We’ve all heard the old saying that states it is not good when “one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing.” Basically, when an organization gets too big or too disconnected from itself, then there is at a minimum a loss of cooperation, and at worst, the organization works against itself.

A while back, I had to strip out all of the links to Amazon from this blog, due an email directive, and I have posted a screen shot of that message, which states plainly that I am no longer an Amazon Associate (a means of funding via promoting products.)

Yesterday, I got another email from Amazon. It seems they no longer remember that my account was “terminated” and want help me sell their expletive deleted stuff.

Honestly, this is just on example of the problems at big A. Lots of articles have been published about problems there. The most troubling ones (for consumers) are the fake reviews and hijacked reviews.  I’ve mostly stopped shopping there, but hubby is addicted. However, the other day he was actually reading the reviews (and not just looking at the number of positive reviews) and realized that most of those reviews were not for the product he was wanting to buy. Fortunately, he didn’t buy from big A this time.

The bottom line is that Amazon is more and more a computerized “middle man” rather than a merchant, and buyers and sellers have little confidence that the platform is working for either side. Consumers should think about alternatives before using that one step purchase button. Sure, it is convenient, but it’s not good to get scammed.

As far as selling is concerned, lately, I’ve sold far more books via eBay than Amazon. More on that later.