In my college NISER, We used to go other institutions for internship in summer time and were granted a scholarship of 20K with which we used to buy books cause there is no other way you can avail that.
Looking into that fact that I was later kicked out from my college, it was inevitable that books were untouched and still they are like that. So I suddenly gave a thought to try out being a book seller at Amazon!
I registered at Amazon.com. It needs a credit card to become a seller there which I got by pulling lots of strings (Banks don’t like 21 old kiddos here) but later found that you can not sell in India using Amazon.com account; neither can you make another account with Amazon.in cause the email address is already used in that case. So I made another new account with Amazon.in and started.
Get 1000 INR
It is indeed sarcastic that I am writing a blog for arguing to leave from Amazon Seller Program but I got an offer to get you a joining bonus of up Rs.1000 when they launch on Amazon.in! Interested?
Hence the points.
I will let you go through the whole journey of amazing start and why I ended up leaving this business.
- Cool thing is there is no hassle of VAT and other stuffs in the books. So it was easy to get started.
2. I had 51 books. I have listed all of them and all of a sudden I got two orders in the same day I listed them. It was unbelievable. I made 27 sales. (I rejected 5 units).
3. Never opt for Amazon Easy Ship. You will never make profits if you are selling books and using Amazon Easy Ship. The charge is too too high.
4. Secondly, my Amazon Easy Ship guy turned out to be an a**hole. He used to take the books on the scheduled time and wait for one, two more days before confirming the shipment. Calling in Amazon seller central didn’t helped me. He said some bar code is not matching. Next time, I confirmed myself once with the barcode number and he said it again but after two days it automatically matched. Haha, that’s a nice scamming excuse.
5. When you list a product there is an option that you want to Easyship or Selfship the item. Always choose the Selfship. Otherwise there is no option to change that. I was having superb sales and I thought of tie-ing up all the local Bengali publishers as I have a good pull over them but after the following incident I skipped myself out.
6. The Amazon Seller Support is not all Seller friendly. They hold up money and do whatever they want and they lie! I called Seller Support and asked them to disable this Easyship thing entirely out of my account. The lady beside the opposite side of phone call was very warming and said that it will be disabled immediately after I disconnected the call.
Next order came. I was out for Delhi for some issues with DGCA and customs; so I asked my dad to ship it and send me the tracking ID. To my utter disbelief, it was still Easyship when I opened my app.
I called them up and I have this exact conversation recorded,“Sir, I know it’s not your fault but it is company’s policy that you have to pay for it.”.
What the hell? I yelled at him and after waiting 36 minutes ( So the mobile bill was more than that shady shifting charge from Easy Ship to Self Ship.) I got to talk with a boss figure who kept me waiting for another 20 minutes and promised me a call back the same night.
Well, I am still waiting for the call.
I got a mail that they have resolved the issue. They made the order marked shipped internally. But next day, it came to the system again and they cancelled the order accusing that I didn’t shipped it. Meh ?
And they deducted 2.5% cancellation charge. How pathetic is it? I lost the item; I paid the shipping; I paid the phone bills and I paid 2.5% shit charges.
7. The seller support is typical Indian support. We all prefer chatting where we need to write a thing once and our ‘supporters’ can read it 4 times but although there is an option for Seller support. Their reply time is 2 minutes on average and the reply is –“What is your number? Let us call you!” Then they waste your time vaguely.
Bottom line – I was doing it for fun but it was not worth it. It’s frustrating but well, who knows I will try again equipped with this knowledge.
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