About the U.S amazon store...
Added 2024-02-05 13:59:30 +0000 UTCFebruary 2024
i feel like i owe you all an explanation...
this is a long sad story....
january 2023 me and my sister started planning our merch store on amazon, everything was going great, we planned to launch everything till july!
....until i had to change the status of my company in brazil, and that burocracy literally took MONTHS..... ok fine, in the meantime we were developing several cool stuff...then, when it was done, we thought "great, the store will be up for christmas!!"
.....and then, amazon made me think i must be really living in the bad place....a pain in the ass to do ANYTHING. But worst of all, the amazon manager updated the business adress wrong and it has to be the exact same as the credit card or they will BLOCK the account.
well, of course that happened, it is now blocked. FOR 3 WHOLE MONTHS. we cant change it, the manager wont do shit, theres no costumer support by phone, only by email, and it takes AGES to respond and they JUST.....WONT.....FIX.....IT.....
honestly its been a horrible experience, me and my sister been losing sleep and sanity over it. we have literally thousand of LYTD1 books READY TO BE SENT, and we cant do anything.....it was a huge investment and we had nothing back yet....a total nightmare....
We are still on the fight to fix the adress but the options are less and less....no one will help us, not even bots, and the alternative is to delete the store and lose all the investment and shipments we done already.
so.....yeah....thats where it is, we have no idea when its going to be fixed.
- if you happen to know anyone that could help us...DIRECTLY, please....reach out here in the comments....
in the meantime....i will be drawing, cause that is whats keeping ilustrAriane going right now...im glad im a consistent artist....
Comments
Hello, fellow romance author! ;)
Bibliophyllis 💖
2024-02-21 07:33:06 +0000 UTCI think Shark Robot and DFTBA are other sites where you can sell things. Maybe switch to that? IDK how painful switching would be but maybe it could work?
Rowan Jalso
2024-02-08 04:25:27 +0000 UTCThat's again in the as.. dammit. Im so sorry to hear that...all these bots and e Mails...I sometimes miss the good old days when you were able to talk to PPp im fu person...they were actually a lot more helpful
Mika
2024-02-07 16:02:58 +0000 UTCThat’s awful! I’m so sorry Amazon has been such a pain in the ass :( I hope everything gets resolved soon🤞🏻
AncientBeing
2024-02-07 05:21:07 +0000 UTCI hate Amazon with a passion. They treat their workers like slaves. And I am not surprised they blocked you for 3 months. That seems to be a standard, they do the same thing when you try to add or remove people from your "household" for prime TV benefits. An alternative could be setting up an independent site, with help of course. A lot of people have moved away from Etsy, for instance, and sell on their own websites.
Keeks
2024-02-06 21:31:34 +0000 UTCAmazon has a near monopoly, so they've decided that have to put anyone who might do business with them through hell. I hope things get cleared up soon. If you're looking at alternatives, places like Bonanza might work.
Becky Matthews-Pease
2024-02-06 03:20:00 +0000 UTCOh no, I'm so sorry!! I hope you can get through to a compassionate human being!!
Andi
2024-02-05 22:08:42 +0000 UTCAmazon blocked my personal account too and it was a freaking mess. I used to buy physical books on the UK website because there's no market for my country and I've been using the same card to pay the books that were shipped to my home address. And I got a kindle and I've started using Amazon US to buy ebooks and they've blocked my account because I needed to prove that card was mine (?!?!?). It's awful because you can't contact anybody from customer support if you don't have access to your account 😤😡 I've sent emails to all the email addresses I found online (even to Bezos 😅🤣), bombarded their fb and I've also called customer service who kept hanging up on me. The best option right now is to make a huge wave on social media, all your followers should bully amazon on ig/tiktok until they can't ignore you anymore
Alexandra Roncea
2024-02-05 20:35:57 +0000 UTCSame here!
Alexa Erin
2024-02-05 20:25:43 +0000 UTCI am so sorry that you are dealing with this, I cannot understand how Amazon treats its business partners this way. I know it is a different market, but I work at eBay with sellers like you, who run stores and many of them with completely original content. I would be happy to help you navigate your options of a store through eBay if that it's something you want to look into.
