Amazon FBA (Germany) - big business? my experience report

Hello my friend, today I want to tell you my story about Amazon FBA, the fully automated service from Amazon for dealers.

It all began when I saw videos of successfull Amazon dealers, who make a whole lot of money by buying stuff from China and sell it in Germany. I always wanted to be self-employed, so i decided to start this business.

I borrowed 6000€ from my mother (thank you mom for your trust), opened up a business, learned all the taxes stuff, bought 1000 pcs of an item and imported it to Germany.

These were stored at Amazon Germany, and my product was online! Wow, I was totally excited and happy! It was a lot of work to get there and now I'll hopefully life from my income.
Shortly thereafter, however, I was quickly caught up again by reality. For days and weeks not a single sale ... I knew I was missing reviews. Without ratings, I sold nothing, I quickly realized that!

Okay, so I asked friends and relatives from Austria to buy a piece and then rate it. First shocker: Amazon forbade me to send articles to Austria. I called Amazon, but all I heard was, "We can not do anything about it, but we forwarded it to the responsible department." Okay, shit. I need reviews! - So I asked friends if you could write a review without buying the article. They did. Finally, I had four reviews !! Wow! Suddenly I sold 5 pieces a day, great!

But the next shocker was not long in coming: a customer complaint was received. The customer ordered the golden version, but the silver one arrived. Something was wrong with my stock. So I called Amazon, commissioned a review, but nothing happened, the problem remained.

Amazon then stopped responding and I could do nothing but deduct 500 pieces from the warehouse and send them home. Soon I had found the error: Amazon has stuck over all correctly attached barcodes a single, uniform code! The inventory was completely wrong, and the error was clearly on Amazon! But Amazon turned the mistake over to me, I would have marked the goods wrong ... but I knew, I did not make a mistake.

Then Amazon deleted all reviews, no one could tell me why. My sales went back to 0. Amazon suggested me to advertise, so I paid $ 10 a day to be high on the list - that was a mistake, I made $ 200 loss and did not sell significantly more because i still had no reviews!

A new attempt: A friend of mine was able to order a piece and therefore to write an official review! YESSS! But Amazon declined, the rating was apparently not valid. Again, noone could explain why..

Then I realized: Amazon is acting arbitrarily. As a small dealer, I have no chance against the giant and I am completely at the mercy of Amazon.
Amazon itself, however, was extremely good at me: 40 € per month basic fee, 15 € per month storage fee, 10% of the sales price was commission to Amazon, and 3 € shipping and pick up costs per sale (at a retail price of 12, 99 €) ... For one sale I had about 3 € left, although I was far from the cheapest provider.

Meanwhile, I was able to collect about four reviews again and I sold daily. One day, Amazon decided to cancel all reviews. Again, without reason. I was pissed off and wanted an answer! But nothing, Amazon directed the request as usual to a department that could give me no answer ... Amazon still suggested to pay their ad service, but I did not.

The profits I made through Amazon were double digits. The majority went for taxes and the rest for other state taxes ...

I'm totally frustrated, Amazon completely destroyed me. This should be a warning to anyone thinking of doing Amazon FBA.

Have a nice day my friend! Thesimpleman

Tag: Amazon FBA Österreich