I fully believe this, and feel terrible for this seller, having had a similar experience.
For nearly a decade I ran a successful side hustle on Amazon from something that was just making beer money to making more than my day job (grew to $6.5 million/yr in sales at it's peak) and ran into the same thing earlier this summer.
Competitors attacking listings with false claims to try and shut your account, or listing down was a regular occurance(search for false 'used sold as new' -- the old version of this), and a headache that could be addressed although it often would take at least a weeks worth of effort and fights with the automated systems. This last series of attacks -- also counterfeit claims in my case -- no such luck -- the process has changed, the invoices from the same suppliers and letters of authorization from the manufacturer not accepted.
As it stands I am waiting on them to destroy roughly $120,000k in inventory that they refuse to release. Maybe more because their inventory tracking is garbage and it's not uncommon for items to be lost for months in their warehouse only to magically reappear... The tracking and inconsistent handling of returns is such a mess I can't exactly tell as anyone using FBA at volume just has to accept there will be variance between their known inventory and what Amazon says you have...
Fortunately, the market I targeted was heavily impacted by COVID so outside of a modest push associated with the back to school season I dodged a bullet as I essentially shut down on the 'buy side' when that all flared up and focused on getting back to cash.
I'm also lucky that I started scaling things back and looking to build out other channels about this time last year when they and WalMart started just automatically price matching one another, including prices from their respective 3rd party sellers, driving prices into the ground -- even below wholesale in some cases.
Amusingly, they have noticed I stopped sending new inventory in and some of their listings are now going unfilled and call at least once a week trying to get me back. (Amazon benefits tremendously from not tying up their cash on inventory and using 3rd party sellers to keep their stock.) When I tell them I'm willing to come back once they help me resolve this issues w/ a real person or even go and physically inspect the inventory they have impounded they go silent.
I thank them for helping to accelerate my long term financial goals, but to be honest, having been free of them for a few months now, the weight of not living in constant fear of jumping through their hoops has drastically improved my quality of life.
No idea if they're any good but the junglescout marketplace has Seller Suspension services. Might be worth seeing if they can help with your inventory?
Another one I've heard of is Thompson & Holt - again not a recommendation but they may be able to help.
For nearly a decade I ran a successful side hustle on Amazon from something that was just making beer money to making more than my day job (grew to $6.5 million/yr in sales at it's peak) and ran into the same thing earlier this summer.
Competitors attacking listings with false claims to try and shut your account, or listing down was a regular occurance(search for false 'used sold as new' -- the old version of this), and a headache that could be addressed although it often would take at least a weeks worth of effort and fights with the automated systems. This last series of attacks -- also counterfeit claims in my case -- no such luck -- the process has changed, the invoices from the same suppliers and letters of authorization from the manufacturer not accepted.
As it stands I am waiting on them to destroy roughly $120,000k in inventory that they refuse to release. Maybe more because their inventory tracking is garbage and it's not uncommon for items to be lost for months in their warehouse only to magically reappear... The tracking and inconsistent handling of returns is such a mess I can't exactly tell as anyone using FBA at volume just has to accept there will be variance between their known inventory and what Amazon says you have...
Fortunately, the market I targeted was heavily impacted by COVID so outside of a modest push associated with the back to school season I dodged a bullet as I essentially shut down on the 'buy side' when that all flared up and focused on getting back to cash.
I'm also lucky that I started scaling things back and looking to build out other channels about this time last year when they and WalMart started just automatically price matching one another, including prices from their respective 3rd party sellers, driving prices into the ground -- even below wholesale in some cases.
Amusingly, they have noticed I stopped sending new inventory in and some of their listings are now going unfilled and call at least once a week trying to get me back. (Amazon benefits tremendously from not tying up their cash on inventory and using 3rd party sellers to keep their stock.) When I tell them I'm willing to come back once they help me resolve this issues w/ a real person or even go and physically inspect the inventory they have impounded they go silent.
I thank them for helping to accelerate my long term financial goals, but to be honest, having been free of them for a few months now, the weight of not living in constant fear of jumping through their hoops has drastically improved my quality of life.