It looks like not only major financial companies are trying prevent themselves from going down while financial crisis is showing its power, but also Amazon.com looks like showing all the signs that deep recession or may be early depression is on its way.

Sellers on Amazon.com are frustrated because every action leads to suspension of their accounts on Amazon. And what’s even worth, sellers find out that their money are reserved by Amazon for 90 days without any right to get them back for that period of time. Every Amazon policy is written in the way that leads to suspension of your account without any serious reason. Amazon blocks sellers accounts and reserves thousands or may be millions of dollars for 90 days without any valid reason. For example, a statement like: “You have 5% of your orders cancelled or refunded, and we suspend your account because of your low selling performance”, looks suspicious to me. Don’t the buyers have the right to cancel the order? Or we cannot cancel or refund the order just because Amazon doesn’t want it? Or maybe it wants us to do so in order to block our accounts and hold the money?

It looks like a good way for the company like Amazon to loan money without any interest in this tough economic situation. Do you think Amazon is trying to boost up its bottom line by reserving people’s money? Good strategy but looks quite fraudulent.

The government really needs to check Amazon’s activities. Companies have no right to reserve people’s money for such a long period of time (90 days) or have no right at all. According to Amazon the reason why they reserve your money on their account is that in case if there are any claims from the buyers they will give their money back. Don’t they have 30 day return policy? So what about the rest 60 days?

The rest 60 days is enough for Amazon to invest your funds and make money or probably just cover their losses. Can you imagine what they can do with your money during 90 day period? They can invest many times in inventory or many other things and make it look like a healthy company. But there is no place on their financial statements that shows that this or that amount of money is the actual amount that was reserved (taken) from the sellers without their permission. I think they should be forced to have a section on their 10-K reports showing the amount of money (cash) that is a reserve amount that belongs to sellers on Amazon. Otherwise it makes their financials look good and their potential stock buyers are fooled.

I think their shareholders have the right to know what is going on inside the company. They just cannot continue boosting their earnings by taking people’s money without any permission.

Amazon’s “service” that allows others to sell on their website have to be terminated or BLOCKED, like they call it. Because what they are doing it is far from being ethical. I think this company is doomed to be exposed one day like any other company with practices like that.