Amazon is like the Google of ecommerce, they are the leading platform to sell and buy online. If you sell online they are no real alternatives to Amazon.
I have started selling on Amazon last year and things were going really well. I was able to hit 14k within 3 months after I signed up for my Amazon seller account.
It felt really good to have this kind of success, I knew right away that this was my future. I quit my job as a customer care representative at T-Mobile and started to focus solely on my Amazon business.
At this point in time, I had no idea that Amazon was known to suspend sellers very easily and in many cases unfairly.
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I used AliExpress to source my products at a very low price and I was able to sell those items on at the very healthy profit margins on Amazon UK and Amazon US.
I also used my Chinese suppliers to fulfill all my orders. Which I would say (after my whole experience of having my Amazon account suspended for poor selling performance) was my biggest mistake.
I always chose suppliers with a minimum of 99.5% positive review score. I was thinking that if their review scores were exceptional good that I would never run into any issues concerning the fulfillment of those items.
The biggest challenge when using AliExpress for drop shipping is that the delivery time is from China to the UK or US can be in many cases several weeks. There hundreds of articles and YouTube videos online where people bragging online about how they were able to turnover hundred of thousands of dollars with using AliExpress for drop shipping.
The reason why all those people are now selling some information products on how to make fast money buy dropshipping goods from China because they were never actually able to make that business model work. I can almost guarantee you with certainty that most of them had their Amazon accounts suspended because of poor seller performance as well.
I had to find out this the hard way because those Chinese suppliers on AliExpress are very unreliable. Usually, they claim that the goods you ordered would arrive within four weeks after you placed the order. However, in many cases, it took nine sometimes even 10 weeks for the items to arrive. At this point, my buyer on Amazon would usually already have left me negative feedback even after refunded him or her the full amount.
There are thousands of Amazon sellers who tried to make that AliExpress drop shipping business work only to find out that their accounts are getting suspended for poor selling performance.
Having delivery times of up to two months is just unacceptable, the only solution to make that business work is by importing those goods directly to some cheap fulfillment warehouse in the US or UK or use Fulfillment by Amazon to ensure that all items arrive in an acceptable timeframe at the customer’s doorstep.
After my account got suspended for poor the selling performance I did a lot of research online and I found companies who offered Amazon appeal services at different price points. Most packages started around $200 up to $900 USD. Charging this amount of money for an and appeals letter and plan of action is my opinion way overpriced.
I came across an Amazon appeal service company (BizzExpert), who had packages starting at around $27 USD.
After I purchased the appeal package, they ask me to forward the Amazon suspension email as well any other correspondence I had with them relating to my poor performance suspension.
It’s taken them two days to have my custom appeal letter and plan of action ready. It took another five days until my Amazon account got reinstated.
I’m using now fulfillment by Amazon, my overall performance score has increased dramatically, all my buyers really happy because day don’t have to wait anymore for weeks to get their orders delivered.
Having to deal constantly with angry customers can also be very challenging and frustrating, I feel a lot better now because I don’t have to reply the angry customer messages anymore.
Running a business is not always easy. Only difficult times will show if you are a real entrepreneur or not.
Resources:
http://www.newsweek.com/how-good-girls-revolt-got-shot-down-amazon-again-773327