Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof.<p>I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010.  I found niche products that Amazon didn&#x27;t sell.  As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks.<p>I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product.  Within a few minutes of me receiving this claim, my account was suspended.  I had no chance to rectify the situation.<p>No amount of calling or emailing Amazon could get me in front of someone that could help me.  All responses were an automated rejection.<p>This was a rough time for me as it was my only form of income and Amazon held almost $30,000 of my money for 3 months.  I ended up having to close my business and move on, though I did eventually get all of my money back.<p>I&#x27;ve built multiple successful businesses since then and Amazon has recently had many business reps try to get me to sign up with a business account, because we purchase lots of items on Amazon&#x2F;month.  I always try to get them to re-investigate my old seller account and our email correspondence stops shortly after this. It&#x27;s crazy to me that after 10 years and in a completely different industry, I still can&#x27;t open a seller account.<p>It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else&#x27;s platform.<p>It only gives them more control over you and they will most likely use your customers, data, and more resources to out-compete you, if you get too big.  Twitter has also done this to their app developers.<p>My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it&#x27;s just as bad.  They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time.<p>What&#x27;s even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online.  Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure?