Amazon has become a massive global platform, attracting millions of buyers across several countries. For buyers, Amazon is often regarded as a convenient and reliable marketplace. However, the experience for sellers—especially small businesses—can be far from smooth, as we have painfully learned over the past three years of selling on the platform.
A Pricey Platform for Sellers
One of the major hurdles for sellers on Amazon is the cost. While it might appear to be a lucrative platform for reaching customers, the financial reality is sobering. On average, Amazon takes more than 40% of our total sales revenue. This includes various fees such as Amazon's commission, fulfillment fees, and, most significantly, advertising costs.
To even have a chance at making sales, sellers must invest heavily in ads to get their products seen on the first page of Amazon search results. Without these ads, visibility plummets, and so do sales. This creates a vicious cycle where sellers, especially small businesses, are forced to pay more just to maintain their presence, eating deeply into profits.
A Complicated Backend and Listing System
If the financial burden wasn’t enough, Amazon's backend system for sellers adds another layer of complexity. Managing listings and inventory is not user-friendly. The system is notoriously difficult to navigate, and Amazon frequently changes its rules and policies, making it harder for sellers to keep up.
From inventory management to listing updates, every step of the process feels unnecessarily complicated. What worked a month ago might not work today, and sellers are left scrambling to figure out the new requirements and systems. It feels like a constant battle to keep your product listings compliant and visible.
The Real Disaster: Amazon’s Seller Support
But perhaps the most frustrating aspect of our experience has been Amazon’s seller support. Since early 2024, we’ve been battling a major issue: our best-selling product was deactivated by Amazon without any clear explanation. We have opened more than ten support cases in an attempt to resolve the issue, but nearly a year later, the product remains inactive.
The support team itself is a disaster. Agents often do not seem to understand the problem, and instead of offering real assistance, they copy and paste prewritten responses. These replies are often vague, stating that we are "not eligible to sell" without providing any specific reasoning or steps to fix the issue. When I have insisted on more details, the next agent might offer a different solution—one that is either irrelevant or completely useless to our situation.
This cycle has repeated itself over and over again. We’ve lost not just money, but time and patience. Amazon’s support team has been unable to provide any meaningful help for months, leaving us stuck in limbo with one of our key products off the market.
Conclusion: A Nightmare for Small Sellers
After three years of selling on Amazon, we can confidently say that it is not the dream platform it is made out to be—at least not for small sellers. While Amazon is a great marketplace for buyers, the costs, complicated systems, and terrible seller support make it a nightmare for those of us trying to run a small business.
If you are a small seller considering Amazon, be prepared for a rough ride. High costs, difficult systems, and poor support can turn what looks like a promising opportunity into a painful and costly experience. Amazon might offer access to millions of buyers, but it comes at a steep price for small businesses.