Amazon Shuts Down 400 Seller Accounts, Offers Little Recourse, Says Lawsuit By Miami E-commerce Company

A Miami e-commerce company that creates and operates Amazon stores for clients claims in a newly filed federal lawsuit that the online retailer this summer shut down 400 of its user accounts — about half of the company’s business — with little explanation and no real way to appeal. The account deactivations are an outsize example of an issue that, according to news reports, has plagued scores of Amazon sellers in recent years. The reports, including one on CNBC’s website, describe a one-sided process in which Amazon shuts down accounts with vague explanations, seizes the sellers’ online funds, then disposes or destroys their inventory while continuing to withdraw service fees from the seized accounts. Amazon, which did not respond to questions before this report was published, told CNBC that it regularly requests “invoices, purchase orders, or other proofs of sourcing” if it has concerns about a seller, and has an appeals process for merchants who believe they were wrongly singled out. In August, a New Jersey congressman sent a letter to Amazon saying he’d heard that hundreds of accounts in his district had been deactivated.