I have to say that there are more reasons to stay away from, or at least aware o f, Amazon before you

decide to sell there. I have sold 5 items there, and yes it 's very convenient. However, it comes with a price. 1. Their commission fees are high. I never bothered to check how they are calcul ated but I have gone to list stuff there that I chose to sell for $8 and they de cided they would charge $4 for shipping and in the end I would receive a total o f $8. (this is rounding off to the nearest dollar). I was like whoa, wait a minu te. Hold the phone. 50% commission? That's insane. The percentile isn't so high for higher prices items. I find the commission is worth it when selling items th at are in the range of multiple hundreds of dollars. 2. They use some ridiculous self-created table to calculate shipping costs of ca tegories of items such as books, musical instruments, etc. In other words, ALL i tems falling under those categories use a certain formula to calculate the shipp ing costs. This is not based on any real-world cost of shipping. The result: For every. single. item. I had to pay $10-$20 out of pocket to ship the items. This was using the cheapest available shipping method. If they choose expedited and live somewhere that ground shipping takes ages to get to, you're looking at fron ting $50+ out of pocket to ship items 3-day select, 2nd day air, etc. 3. The first time you sell anything on there, your earnings are frozen until the next two-week disbursal period. You don't get ANYTHING, not even the shipping c harges. You have to front the money 100% out of pocket. This makes it tough for people who are thinking of Amazon as a way to generate extra cash in an emergenc y, as if you're selling something to get some cash, it's probably because you ha ve none. 4. For each milestone of successful sales you have (an undocumented and unknown measurement of success) they conduct a review process on your seller account. Th is freezes your earnings for up to thirty days while they conduct an extensive i nvestigation to make sure you're not cheating your customers. DURING THIS TIME Y OU ARE STILL REQUIRED TO SHIP OUT ALL ITEMS THAT SELL, AND NOT GET PAID FOR THEM . With #3 they told me on the phone that my earnings would be frozen for thirty da ys because it's a new account. This is written no where on the site. I complaine d, got my funds disbursed immediately. With #2 they told me the only thing I can do is charge more for the item to cove r my shipping costs. Obviously this is not an option because then your item is n o longer the "lowest price" and when someone chooses the default buy option, it will not be yours that sells. Not a viable solution. With #4, they told me to request feedback from the buyers. None of my buyers had left me any feedback. So I requested feedback and one buyer e-mails me the feed back in e-mail. I told him he needs to leave it on the site. I e-mailed Amazon o f this saying I had no idea where to tell him to go because there is nothing on the help site giving you a URL (you have to just know where it is previously). T hey tell me that on average, only 10% of buyers leave feedback for sellers, and they cannot obligate the buyers to leave feedback (I never implied nor suggested this AT ALL). See the catch 22? They want me to have feedback for every time th ey put the account for review automatically after the next success milestone, ho wever only 10% of people leave feedback, which leaves me SOL. At the end of all this I closed all the listings I had left over. They still owe me $500 and my account is still in review, and I shipped ALL items same day, wh ich is much better than they do 90% of the time. Most of my customers got their items within 3-4 business days REGARDLESS of whether they chose Standard or Expe dited shipping, and I'm being treated like a criminal.

Honestly, I am NEVER doing business with them again. I can see that these things may not be the worst things ever for someone with enough capital to handle all the roadblocks. HOWEVER, if sellers just put up with this behavior, it will neve r change. Amazon would be nothing without its sellers.