Jonathan Billings retweeted
We’re dealing with a tough situation on Amazon right now, and I’m sharing it because other brands heading into Q4 may face the same thing.
One of our flagship products was approved for a 12-day Best Deal (11/20–12/1). We built inventory, planned our strategy, and launched exactly at the price Amazon approved - the lowest Q4 price we've ever offered.
A few days into the deal, the system suddenly changed the discount requirements with no notice. Our deal badge disappeared, and Amazon started requiring an additional ~30% off beyond the approved deal price - a price point where we’d lose money on every unit.
We’ve never sold anywhere near that price. The choice became: run the deal at a loss or lose the deal entirely.
Sales dropped immediately. And because the change happened after inventory was already shipped in, we now have a large amount of stock stuck in FBA during the most expensive storage period of the year.
While we wait in appeal limbo, every day adds:
• High Q4 storage fees
• Risk of long-term storage fees
• Capital tied up
• Lost ranking and deal momentum
The bigger concern: if the system locks in this ultra-low price as the “correct” discount baseline, it may become impossible to run profitable deals this season.
Small brands can’t absorb sudden algorithmic price shifts like this. We followed the process, agreed to the terms, shipped the inventory and the requirements changed mid-deal.
At this point I don't know what to do - been panicking all day and feeling kind of stuck.
Jonathan Billings retweeted
The same abusive buyer is now up to 384 orders. Four more orders placed yesterday.
Seller Support has conducted 3 investigations without taking action.
How is 100% Return rate not flagged as fraud or abuse?? @amznsellerhelp
Amazon believes buyer return abuse is a solved problem. I have 379 orders from one buyer that say otherwise. A Seller Support investigation last month did not solve the problem. Please help me escalate this issue to the right team. @amznsellerhelp
Jonathan Billings retweeted
This is the #1 in Sports Nutrition Endurance & Energy Supplements on Amazon. It also is the #2 best selling creatine gummy on Amazon (by volume) having sold at least 50,000 units across all flavors and sizes over the last month,
It also happens to be a creatine gummy with no creatine in it, as confirmed by testing done at a leading lab. No creatine.
But hey, maybe you dont trust the lab tests. Let's take a look at the SFP and see if these could possibly have creatine in them. This brand claims to have 5000mg of creatine monohydrate per serving and a serving size of two gummies. Thats 2500mg of creatine per gummy. There's only one issue: each gummy weighs less than 2500mg in total! Generally creatine should make up about 30% of the total gummy weight. In this, case it makes up over 100% (which is uhh impossible.) This is just blatant.
I have been flagging this to Amazon for months via email and live meetings with relatively senior folks but this brand still continues to sell fake and potentially harmful product to unsuspecting American customers. This is a Chinese company (address is: NO. 99 KING FUK STREET.SANPOKONG.KOWLOON RM D07.8/F .KAI TAK FTY BUILDING, Hong Kong CHINA 518000) selling fake, potentially dangerous product to stadiums full of Americans every month. Amazon has done nothing about it and is even (if just algorithmically) rewarding this brand with the "Amazon's Choice" badge.
If you have a friend at Amazon, send this to them.
Jonathan Billings retweeted
We think tariffs are about bringing back manufacturing. Talk to small businesses first
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Chinese Sellers brazenly skirt Amazon's rules. They create dozens of Amazon Seller accounts and get around Amazon's security.
There's a secret way they do this. They use tools like this Ziniao browser that separates out the credentials and the IP address so that they can managed dozens or even hundreds of seller accounts. If one gets suspended, they have sleeper accounts ready at the waiting.
But the most damning thing is actually reading the reviews. Check these out. They actually brag about this on their home page.
"We need to register many Amazon stores for a long time. In 2019, we had to go through the second review all the time, which was very troublesome. After seeing netizens saying that the niche IP of Ziniao Browser would not be reviewed by Amazon, we registered with a try-and-see attitude, and found that there really would be no second review! Although there is no need for a second review when registering a store now, a video is required. We used the ZiNiao video function, which was very smooth and helped us a lot."
"Our company previously used a cloud server, and we had to tell employees all our accounts and passwords. After an operations executive left, he stole 21 of our accounts and passwords, resulting in a loss of more than 6 million. After learning about this, a friend strongly recommended the Ziniao browser, which allows employees to use it without having to obtain store accounts and passwords, and to transfer all permissions with one click after leaving the company, and to safely reclaim all permissions. It also allows access control, which controls operating permissions just like an Amazon sub-account, so we decisively switched to ZiNiao."
