Death by Amazon – A small business rant

Amazon’s new inbound placement fees will have my inventory staying at zero unless they change.

I have held back criticizing Amazon for issues that I have had with them. I probably should have seen this coming, but they had long broken me from actively managing and striving to better my business on their platform.

I invented and patented the Chair Cane because of my experience with 3 patients, in just a few months, having falls and injuries from bedside commodes. My hope was to sell or license the idea to a company. Failing to do that, I contracted a manufacturer and the first, and last shipment, was sitting at port March 2020. Not the best time to have a low priority item sitting at port, unless you like waiting.

In order to sell a new item that never existed, Amazon required that I have a business acoount and that I have a trademark. Trademarks can take a long time to have in hand. They generously offered up a program that connects you to lawyers (that likely pay fees for the privalge) that will help with trademark applications. If you use a lawyer through their program, Amazon will let you go ahead and list.

Finally! I had an Amazon listing up and running. I started spending marketing money with Amazon and Facebook. Sales started to pick up. Then they died.. Without notice, Amazon had suspended sales. I forget why this first time but after a week or two, it was back up. Yes! Excitement again, hurdle overcome. I waited this time to spend on marketing, only doing some low budget things inside Amazon.

I lowered the price and there were some sales. After awhile, I decided to ramp up the marketing efforts again. I was following closely this time and was able to shut down the ads quickly once I noticed Amazon had stopped sales again. I worked with Amazon support trying to figure out why. It seemed like their algorythm had decided that my product had hazardous materials.

Amazon support seemed incapable of telling me why my product of two aluminium sticks and two pieces of rubber was hazardous. I changed the listing description to make sure words that could be misread by an algorythm were taken out. For example: I had paid for third party testing of the product and thought that maybe terminology about the testing may make it seem like it had hazardous materials. I waited a week or so and when it wasn’t reinstated, I tried just deleting all but the most basic description. Still nothing.

I also tried several times to get help from seller support. The actions I did recieve: 1) down grading my account from business with monthly fees to a type of account with less privileges and pay per item sold, and 2) to certify my account to be able to sell hazerdous materials, like batteries. Unfortunately, I was unable to prove that my hazardous product was safe to sell becasue I had no documentation to prove that what didn’t exist was safe.

I gave support one last chance and the answer that came back that there was a product in France with the same product ID. It was a shaver and had a battery. Their proposed solution was that I list in France and get together with the other company and work on the product description. What??

The trademark application came back with an office action. The lawyer that I had, through the Amazon program, was really nice and thorough and explained my options and what he would recommend. Of course, I would need to pay him. His fees were were reasonable; however, with no end in sight to the product listing issue, I was not willing to sink more money into the trademark. He didn’t understand the listing issue either and thought it was strange. Not having a trademark and no longer being part of the special program, I have not made any changes to my account for fear that it would trigger a new account audit and Amazon would kick me out for noncompliance with listing requirements.

About six months later, I get an email from Amazon. There was a manual inventory audit and my product was found to not contain hazardous material. The listing was back up. I have been selling passively since that time. Sending in a box of inventory whenever I run out. I had tried to proactively restock when inventory was low, but Amazon would sell the new inventory first. Allowing the old inventory to sit and become subject to increased fees for aging inventory.

I have friends that have offered and even started to build a website that I can sell from but I do not have the energy or patience to deal with it. I was happy to pay Amazon fees to deal with returns and sales tax issues present when you sell in multiple states.

If you know anyone looking to buy or license a patent, let me know. Maybe Medline or Drive DeVilbiss can fill this need.