Amazon makes life so hard for their suppliers it doesn't even surprise me. I once shipped a box of 10 laptops to sell on FBA (retail value ~$10k) and UPS showed the box as delivered, Amazon checked in the units and showed them available for sale on the website. Then 24 hours later all of them got removed saying I sent the inaccurate quantity in the box and none where now available for sale. The laptops disappeared and I had to do an insurance claim with UPS. Amazon's support was horrible and made me never want to sell with them again. Lots of stories like mine on the Amazon subreddit.
Subreddits tend to wildly misrepresent reality due to survivorship bias. People generally don't post or noodle through such communities when things are going well. That's not to say there isn't a significant supplier issue -- just be aware of the company you keep. I often forget to be critical of the bubbles I inhabit.
In any case, I do wonder if Amazon's treatment of folk like you would improve considerably if Amazon had competition. It seems they can push you around because there are no consequences to pay.
"Subreddits tend to wildly misrepresent reality due to survivorship bias"
I disagree. If Amazon had great customer service, there wouldn't be a large volume of people complaining.
"In any case, I do wonder if Amazon's treatment of folk like you would improve considerably if Amazon had competitio"
I agree with you here. The only two marketplaces that actually get traffic are Ebay and Amazon. I've tried them all over the years and the rest combined don't even come close.
> If Amazon had great customer service, there wouldn't be a large volume of people complaining.
Volume of complainers is an absolute number. Customer service can only reduce the proportion of complainers. If you have 50 complainers on 100 customers, bad customer service. If you have 50 complainers on 1,000,000 customers, good customer service.
You can conclude nearly nothing based on the absolute number of complainers in isolation.
As a counterpoint, we regularly have Amazon reimburse us for thousands of dollars of merchandise when they lose our products at their warehouses. And they reimburse us for what we would have netted had we sold the product, instead of what the product cost us. It's been a great arrangement so far.