"When we used other browsers before, we suffered a lot of losses due to batch association. After a friend introduced us to Ziniao, we visited the company and found that there were more than 100 technicians. We decided to use Ziniao browser on the spot. Now we have thousands of stores, and ZiNiao always makes us feel at ease."
No wonder 75% of US Amazon sellers don't feel like it's a fair marketplace. This leads to one basic question:
Do Chinese Sellers get more or less scrutiny than US sellers? Should they? Does Amazon even know?
Jonathan Billings retweeted
I sold $25mm a year on Amazon for almost a decade @ajassy — that’s like $40mm in fees paid.
Amazon loved us. We sold Le Creuset, Kitchenaid, and 100 others that wouldn’t sell to Amazon direct out of fear they’d destroy their brand.
I got email threatened with defacto bankruptcy by unceremoniously and frivolously turning off our account nearly once a week.
Never. Ever. Were we in the wrong.
We were told to pay $5k/mo for account management and the pitch was “Amz is a big company. We do clumsy things. You pay us to protect you from us.”
Me and half a dozen employees lost sleep and lived the most stressful period of our lives in constant fear.
When we did something “wrong” we had to send in a “plan of action” that listed every conceivable thing we might have done wrong and our plan to fix it — if you guessed what you did wrong incorrectly you were suspended. Guess wrong twice more and you were BANNED.
Walked away 4 years ago and sleep well now. Still, emails like the one below trigger that anxiety.
Our new company (a 3PL with 200 employees in just 4 years) pledged to NEVER build a business that relied on Amazon. No SFP, no FBA prep, no FBM. Nothing.
It’s shocking to see these emails still go out.
This is a button click to your $4/hr employee in the Philippines. To your sellers, this is risk of catastrophic financial damage.
It spawned an entire industry to just help write POA’s and get you unsuspended.
Lloyds started offering suspension insurance.
Amazon has cried wolf about threatening suspension for so long the only sellers left are the ones who openly mock emails like this (love you @michaelpatron0 😅) or are comfortable with these REAL risks of suspension (they’re insane) or build networks of black hat systems to exploit the platform.
This drives smart people away from the platform and degrades it.
@Shopify dealt with similar issues with DMCA abuse and @harleyf and @tobi solution was to lean in and add more resources to personally work with sellers — not more human robots with canned answers whose only tool to fix issues is a gun.
Amazon can afford to stop this crap. It cannot afford to continue it.
Amazon sending this email out on a Friday night. Log in and my defect rate is 0.36%. lol. @ajassy can you teach me to be a better seller?
Jonathan Billings retweeted
De Minimis and unfair foreign competition on all ecommerce platforms is quite literally giving the home team a MAJOR disadvantage.
And US taxpayers are subsidizing this!?!?!?!
Forever 21 just called this out in their bankruptcy.
You CANNOT save US manufacturing without saving US brands.
@mcuban @JDVance @realDonaldTrump @jacobhelberg
Retailer @Forever21 points to de minimis as driving its bankruptcy.
U.S. jobs, payroll tax, personal income tax, corporate income tax, and property taxes lost. All the margin goes overseas, with @FedEx, @UPS and @DHLGlobal taking some vig from the top.
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Get these Chinese companies to pay to sell online in the USA and you will raise money to reduce the debt. And reduce the number of knockoffs , helping entrepreneurs.
This is insane. @realDonaldTrump @andrewrsorkin @CNBC @SquawkCNBC @JoeSquawk
This is insanity.
Foreign companies can sell in the U.S. without a single piece of paper with the US or State government.
Almost every single other country in the world requires registration and taxes.
We are giving the world a free lunch with free access to the best economy ever
@mcuban
Jonathan Billings retweeted
This is insanity.
Foreign companies can sell in the U.S. without a single piece of paper with the US or State government.
Almost every single other country in the world requires registration and taxes.
We are giving the world a free lunch with free access to the best economy ever
@mcuban
I am literally on a call right now to learn about how my US business can sell products in Mexico.
In order to sell in MX, I need the following:
1) Register my business
2) Have an MX bank account
3) Register my products (supplements)
4) Customers pay VAT when I sell
5) I have to file and pay income tax in MX on profits made in MX
For a foreign company to sell in the US on Amazon.com, they don't need to do a single one of these things 🤯
Jonathan Billings retweeted
I just paid over $20,000 in tariffs on two containers.
