knowledge.
To compete with Amazon Advantage, I lowered the price of my book on my Marketplace account, Tilikum Press. Amazon Advantage promptly undercut my price so they would be lowest. I still didn't understand where they were getting their inventory of my books.
After a week of digging, I realized that I had shipped Amazon 600 books and their warehouse had only received 384. They had "lost" 216 books in between receiving it and putting in their warehouse.
I sent Customer Service a message as follows "I shipped you a total of 600 books for Fulfillment by Amazon for my Amazon Marketplace account, Tilikum Press. Only 384 books made it into my inventory and 216 books are missing. I have just noticed that you are selling the book on Amazon Advantage. I don't know whose Advantage account those books went to, but I never gave permission for those books to be put on Amazon Advantage. Furthermore, I don't know how many books you have sold on Advantage, but those are legally my books and I want you to account for them. In addition, I want the remaining unsold books to be put back into my own FBA inventory for Tilikum Press."
Amazon responded by immediately acknowledging that they lost 216 books and credited me $2636.31 on 01/07/2016 for the "lost" inventory. This is what I would have received if I had sold those 216 books. In essence, they made me whole.
I believe that Amazon took my books from me intentionally. The books went to three distribution centers, and Amazon "lost" 144 books from one place, 24 books from the second place, and 48 books from the third. This is unlikely that they accidentally misplaced books in three different warehouses. While they reimbursed me for those 216 books, I note three things:
They are still undercutting my price on Amazon Marketplace, with inventory they took from me. I can't sell my books from my Amazon Marketplace account because no matter how much I lower my price, Amazon drops it lower.
They only reimbursed me after I figured out they had "lost" my inventory. It took me a week to figure it out, and I don't believe I would have figured it out without reaching out on Facebook to people who had responded to my advertisement and one purchaser responding to me saying he bought the book.
And now, there are literally dozens of vendors selling my book, all undercutting me. The only place they could have gotten inventory is from the 216 books Amazon "lost."
By immediately making me whole after I noticed my missing books, I have no legal claim against them.
I believe this is all intentional. Amazon takes inventory from sellers who use Fulfillment by Amazon without telling them. They use that inventory to compete with those sellers and undercut them. Amazon then makes money selling the inventory without compensating them. If a seller figures it out, Amazon compensates them for "lost inventory." However, some percentage of sellers never figure it out. Amazon makes money off by those people by taking and selling their inventory without their knowledge.
If you are interested in this story, I'm happy to provide additional documentation in the form of correspondence between Amazon customer service and me.
In addition, there are other people who's inventory was probably taken from them here.
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