Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Is Kicking All Unauthorized Apple Refurbishers Off the Site (vice.com)
In a new agreement between tech giants Amazon and Apple, shoppers will soon see a selection of the latest Apple products on Amazon.com. This is not good news for everyone. Motherboard: John Bumstead is a computer refurbisher who, every year, saves thousands of laptops from the shredder. He buys MacBooks en masse from electronics recyclers, fixes them, then sells them on Amazon Marketplace or wholesales them to vendors who do the same. Friday morning, Bumstead got an email from Amazon informing him that he'd no longer be allowed to sell Apple computers on the platform, thanks to a new agreement between Apple and Amazon that will only allow "authorized resellers" to sell Apple products.
"As part of a new agreement with Apple, we are working with a select group of authorized resellers to offer an expanded selection of Apple and Beats products, including new releases, in Amazon's stores," the email says. "You are receiving this message because you are currently selling, or have previously sold, Apple or Beats products. Your existing offers for those products will soon be removed from Amazon's online store in the United States. Please contact Apple if you would like to apply to become an authorized reseller on Amazon." As the email notes, this is part of a new agreement between two of the largest companies in the world that will allow Amazon to sell new Apple products around the world; in exchange, Amazon agreed to let Apple pick-and-choose who is allowed to sell Apple products on the site.
"As part of a new agreement with Apple, we are working with a select group of authorized resellers to offer an expanded selection of Apple and Beats products, including new releases, in Amazon's stores," the email says. "You are receiving this message because you are currently selling, or have previously sold, Apple or Beats products. Your existing offers for those products will soon be removed from Amazon's online store in the United States. Please contact Apple if you would like to apply to become an authorized reseller on Amazon." As the email notes, this is part of a new agreement between two of the largest companies in the world that will allow Amazon to sell new Apple products around the world; in exchange, Amazon agreed to let Apple pick-and-choose who is allowed to sell Apple products on the site.
Not quite... this is tantamount to a craft brewer complaining he suddenly can't put his beer in Walmart's aisle coolers after Walmart encouraged him to put them there for years.
We're talking about the market for secondhand Apple computers. I suspect the market for secondhand beer is substantially smaller.
I saw this kind of thing coming for years, on their platform. A long time ago, I used to do a lot of selling via the original "Amazon Auctions" service. It was more or less a direct eBay competitor, where any individual or business could start listing whatever used or new products they wanted to sell, with auction bidding.
Then, that disappeared and all of us were herded to Amazon Marketplace instead -- a service that demanded you list your items for sale at fixed prices, but did help you determine the optimal sale price at least. (It would tell you if identical products were currently listed by other sellers, and if your price was below all of theirs or not. If you were willing to sell at the lowest price on the site, they'd promote your listing to people as such.)
Then, I kept seeing Amazon revising the Marketplace, catering more and more towards big businesses and large volume sellers. You started having to create listings in kind of an inventory grid, that looked totally out of place for an individual selling a few items at a time as a side gig to make some extra cash.....
Finally, they added so many rules and restrictions on sellers, it became unreasonable for the "little guy" to even bother with it. (Essentially, you got kicked off Amazon as a seller if you didn't agree to give any buyer a full refund for just about ANY reason. They could buy your product, switch it out with a defective/worn out and dirty version of the same one, and ship it back for a full refund claiming "Product was not as advertised." They could claim your perfectly good product was non-functional and get irate with you as soon as you tried to email them back to help them troubleshoot it. Again, you had to give them the refund and eat your original shipping costs to mail it to them. And if this nonsense went on a few times within a couple month period? Your percentage of satisfaction dropped to below their acceptable levels, even if you happily handed out all those refunds and lost money trying to sell your stuff. And you'd risk suspension for not keeping up your metrics.)
Since then, they've been pedaling Chinese counterfeit versions of everything from shoes to iPhone chargers -- and only apologizing when someone like Apple catches them in the act, red-handed. Then, Amazon claims "We fixed the problem!" as they move on to the next high volume seller who wants to give it a try. So of COURSE they're gonna cater to Apple on this one. They don't want to get branded the bad guy....
what am i talking about?
The fact you can buy tons of counterfeit goods from amazon
https://www.forbes.com/sites/w...
but now not legitimately refurbished apple products.