Hi All,
I am wondering if any of you are required by Amazon to submit your personal information for Seller Identify Verification on Amazon Marketplace even you are a company in good standing and legally incorporated in the US?
Like many of you, our company has been selling USB products on Amazon Marketplace for years. Recently, Amazon’s seller Identify Verification requirement really bothers us and essentially doesn’t make any sense. I would like to share the issues we have experienced on identity verification with Amazon Marketplace. Just in a word, Amazon’s demand for identify Verification is problematic on the following aspects:
1. Inconsistent and confusing messages: Amazon keeps changing the reasons for why collecting personal information is necessary:
a) EU regulations (we found it is not applicable);
b) INFORM Consumers Act (we found it is not applicable either);
c) Quoting Amazon’s company policy (We found Amazon has not mentioned this requirement until now).
2. Not following US laws: Amazon insists to collect personal information from a non-individual seller like us despite the INFORM Consumer Act law clearly states a company can choose to use tax document that contains business name and business address for verification.
3. Misleading info: Throughout the process we had been confused to receive misleading and inconsistent information from various departments within Amazon to us for multiple times:
a) Told us to change TAX setting to avoid submitting personal information
b) Told us to contact Amazon Legal team for further appeal, but no response was received from Amazon after our legal sent letters;
c) Told us that three product listings infringe on the intellectual property of others but the fact is: those listings are perfectly fine without infringement of any kind; in addition We had removed those listings years ago due to product updating. It is confusing and doesn’t make any sense for why Amazon mentioned it as part of the identity verification at this moment. After we pointed it out, Amazon no longer mention this in later communication for identity verification.
We have sent letters to Amazon’ s top Management， including their board, CEO etc. to address this problem a week ago. If we don’t hear from them within 30 days, we will completely withdrawing Amazon Marketplace, no long selling there, period.
Hope this message is useful to you, thanks.
