Comment by hippich
5 years ago
> Amazon wants to not be a seller
This is true. But at the same time Amazon tries very hard to hide any information about the customer from the seller. If the order is fulfilled by FBA, the 3rd party seller has the name of the customer and that's it. Amazon also can facilitate email exchange through their server, but most customers do not see it (getting into spam?) or ignore it. So in practice, you rarely have a reliable channel to communicate with your "customer".
Compare to eBay - you have all the info for the customer, can follow up, resolve issue, etc. On eBay there is no confusion about who is "the seller".
I understand why Amazon is doing that - theirs customers probably hate idea of dealing with individual sellers and instead prefer the uniformity of dealing with Amazon. But then the position that Amazon is not "the seller" kinda weak.
Yes. I too find that Amazon tries to hide (maybe even obscure) information of who the third party seller is.
So is amazon a marketplace or a seller. Hard to decide. I think courts should also give importance to how amazon markets itself.
EBay, always, marketed itself as a marketplace. There was never a confusion about whether it's a "store" or a "marketplace".
From the Amazon banners/ads/and other marketing material, I always get the sense that Amazon tries to market itself as a "store" and not as a "marketplace".
With that and the _hiding/obscuring_ of third party seller information on the amazon website, I think courts should treat Amazon as a seller/store more than a marketplace.
Amazon now shares your email with sellers, exactly to avoid this argument.
Only if you tell Amazon it's for certain support-related reasons. If you contact a customer for any reason that Amazon doesn't approve, you can have your account suspended.