@teo_audio
Sage words on Amazon in particular. I've been an Amazon seller for two decades and I couldn't even begin to describe the angst they create for me on an almost daily basis, it's a full-time job just trying to keep a handful of listings 'alive' in their ridiculously stupid and complex selling system.
And the level of customer service they have for sellers is beyond belief. Whenever I open a support ticket, it takes at least 3+ attempts to actually get a person to understand what I'm trying to get across. "Just READ my bloody question will you!"
And it's nothing complex on my side. I sell a branded vitamin supplement product, the same product I've sold for 20+ years. It's 'branded' in my name, I own the trademark and no other seller offers the same product on my label/sku.
A couple of years ago they de-listed all of my products for no stated reason.
After days of going back and forth with people with the loosest grasp of the English language, I was notified that my products had all been re-classified as 'pesticides'. PESTICIDES! (lol)
I sell health products from the beehive - honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis. These are formulated to support the immune system, absolutely nothing to do with pesticides.
It turned out that in one of the product descriptions I'd used the word 'pesticide'. (bee pollen from Asia often contains unwanted pesticides....blah blah so always buy USA bee pollen, etc).
So their 'robot' re-classified my entire catalog as pesticides.
Now then, you'd think it would be a simple case of contacting their customer service and explaining the issue, and having them fix it.
Nope. After six months of ongoing correspondence, I was told it could not be fixed. I couldn't just change the product description and remove the word 'pesticide'. I couldn't just delete the one product and have the remainder re-classified correctly.
Their solution - either close your account (since non of my listings were active) or.....to continue to sell on their platform, I was told I had to sit an online course on pesticide handling and management!
Further days and weeks go by of interacting with their people and I finally give up and register for their stupid course. I then discover it's a 'timed course' and it takes a minimum of four hours to complete! As a matter of principle, I could not bring myself to do it. (and I didn't really want my health supplements to be attached in any way to a pesticides category!)
So, I deleted my Seller account, registered a new Trademark, formed a new LLC, set up new banking, created all new product labeling, opened a new Amazon seller account, went through their ridiculously convoluted Brand Registry program....etc etc. When I got to the final step, which was advertising my 'new' products through the Amazon Promotion program, their system broke again. It would not let me enter a credit card to pay for Ads in their system. It took 3 months for them to fix this simple issue, during which time my only Amazon sales originated from advertising I was doing outside of Amazon. By this time I'd pretty much run dry, mentally, and was just focusing marketing through other outlets. But it's impossible to ignore Amazon if you want high-volume sales of small-ticket items.
Anyway - sorry for another long rant/post - this has nothing to do with eBay or PayPal, but they're each as bad as the other in my experience. (Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and now Walmart).
Sage words on Amazon in particular. I've been an Amazon seller for two decades and I couldn't even begin to describe the angst they create for me on an almost daily basis, it's a full-time job just trying to keep a handful of listings 'alive' in their ridiculously stupid and complex selling system.
And the level of customer service they have for sellers is beyond belief. Whenever I open a support ticket, it takes at least 3+ attempts to actually get a person to understand what I'm trying to get across. "Just READ my bloody question will you!"
And it's nothing complex on my side. I sell a branded vitamin supplement product, the same product I've sold for 20+ years. It's 'branded' in my name, I own the trademark and no other seller offers the same product on my label/sku.
A couple of years ago they de-listed all of my products for no stated reason.
After days of going back and forth with people with the loosest grasp of the English language, I was notified that my products had all been re-classified as 'pesticides'. PESTICIDES! (lol)
I sell health products from the beehive - honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis. These are formulated to support the immune system, absolutely nothing to do with pesticides.
It turned out that in one of the product descriptions I'd used the word 'pesticide'. (bee pollen from Asia often contains unwanted pesticides....blah blah so always buy USA bee pollen, etc).
So their 'robot' re-classified my entire catalog as pesticides.
Now then, you'd think it would be a simple case of contacting their customer service and explaining the issue, and having them fix it.
Nope. After six months of ongoing correspondence, I was told it could not be fixed. I couldn't just change the product description and remove the word 'pesticide'. I couldn't just delete the one product and have the remainder re-classified correctly.
Their solution - either close your account (since non of my listings were active) or.....to continue to sell on their platform, I was told I had to sit an online course on pesticide handling and management!
Further days and weeks go by of interacting with their people and I finally give up and register for their stupid course. I then discover it's a 'timed course' and it takes a minimum of four hours to complete! As a matter of principle, I could not bring myself to do it. (and I didn't really want my health supplements to be attached in any way to a pesticides category!)
So, I deleted my Seller account, registered a new Trademark, formed a new LLC, set up new banking, created all new product labeling, opened a new Amazon seller account, went through their ridiculously convoluted Brand Registry program....etc etc. When I got to the final step, which was advertising my 'new' products through the Amazon Promotion program, their system broke again. It would not let me enter a credit card to pay for Ads in their system. It took 3 months for them to fix this simple issue, during which time my only Amazon sales originated from advertising I was doing outside of Amazon. By this time I'd pretty much run dry, mentally, and was just focusing marketing through other outlets. But it's impossible to ignore Amazon if you want high-volume sales of small-ticket items.
Anyway - sorry for another long rant/post - this has nothing to do with eBay or PayPal, but they're each as bad as the other in my experience. (Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and now Walmart).