Barmy Hag
2024-02-05 19:50:34 +0000 UTCSo sorry this is happening!! I’d be willing to purchase a LYTD1 book through other sources like Etsy or something like that to help you gain back some of the investment money. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way! Much love ❤️
M0rningStar
2024-02-05 18:43:25 +0000 UTCWhen this happened to me with eBay I got my friend who is a lawyer to send a letter on their legal letterhead and attached that to my next complaint. That got things moving REALLY fast, so if you know anyone who is willing to shake a saber on your behalf don't hesitate to reach out. Even local government officials, any org bigger than you and your small business is the only thing the really seems to work with these big companies. The other thing I'd consider is maybe opening a shop somewhere without commission. Etsy is just the worst at letting you keep what you earn, I do not recommend that. I use Square as they will let you build your our storefront for free and the transaction fees as pretty low, same as their payment terminals. Anything that can help you generate revenue that you can leverage on your fight against Amazon!! I'm term of what to sell the easiest thing would be to sell digital copies of your works as these wouldn't need the investment for printing and shipping. Just find a good way to protect them in PDF format, and then distribute them with anything that generates individual records of who has downloaded. Dropbox had become surprisingly good at helping share artists work and you have a record of everyone who downloads, so any shady business can be traced. My heart goes out to you. My partner and I run a small business in the US and the amount of red tape here just floors me, I can't imagine what it would be like in Brazil. If there is any work around you can use to work with another local Amazon seller you know and sell through their account temporarily that's also helped some people I know out of a jam in the short term. I also follow a few creators who have had really good luck with Kickstarter. I've never dabbled in that but a few authors I read swear by that as the only way to sell comics. Last, hang in there, and let's us now if there is anything we can do to help. I do not mind calling people and harassing them in the name of helping a friend's business, that's what I do all day long I feel like 😅 I'm sure many fans would feel the same ❤️
Zan The Pebble Witch
2024-02-05 17:52:27 +0000 UTCAmazon is shite...I avoid buying from there whenever I can so if you open any other better platform for your physical goods that let's you ship to the US, I'm there.
CarrieBoo
2024-02-05 17:29:21 +0000 UTCThat’s so ridiculous. I back the idea of your own website if possible. I would be there so fast to support you and that you would (hopefully) get more of the profits is extra incentive for us.
Oddity
2024-02-05 17:18:02 +0000 UTCI have no Amazon advice and am sorry for the months of heartache. Un/related, when I'm frazzled by life's delightful roadblocks, I like to buy a few garage sale/value village plates and find a dumpster/alley that I can let loose. Hulk smash! For peace.
Annie Steel
2024-02-05 17:08:19 +0000 UTCMy husband can help build you a site! He’s great at storefronts, currently a programmer but his heart is in web design and development.
LaurenEH
2024-02-05 17:06:23 +0000 UTCOh my goodness, I’m so sorry. Have you tried setting up an Etsy shop, shopify, or Wix website? A lot of authors sell on Etsy. I used to sell on Etsy and the process is very straightforward and easy for anyone to use. Of course Etsy will take a small percentage of anything posted to their website but it’s worth it.
xOxTarenxOx
2024-02-05 16:53:49 +0000 UTCHi ilustrAriane, sorry to hear the Amazon bureaucracy is also a huge pain. I work in tech and my manager use to work for Amazon(in the engineering department). It is not a direct connection, but I can ask if they are willing to reach out to anyone that could potentially help. If you are ok with it, I can share your story with my manager. Cannot promise it will make the process go any faster unfortunately, but can give it a try.
Aleksandra
2024-02-05 16:49:39 +0000 UTCOoof sounds awful 😢 I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.
Icca
2024-02-05 16:46:19 +0000 UTCGod's, I'd tell Amazon to go get fucked and the create my own online shop. 😓😤That's absolute horse shit.
ChaosKitty420
2024-02-05 16:05:25 +0000 UTCMaybe an etsy?