Regardless of whether tariffs are good for the USA (and the world), they need to be executed better.
We committed to purchasing these goods before Trump was elected, when there was 0% duty.
We shipped them before February 1st, so the tariff was not supposed to apply, but it is being applied because they are arriving after March 4th.
Sea shipping is slow, and so is going through the Panama Canal to get to Houston; we can't control this.
So this is $20,000 in unpredictable costs that we must shoulder. We went from paying $100,000 in goods costs to $120,000.
When we're selling these goods to a retailer at a price decided months ago we go from profitable to losing money.
And this tariff is not protecting a toy industry in the USA. The product is stuffed animals. We have a 20% tariff right now.
Even with a 200% tariff, I'm not sure if you could make these products in the United States.
And because we've had 25% tariffs put on Mexico twice, and then taken off twice, we won't be running down to Mexico, which has nowhere near the supply chain China does, to make our products.
And because on April 1st, there is a plan to have reciprocal tariffs on all countries, Vietnam and Indonesia should have duties that are as high as China's. So, that's not an option either.
So, I suppose, for now, the plan is to just make toys more expensive, no matter where they are made.
We cannot eat these cost increases, nor will our manufacturers. Thinking otherwise is magic.
So our retail prices will go up, not 20%, but probably 10-15% to account for not only the cost increase, but all the the extra work we need to do from arguing with customs brokers to the uncertainty.
These products are useful to parents, schools, and children.
But since these tariffs won't start a manufacturing renaissance in the United States because our supply chain is worse than other countries and because our labor is way more expensive both actually and effectively, they are a tax.
Toys, along with many other imports, will get more expensive and will be purchased less.
The United States needs to decide what it wants to do. Our president has built a lot, and I respect that, but I'm not sure he's ever manufactured anything.
Many of the products we use are not as simple as steel where, if certified, product from one country is interchangeable with that of another.
Most products are not like that. You can't say "we're going to build top of the line chips from Taiwan in Arizona, starting tomorrow". Bananas don't grow in the USA. There is no supply chain for stuffed animals in the United States or Mexico and what is in Southeast Asia is mostly imported from China.
What we need is a plan.
Stuffed animals will never be made in the United States. The labor costs are just too high. They can't be made with robots; we're far from that.
Let's put tariffs on the products that play to America's strengths or things that we need to make ourselves like medical equipment and food (because in war, you can't get that from other countries) and let's apply those tariffs to all countries instead of just the ones that we don't like this week.
And let's not do it on arbitrary timelines.
No one is going to build a factory in America when tariffs every other week are on and off.
Our administration's term is 4 years. Let's add 5% tariffs per year, until it hits 20% in year 4, no going back.
Yes, our system is such that when you have a new president, you have a new tariff regime, but our last president kept the tariffs made by our previous one.
Good policy is good policy.
We need a plan that's certain that plays to America's strengths, not ambiguous volatility.
And if we don't get that, we're going not only get higher prices, but a major recession, if not worse, in our industry, because this is going to hurt a lot, and not just jobs overseas, but jobs here in the USA.
So I hope the administration takes this feedback and uses it to adjust the strategy instead of doubling down on it.
PS if anyone knows how I can get some sort of exclusion for this $20,000 in tariffs on product purchased before president was elected, shipped before February 1st, please reply!
Jonathan Billings retweeted
People say US manufacturing is back
Lemme tell you what happened to me this week
I reached out to soft good designers in the US for DESIGN quotes
Got quotes $18,000 - $21,000
China did R&D, new design development, and samples for free.
I’m not sure how a small brands can rely on US manufacturing when 10x the money is needed before manicuring even begins.
Same disadvantage of manufacturing in US is true of payment terms, order quantities, etc
Forgot that it’s usually 5x the price too.
And despite what most say and think, they’re not paying more for US made goods.
Of course there are expectations but I’m convinced most people who think US manufacturing can easily return are either in a category that DOES benefit or have never run a small business.
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Update- no call no email
@awscloud what a terrible experience.
48 hours later
Was told to expect a call between 9am and 2pm. It's 1:05pm
Will I be getting a call back?
No is currently the favorite at -300
@awscloud @AWSstartups
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Hey @awscloud someone added a MFA and new phone number to our account and the first time I can get help with for this is over 36 hours from now
We're paying thousands a month and this seems like terrible service can you please assist?
