Amazon.com Put my Funds and Sales on hold with No Valid Reason

[Gryphon410]

What is the name of your state? Arizona

Ok, let me give the sum**** of events:

11/30/05

Created an Amazon.com account. Started listing movies for sale.

Received my Seller's Welcome E-Mail stating that I could not have access to my funds until 14 days had passed. Understood.

E-mail did not mention anything else about the possibility of having funds held longer, nor did it say anything about the possibility of having my transactions being temporarily removed for evaluation purposes.

Sold 3 movies.

12/01/05

Added payment information so that I could have funds deposited into my bank account. Received an E-Mail stating that the 14 day period to receive funds was restarted but would not interrupt the once a month automatic deposit. Understood.

Sold 3 movies.

12/02/05

Was sent an e-mail stating my funds would now be on hold for up to 30 days while my account is evaluated. E-Mail stated the following:

To ensure that all parties have the best experience on Amazon.com we will be conducting a broader review of your Amazon Payments account. During that time your funds will be reserved in your Amazon.com seller's account for up to 30 days. Although we will delay the transfer of funds to your account, we will continue accepting orders on your behalf for items you list for sale on Amazon.com. Once your funds have been released, they should arrive within 5 business days.

While your funds are being reserved, we will be actively contacting your buyers to find out how their experience is proceeding. We will be requesting tracking information and their comments on their buying experience. This information will be used with any feedback received on your account to help build your history with Amazon.com. We encourage you to send a friendly reminder for your buyers to leave feedback on your account after they have received their item(s). They can do so simply by visiting www.amazon.com/feedback.

Sold 3 movies.

12/03/05

Sold 3 movies

12/05/05

Sold 4 movies

Received an e-mail from Amazon.com stating that they would be conducting a review of my account and my listings would be temporarily removed for up to 30 days and I would not be able to sell anything more until that evaluation was complete. E-Mail stated the following:

As part of our ongoing commitment to improve the buying and selling experience on Amazon.com, we will be conducting a review of your Amazon.com selling account. Please know that this is not necessarily a negative reflection of your selling history, and that this action is taken regularly on newer selling accounts.

This review may include contacting your buyers to learn about their experience, evaluating incoming buyer feedback, and/or contacting you via email or telephone to verify information about your account. Please know that we will never ask for your Amazon.com password or complete credit card number (though we may ask to verify the last 5 digits of your credit card). The information we collect in our review will be used to help build your history with Amazon.com. We encourage you to send a friendly reminder to your buyers to leave feedback on your account after they have received their item(s).

Since your account is currently under review, your listings will be temporarily removed for up to 30 days and you will not be able to complete further sales. You will also be unable to disburse funds from your Amazon.com Payments account during the review period. However, it is important that you continue to fulfill any orders that were completed before the removal of your listings, as we will use buyer feedback regarding these orders as part of the review. Please rest assured that you will be able to disburse any funds from your Payments account upon completion of this review process. If you signed up for a Pro Merchant account, any subscription fees assessed during the evaluation period will be refunded.

You will receive email notification when your account review is complete and you may continue to list items on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, we are not able to expedite this process.

If you would like to provide feedback about this process, please feel to write to [email protected]. While we are unable to provide personalized replies to messages sent to this address, please know that it is monitored regularly, and that we do take seller feedback seriously.

If you have general questions about your selling account, please visit the seller help pages on our web site: Amazon.com -> Help -> Selling at Amazon.com.

Attempted to send a feedback e-mail to [email protected] and received an e-mail back from the mailer daemon after 4 hours that it was having trouble getting sent.

Sent an e-mail to [email protected] about the issues I was experiencing and that I was having a hard time understanding why I keep getting e-mails saying something different than the last.

12/06/05

Received a copy/paste response from amazon.com.

Sent another e-mail to [email protected]. Asked for a customer service number.

Received an E-Mail stating the following:

Thank you for contacting us. Due to the status of your account your funds are reserved until we are sure all items have shipped and no A- z Guarantee Claims are received against your account. Your account will be evaluated 90 days after the date of your final sale. For questions regarding why your account has been blocked, please contact [email protected].

Sent a reply E-Mail asking why it was now 90 days instead of the original 30 and why m y account is blocked.

Received an e-mail quoting their participation agreement (no contact number given):

Per section 5. j. of the Amazon.com Participation Agreement:
j. We reserve the right to delay initiating the transfer of Payment Transaction credits to a Seller's bank account (or sending paper
checks) pending an investigation if we, in our sole discretion, believe Buyer or Seller may have violated the Participation Agreement. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Participation Agreement, if we determine, in our sole discretion, that Seller has violated this Participation Agreement, we may refuse to deliver a Payment Transaction credit to Seller and may instead maintain the amount of such credit in a trust account or may return the amount of the credit to Buyer. We will not be liable to Seller if we act in accordance with the provisions of this Section.

Sent an e-mail to [email protected] referencing their quoted section asking what they believe I violated, since their agreement clearly states that they reserve the right to delay the transfer of payment if they believe I have violated their participation agreement. Asked again for a customer service number.

Received the following E-Mail:

Thank you for writing. We understand your concern in this situation. Please understand your account is not blocked. As mentioned in our previous e-mail notification, as part of our ongoing commitment to improve the buying and selling experience on Amazon.com, we will be conducting a review of your Amazon.com selling account.

In order to minimize risk to buyers, we may at times remove listings of new sellers while the evaluation is conducted. Please know that this is not necessarily a negative reflection of your selling history, and that this action is taken regularly on newer selling accounts.

We will complete the review as quickly as possible, and we realize the issues that may be facing you. Once we have completed our review, we will notify you via e-mail. Unfortunately, we are not able to expedite this process.

While we appreciate your interest, after this correspondence, we will not continue to address the status of your account.

If you would like to provide feedback about this process, please feel to write to [email protected]. While we are unable to provide a personalized response to messages sent to this address, please know that it is monitored regularly, and that we do take seller feedback seriously.

So now they are stating that they will no longer address the status of my account, thereby refusing to answer the direct questions I asked about what they feel I violated and why they referred to their section 5. j. of their Participation Agreement if they feel I DIDN'T violate anything.

I have since sent back 2 e-mails back to [email protected] stating that they should be referencing a different section that states where they have the right to do this, and if I have not violated anything they never should have quoted section 5. j. Asked again for a customer service number.

I sent this on the 6th and, as expected, have not receive a reply.

Is there anything I can do? I feel that there's a lot of loopholes here and mistakes on their end. Am I wrong in thinking this? What about their reference to their Participation Agreement?

PLEASE help me on this. I have $700 worth of sales sitting in limbo and cannot sell anything more because of this. I was hoping to sell enough movies to make a trip to Utah with my wife and kids.

Thanks,
Doug

 

[janedoe23]

.
Is there anything I can do?

Yes, pass the aspirin bottle! I have a horrible headache from trying to keep up with your post.

 

[Gryphon410]

Um, ok, sorry. I did the best I could at giving detailed information so that I could get some good feedback on what to do. Sorry that it gave you a headache.