I don't know why I have to get forced into a love/hate relationship with Amazon, but it seems that I do.

As a buyer, I love dealing with Amazon.  The experience is pretty hard to beat, and as evidenced in a recent news article about customer service and bad actors and the lack of such on Amazon, it's pretty easy to justify buying via Amazon.  If you happen to hit a bad customer service experience, Amazon will step in and make it right, and rather swiftly the bad seller will find they can no longer do business via Amazon.

On the other hand, as a seller, well, I've got issues with Amazon.  Every year, around the 4th quarter of the year, as the holidays approach, Amazon starts clamping down more and more on sellers, making it darned near impossible to participate in their marketplace.  For example, this year I have a collectible toy that I'm interested in selling but Amazon will preclude my sale unless I go through their Fulfillment by Amazon program.  That may or may not be a good deal and it might be a fairly painless process, but I don't care at all for being forced into participating in such a program and don't see the need for it given a spotless record as a seller, including having sold some more expensive consumer electronic items in their marketplace.

Compared to eBay, Amazon's feedback system is weak in that many buyers never bother to use the system at all.  I hate that about the program and wish they'd make more efforts to improve in that area.  If they did, perhaps I wouldn't have an issue as they'd base their decisions on who can and can't sell more on feedback and less on the volume of transactions (as they currently are doing).  You see, if I was a busy seller and had sold a bunch of items over the last several months, I could sell pretty much whatever I want, but because I only have one item to sell now and hadn't sold anything in months, well, I get to sit on the sidelines while the bigger sellers can sell whatever they want without the additional constraints.

I realize that I could be selling on eBay, or via Craigslist or classified ads and such, but each of those markets come with a set of issues that I may not want to deal with.  I'd rather go through Amazon if possible as they have advantages to sellers in how they keep away hackers and posers that create bogus accounts and bid on items with no intention of actually completing the transaction.  Sigh.

I did raise my concerns with Amazon.com and unfortunately got no where, though I also mentioned in my complaints words like "monopolistic" "anti-competitive" "restraint of trade" and such.  They really should consider their actions carefully because their current policies may bring them more legal actions and restrictions than they may like in the long run.