Pros
1. Immediate market to sell to
Cons
1. Amazon take a massive commission, up to 15% which is a lot of people's margin gone straight off the bat.
2. They have a thing called AZ Claim. This is a claim the buyer can make for just about anything and the seller has only days to respond to the claim and then the buyer gets all their money back unless you, the seller actually puts in a counter claim which is then up to the person receiving in Amazon. They basically favor the customer every time, even if the customers claim is rubbish. So the customer can pick anything wrong with a product, like a tiny scrape ( which they could probably do themselves) and then put in a claim. The worst part is then they have a great chance of winning and getting a free product. People are really taking advantage of this and it hurts sellers badly.
3. Automatic price lowering. Just as competition couldn't get any worse they introduced automatic price decreasing, meaning if you select this then your products will be the cheapest on Amazon, even if someone puts a product in at a ridiculously low cost ( possibly just to screw you) and then you have to go out of business, ouch.
4. Most of your time is on Amazon losing valuable time to focus on your real business or selling on your own platforms. If your starting off and don't have the resources to pay for a full time Amazon staff member then it's very hard to keep up. Amazon themselves send a ridiculous amount of emails and customers add to this so too much time is needed.
5. So many rules and easy to lose your selling privileges. Same as above, if you do not put 100% into Amazon then you start to lose points. When your points go too low then your gone. And whe your gone and have been relying on selling on Amazon they literally throw you out like you were nothing to them. The way to lose points seems endless. One example is if you delay a shipment, that's marking an order shipped. If an order comes in on Friday night and you don't mark it shipped until Monday then it's a delayed shipment and it effects your selling rights. Also sometimes Amazon will email you ona Saturday morning and only give you 24 hours to answer. If you don't answer then you can lose a claim or some selling privileges etc.
6. Amazon will destroy you with requests.
Out of the blue we got asked for certification that our products had certain standards. So they wanted Sophie's of the test certificates, WTF!! If we are selling a product that we bought of someone and they bought off another then where do we start with getting this sort of stuff. We were selling them without an issue and all of a sudden Amazon decide to destroy us even though we were selling a perfect product. Trying to tell them they should get the certificates from the manufacturer they don't want to know and pass you from Adam to Paul with no resolution, ever.
7. Too much competition so no money can be made. There's way too many people competing on Amazon it's geared towards the massive sellers that can get products for cheaper and make more money because they are selling in quantity and can afford all of the returns and queries Amazon have to offer.
8. Prepare to give products away for free. Because of amazons rules that even if someone raises an AZ claim which you win, they still go against you!! WTF, even if you win an AZ IT Goes against you, that's friggin insane.
In summary there's too many cons to selling on Amazon. Put your efforts into your own shop or website where you have more control and don't have to pay Amazon for a lot of hassle with zero returns.
