Today marks a very special day for us,
TODAY, after a very TOXIC and UNILATERAL RELATIONSHIP, and after months of trying to break free from being sellers on Amazon, WE ARE FINALLY FREE OF DOING BUSINESS WITH IT.
So... a couple of years ago we decided to put our handcrafted creative oracle "DoShit!" on Sale on Amazon.com.
As everyone who read our previous article knows, it was a purely logistical play we as small sellers felt we needed to do in order to make our cards more cheaply available to the american continent. (If you are curious about how we got to that conclusion feel free to read our previous article):
Anyhow, after a few sales on the continent, and increasing costs of paying for our Amazon seller subscription, it no longer made sense for us to keep selling on Amazon and paying for the growing storage costs of unmoved product.
(THANK YOU TO ALL THE NOSTRICHES THAT RESCUED SOME DECKS BEFORE WE CLOSED SHOP <3)
In any case, we had tried the Amazon route and the attempt had been a failure; it definitely cost us more money than it earned us. So with that defeat hovering over our heads we decided to make the sensible thing and process the return of our unsold stock, and the closure of our Amazon seller account.
Little did we know that the Giant wasn't gonna make the return of our decks home any easy.
"NO, WE WON'T SHIP IT BACK TO SPAIN"
The first step was trying to get home all the unsold stock (around 150 decks) and have it sent back to our local fulfilment center in Madrid. Our first surprise upon starting the process was that we weren't able to put a non-US address on the RETURN ADDRESS.
It had to be a mistake, we thought. It didn't make sense to us that we were able to send it from Spain but unable to return it to the same address. So you can imagine our anger when a help assistant replied to our enquiry confirming that they didn't ship to Spain. They didn't ship and we couldn't organize any pick-up.
"How about shipping it to an Amazon fullfilment center in Spain or Europe?" we asked. But the reply was unhelpfully categorical: They would only coordinate the return shipment to a US address... Either that, or they could destroy our decks... π¨
A FRIEND TO THE RESCUE!
Letting Amazon destroy our stock was out of the question (as it had been previously on the experience we relayed in our first article). What was it with Amazon wanting to destroy sellers' stock?
Anyhow, we had little options on the table, so we reached out to a friend and shared with him our horrible experience with the giant and the crossroad it had forced upon us. This friend became our instant savior, "happy to help". It was supposed to be easy, the 150 decks would fit in the 3 boxes we sent their way... But, oh, how wrong we were.
Briefly after initiating the stock removal process, our friend received a package that confused us all: Three single "DoShit!" decks had made it to his home. But he was supposed to get 3 BOXES, not three decks.
THE CHAOS OF THE PACKAGES
One would think the easiest way for Amazon to ship you back your product, specially when you are processing a "BULK REMOVAL", is to send you as few packages as possible, but that was not the case.
Our friend started to receive random packages during three weeks, some containing 1 deck, others containing 16 or 9 or 3, which was obviously a nuissance for the receiver. We could only presume they simply used up their vehicles from paying customers and shipped whenever there was space. Our Shit would make it eventually, but it was clearly not a priority.
(THANK YOU FRIEND FOR BEING SAFE HAVEN FOR OUR STRANDED DECKS)
And as packages were sent at odd days in weird batches, suddenly we saw that 7 of the decks' removal had been unilaterally cancelled by Amazon. WTF?
We didn't receive any notice, so we enquired on whether the 7 missing decks were damaged (and therefore cancelled from travelling), in which case, we demanded a refund for their sloppy handling. But to our surprise, they weren't damaged, Amazon had simply unilaterally decided to put 7 back on sell on the site.
We hadn't approved this, we had specifically asked to be done with it and close the listing. And now, if we wanted to undo their doing, we needed to create a new removal order for those 7 decks, and were being instructed to wait a few days because they needed to do some internal processing... Whatever that meant, but in any case MORE BUREAUCRACY FOR US.
Apparently, the universe wanted us DoShitters to benefit from Amazon's actions, since ironically in the few days of bureaucratic delays, 1 SALE WAS MADE, so only 6 remaining decks needed to make it home to our friend.
But at the same time, our bank account was suddenly being relentlessly drained by a "removal fee" for each package leaving the Amazon warehouse. We had probably signed some fine print in the many terms and agreements where we had accepted to pay a hostage removal fee, but the sting was felt anyway. (AND IT'S NOT LIKE YOU COULD REFUSE).
BUREAUCRATIC DELAYS DESIGNED TO WEAR YOU DOWN
We had naively expected that once the product was out of their hands, the account closure would be swift, what else was there to do?
We downloaded all the reports we could ever be required to generate, closed the listing and were ready to close the seller account when the first delay prompted us: 90 days needed to pass since the last sale before the account was allowed to be terminated.
Yes, we understand that FINAL BUYER had a right to their 90-day return policy, but you can't imagine how bad it felt having to kick down the task of closure 3 months into the future. HAVEN'T YOU EVER WANTED A TOXIC THING TO SIMPLY BE DONE WITH?
In any case, when the 90 days arrived, they delayed it again because there was a $0,60 payment pending, and we were notified to wait 4 more days for the payment to be done. And when that day passed our seller account had been set by Amazon as "inactive", which PREVENTED US FROM CLOSING THE SELLER ACCOUNT unless we reactivated the account doing a full KYC verification, uploading more of our documents and forcing us to update to a new payment method. Yes, it was more nuissance. It was becoming a joke how they didn't want us to be free of them. Annoying really.
WE HAD TO COMPLY, AND KEEP TRYING ONE VERIFICATION PROCESS AT A TIME...
But after all their delays, hidden costs and unilateral toxicity, TODAY WE ARE FINALLY FREE OF THEM <3
PEER TO PEER SELLING IS THE DOSHITTER WAY
Being small sellers you always have to pick your battles and walk the path that works best for you.
We wanted to make DoShit! more easily and cheaply available to anyone with an Amazon account, but by making that decision we were draining our revenue more and more every month we weren't selling. Additionally, selling DoShit! is not our fulltime job... We're artists, and we barely spend time making sure we sell, so a model like Amazon was simply not in the same time preference as we were operating.
For us, DoShit! is a tool for connection, so it makes sense that people may buy it direcly from us. And since we know small sellers like us can't compete with the economies of monopolies like Amazon, we try to make it as cheaply available as possible, and to have discounts ready, specially for people who choose to buy in #sats β‘
So if you want to get this adventurous "DoShit!" deck for yourself or as a gift for someone, you can:
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Find it on
and get shipment as cheap as we're able to afford: plebeian.market/products/doshitters@ditto.pub/doshit-creative-oracle-y0fdoz0u56 -
Buy it in our fiat small seller store using the discount SATOSHI : doshitters.bigcartel.com
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Reply to this article saying you wanna buy it and we'll generate a SPEEDY SALE INVOICE IN SATS that you can pay directly from your #nostr feed.
ANYHOW, IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR,
THANK YOU FOR WANTING TO KNOW ABOUT OUR HORRIFIC JOURNEY WITH THE SELLER DEVIL WHICH HAS BECOME SO FREAKISHLY CONVENIENT FOR SO MANY π₯π₯
May Your Shit always be EPIC! π©
