Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Closing My Amazon Seller Account - After A "Funds Delayed" Fiasco

For the first time in over nine years as a seller on amazon.com I ran into a head twisting, incomprehensible issue to do with getting paid after mailing out one of my recently purchased books. ('The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism').  While in good faith I packed up a near mint copy of the book and mailed it to the purchaser in GA, Amazon said it was unable to pay me because my credit card info (required in one's seller account for some reason, perhaps to confirm  identity) was "invalid".

I then had to initiate a case file and proceeded to respond to these geniuses (via Amazon's message system) that I already used the SAME card - with three examples cited - for book and dvd purchases, which went through without a hitch. I also had to make it clear the card was not 'prepaid" or a debit card. So clearly the problem could not be that the credit card was invalid given the purchases were made!

But Amazon insisted that I had to "update" my card, which eventually - as I saw it  - meant having to totally delete the old card and replace it with a new one.

Evidently the issue - among others involving delayed funds- is not new, not at all,  or unique to me, see e.g. the discussion forum here:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=163505


Wherein one seller writes:


"Exactly the same issue here. Credit card information is invalid, the help and contact link doesn't refer to any help or contact formular. Additional, our companies credit card has been charged with the 39.99 USD monthly fee but Amazon still says the credit card information was invalid! How ridiculous is this?!

And also:

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-sellers-complain-of-tied-up-payments-account-shutdowns/


Anyway, I decided that given this sort of fiasco can happen once, it can happen again, and it is simply more trouble than profit to deal with it. Also,  I don 't plan to interject any more credit cards so Amazon can also declare them invalid. Hence, I closed my seller account this a.m.(though the Amazon agent said I will have to wait at least until after Jan. 10 to be paid, because your account has to be closed that long before you can get the delayed funds.

Given the Amazon gateway is now closed for me as a seller, I can still make the following books available to be ordered from this blog site: 1) 'Beyond Atheism, Beyond God',  and 2) The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism'  . This will be for a limited time (6 mos.).

Here's how it will work, and bear in mind my prices for those books are a lot less than the remaining Amazon sellers:

You send me - via the moderated comments field- a request for one or more books along with your email address.(No 'secondary' emails, i.e. gmail, or yahoo.com, please!) . The information will not be published, only the information taken. I will then email you with the total price including postage, and you have the option to send away your order to my address (which will be supplied in the email) to make the purchase. For comparison, the price of each of the above books new is $12.00, which is lower than other sellers offer, including on amazon.com.

Sound fair? I hope so because I won't be selling any longer on Amazon!

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