Juniper Pierce
2024-02-05 15:39:48 +0000 UTCI'm sorry you have to deal with this. Can you create your own website or go to etsy or shop?
Vanessa G
2024-02-05 15:33:10 +0000 UTCOh my god what a nightmare!!! Sounds really frustrating, creds to you and your sister for sticking it out this far!!! I don’t have any advice to help unfortunately, but i'm praying to the amazon gods that you'll get it fixed soon🙏
Fru blom
2024-02-05 15:29:29 +0000 UTCAmazon is just such a hellscape for sellers and authors. If they had any kind of competition, they wouldn't be able to stay in business.
Lydia Holloway
2024-02-05 15:24:01 +0000 UTCDang. ):
MoonlitInuyasha
2024-02-05 15:11:57 +0000 UTCI do know that there are other places, like redbubble, etsy, and gumroad that could be more reliable as a main source of distribution. I would ask some other creators who have had successful comic books come out on how they did it. I know the author of Hooky on webtoons is from Spain and she has books in USA stores for it. There are probably welcoming help groups through a reddit thread on how to go about getting books out or even some easier solutions. If you want us to ever flood Amazon with requests to look into it let us know as viewers.
Captain Aryes
2024-02-05 15:10:44 +0000 UTCSo sorry to hear that. We'll be here to support you and I'll be sure to order a copy once able!
TinTin
2024-02-05 15:09:47 +0000 UTCI am so sorry for your troubles, and you will be in my thoughts. You have my support, and if there is anything I could do. If you have another venue to sell the items like ETSY or something then I will be all over buying your items. Good luck, and keep your head high.
Kandace Swinson
2024-02-05 15:08:20 +0000 UTCHoping they get it fixed soon. I'm sorry this occurred. Looking forward to making my purchase whenever it can occur.
DraconianBriana
2024-02-05 15:06:57 +0000 UTCYou got our support anyway ! Don’t give up. We won’t either
Melisande Reade
2024-02-05 14:56:21 +0000 UTCI was going to suggest this as well i really hope this gets worked out not only for their sake but for mine (i really want that sun moon necklace)
Abraham Crane
2024-02-05 14:47:27 +0000 UTCI’m so sorry this is happening. I wish I could help. ❤️
Shannon
2024-02-05 14:46:05 +0000 UTCOmg no
Midori Alexandros
2024-02-05 14:42:19 +0000 UTCSorry to hear about this :( I'm an author with a KDP account. Were you doing this via KDP? Do these releases have ISBNs? I don't release illustrated works, so I'm not sure how that goes. But I'm an author within the fantasy-romance space, so if you want to talk, please reach out :) Maybe we can talk to find a solution or I can help put you into contact with someone who can help.
taybel
2024-02-05 14:38:10 +0000 UTCI am so sorry that sounds like a nightmare.
Emily Gaff
2024-02-05 14:33:18 +0000 UTCIDK of anyone who could help but you should look into Etsy
CrazyOne
2024-02-05 14:17:12 +0000 UTCOh wait! What if, your customers that made purchases already flood Amazon with complaints about the account being Blocked??? That may force them to look into it?
Amethyst
2024-02-05 14:12:10 +0000 UTCGet your shit together Amazon! I'm sorry this is such a struggle for you.
Krista
2024-02-05 14:10:29 +0000 UTCDon’t do it through Amazon! a family member had the same issue in the US! do it through Etsy or shopify!
Scorpiana_
2024-02-05 14:09:51 +0000 UTCWoof... That's a rough one! I wish I had a resource for yall. I'll be cheering you on! I'd love to have ALL your books one day 💜
Amethyst
2024-02-05 14:09:27 +0000 UTCMake noise on social media. Public pressure can accomplish quite a bit.
Kythera of Anevern
2024-02-05 14:07:45 +0000 UTCCan you change the billing address on the CARD temporarily to make it match the incorrect address on the Amazon account just long enough to get past the address mismatch? I can't believe how fucked up that is.
Midori Alexandros
2024-02-05 14:04:54 +0000 UTC
