Amazon is just plain crazy! That may seem like a strange statement, but here’s proof … We had a CD for sale on Amazon that included a collection of recipes. RECIPES! And we received this notice just two days ago:
“This product has been identified as a pesticide product, pesticide device, or a product that contains pesticidal claims. To be considered for reinstatement, please provide evidence of an EPA Registration number and/or EPA Establishment number or a certification that the product is exempt from EPA regulations. You will need to provide this information in the Pesticide Marking attribute for the listing.”
Pesticides? Are you kidding me? Not too many people sell recipes with pesticides in them – we certainly do not!!!
Why did this happen? I can only speculate that perhaps a competitor reported us out of spite and Amazon didn’t bother to verify anything. Even if we did have pesticides in our recipes, how would Amazon know since it’s a CD and, obviously, Amazon can’t see what’s on it? Amazon is a huge, monolithic company with no human contact. As a seller, dealing with them is awful. They simply hand down decrees and there is no appeal.
The penalties for non-compliance? Possible loss of our seller account. We sell less and less on AZ since they’re such a pain to deal with.
What have we done about this? Simply deleted the product from the Amazon database and it’s no longer for sale. Going to the EPA and jumping through a bazillion governmental hoops, which are bound to be extensive, awful and time-consuming, simply isn’t worth it.
The entire episode is so ridiculous and absurd that I can’t think of the appropriate words to express how stupid this is.
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