@AWSstartups @AWSSecurityInfo
Jonathan Billings retweeted
No update from @awscloud.
Still locked out, no response from support and phone call back scheduled for 4pm
some helpful AWS employees are trying to help behind the scenes
An AI support bot would be better than whatever support caste system they have currently going
Hey @awscloud someone added a MFA and new phone number to our account and the first time I can get help with for this is over 36 hours from now
We're paying thousands a month and this seems like terrible service can you please assist?
@AWSstartups @AWSSecurityInfo
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Amazon.com is mostly counterfeit products pretending to be my books and calendars.
The platform is largely worthless to independent publishers who don't have a full-time lawyer to chase these down.
I'd need to BUY every counterfeit to have the content to submit to Amazon. That's their dumb system.
Worthless.
@JeffBezos
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Correct me if wrong, but your system requires me to BUY the fakes so I can show you they are fake. Meanwhile, ten new fakes show up and there is no end.
That is not a workable system. Please have your legal team contact me.
@ScottAdamsSays Hello. We'd like to help. Amazon's Report Infringement form is intended for use by intellectual property rights owners to notify Amazon of alleged intellectual property infringements. More info here: amzn.to/40erszs. We hope this helps!
-Cris
Jonathan Billings retweeted
The vibe has shifted.
When we launched Mini Katana in 2021, we were the only ones selling anything we had.
Slowly, over time a million copycats formed. I can’t do anything to stop them.
My largest competitors for that business all ship direct from China and use loopholes to evade tariffs and taxes.
They don’t need to have insurance like do. Pay sales tax like I do. They don’t hire Americans like I do.
In 2022, I threw up my arms and gave up on doing anything about it.
The last 3 months I’ve never seen so many folks talk about the issue in the mainstream like this.
If something shifts in 2025 that ends these loopholes that let China dominate on Amazon and Ecomm, it will make it directionally easier to be doing online sales as an American small business.
It’ll be the first event in the long time that does that.
If we want to end knockoffs , we should require any products from china (to start), to:
1. Register as an importer of products and post a minimum of 25k bond against potential future infringements that scales as potential sales increase
2. Have to register and display any product they want to sell online, on a .gov website (similar to patents ) for 90 days. Allowing IP holders to review for infringement
3. Pay 5k per product to cover cost of the above
4. If challenged, like the DMCA, prove they are not infringing. The onus is on them. Not the American company, which today bears all the risk and cost burden to prove a knock off should be deleted from Amazon or wherever
5. Automate the system, so once approved a number is assigned to the product (like patents )
6. Fine any retailer who sells an imported product a lot of money.
7. Consider making the 5k per product fee, and annual fee
8. If the product wasn’t going to sell enough to cover these fees and overhead, it was only there to rip off sales from American Companies
This is how you get China to pay. And how you at least start to protect American companies, from being knocked off.
Jonathan Billings retweeted
If we want to end knockoffs , we should require any products from china (to start), to:
1. Register as an importer of products and post a minimum of 25k bond against potential future infringements that scales as potential sales increase
2. Have to register and display any product they want to sell online, on a .gov website (similar to patents ) for 90 days. Allowing IP holders to review for infringement
3. Pay 5k per product to cover cost of the above
4. If challenged, like the DMCA, prove they are not infringing. The onus is on them. Not the American company, which today bears all the risk and cost burden to prove a knock off should be deleted from Amazon or wherever
5. Automate the system, so once approved a number is assigned to the product (like patents )
6. Fine any retailer who sells an imported product a lot of money.
7. Consider making the 5k per product fee, and annual fee
8. If the product wasn’t going to sell enough to cover these fees and overhead, it was only there to rip off sales from American Companies
This is how you get China to pay. And how you at least start to protect American companies, from being knocked off.
The Amazon counterfeit product scandal is way worse than I thought. It’s massive. I wouldn’t hold the stock until it gets sorted out.
100% of the Dilbert calendars on Amazon are fake. I don’t sell the calendar on Amazon. And Amazon has an (intentionally) broken system for reporting the fakes. The fakes come faster than the reporting system.
I’m hearing incredible stories of Amazon abusing American small business owners by essentially being accomplices in stealing their work and giving it to China. The system is so robust that ANY successful American product China can copy gets knocked off.
More on that story today.
Jonathan Billings retweeted
Amazon is a homeland security issue at this point. It's a tool for China to destroy nearly 100% of SUCCESSFUL small American businesses selling on the platform.
