Amazon Third Party Sellers Should Be Banned If They Don’t Have Products

Well, it happened again. I bought an item from another Amazon third party seller only to receive a cancellation several days later because it turned out that they didn’t have the item. I’d understand…if this wasn’t something like the hundredth time this happened.

(Note: This was a used video game. I still try to support my local independent bookseller whenever I can because I love my local independent and Amazon keeps torquing me off.)

Seriously, the viability of Amazon’s third party sellers only works if you can reasonably trust that they actually have the products that they are offering. They come up with all kinds of excuses, but the bottom line is there are many, many sellers who offer something they don’t actually have. Then, when there is an order, they try to get it quick and cancel if they can’t. They do this to keep inventory costs down, but it really makes ordering through third party sellers suck.

Now, I know that that there are times when a screw up happens and they really thought they had something that they turn out not to. However, this happens way, way too often for that. Some sellers do it habitually. There comes a point where it simply isn’t believable, and this is where Amazon should put their boot down.

After all…they allow the third party sellers on their site. They should be able to figure out if a third party seller is doing this habitually, and penalize them for it.

I’ve been reluctant to use third party sellers frequently because of this. If Amazon wants to keep people using their third party seller system, they ought to crack down on this at least a little.

If they don’t care though, then they can go right on ahead with what they’ve been doing.

[END RANT]