> Press: If you're interested in running a news story about our situation and why Amazon is afraid of services that comparison shop Amazon's prices with other stores, please contact us at support@pricezombie.com
Yeah, that's really going to help your situation.
1) You built your product on top of someone else's service. That's always a rocky road. It is common to read about other companies in your shoes.
2) In the time you were operating you couldn't make a single contact at Amazon in case stuff happens?
1. PriceZombie was not built on top of Amazon. PriceZombie indexes products and prices in over 100 online retailers. The developers always had the option of using the PZ website as a front end to gather personal shopping habits and other data that is valuable to advertising and marketing companies - which is what many (most?) price trackers do as their primary source of revenue. PZ opted to get their funding from retailers instead. People purchased mostly from Amazon, therefor when Amazon pulled their affiliate program funding dried up and PZ had a choice - go to the dark side, close up, or sell.
2. They had many contacts, some of them quite high. PZ is a very ethical and methodical company. They dotted their i's and crossed their t's. They had an open dialog with Amazon where they were repeatedly told, in writing and on the phone, that they were in full compliance and there was no problem. The problem with Amazon is inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of their own rules.
The developers are in discussions now with companies that want to purchase the technology - including my own, though I don't think we can afford them. This is no garage set up by comp sci students. The developers have impressive credentials and they have created a very impressive system that has wide application to other uses.
Not technically for the reasons you stated. However, it is evident that PriceZombie was financially built on top of Amazon's Affiliate program. It's hard to argue against that when Amazon contributed 90% of revenue
That is dictated by where consumers end up shopping. You can diversify to thousands of stores, but if Amazon is the biggest seller, they will get the lion's share of the click throughs and purchases.
What PZ did was show users who shop at other stores, that Amazon was cheaper, and funnel users to Amazon. Sometimes Amazon wasn't cheaper, but I wonder if this is all about to change.
Definitely not defending them, but sometime's initiating contact can be a tricky thing. Because they may not have paid attention to you, and now you're basically told them "Hi, I exist!". Then later in a meeting, someone in Amazon says "Oh hey.. this site exists. I didn't know that... isn't that a violation of our TOS..??"
Yeah, that's really going to help your situation.
1) You built your product on top of someone else's service. That's always a rocky road. It is common to read about other companies in your shoes.
2) In the time you were operating you couldn't make a single contact at Amazon in case stuff happens?