Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up?
Everybody welcome into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny today.
Today's topic is going to be a fun one.
We are going to talk about.
Is it really true, Johnny, that you can get banned on Amazon for one single item?
A lot of resellers usually start on other platforms besides Amazon.
Uh, always hear the harsh stories of, well, I don't want to go sell on Amazon
because there's a risk of getting banned on Amazon for one single item.
So I'm going to jump in first and Johnny's going to take over here
and just answer the question.
Can you lose your account on Amazon for one single item?
The answer is yes.
We'll dive a little bit more into it, but I'm curious, Johnny, your thought process
when you were coming from eBay to Amazon, the risk, the scary grim reaper knocking
on your door, the chance of that happening every single day, like what was your
mindset going into it and like, are you still worried like on a daily basis
that you're going to lose everything?
Uh, yes. And to the daily basis, going to lose everything.
Also, yes.
Um, I think the fear of your livelihood on what we do when we're dependent
on somebody else's platform, it's always at risk.
I don't care what platform you're on, whether it's Amazon, eBay, Macari,
Posh, Etsy, whatever, you have to play by their rules.
And if they feel justified or unjustifiably so that you are not, they will issue you
not even a two weeks notice.
You're just gone.
Bye bye.
Thank you for your, or they don't even give you a thank you.
They, they, they just say, you know what?
You've been bad.
We don't want bad people here.
See ya.
That's how it works.
Um, and yeah, it's scary, but if you get caught up in that and get absorbed into
that, and I see this a lot with news sellers, too, but I think it's a lot
of the same thing with the news.
I mean, they're, they're, they're terrified.
They are shaking their boots, but it's just a matter of following the rules
and the odds of it happening.
It's not a hundred percent that you're going to be safe, but they're much, much
lower.
Um, and in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, do I have a job today?
Let's log on.
Okay.
It's still good.
Let's get to work.
We got work to do, Mike.
That's so funny because it's so true.
I don't like, I don't have that mindset anymore.
Like sure it could happen, but I know there's, there's ways, as long as you
don't do anything that's like absolutely against, you know, terms of service
within Amazon, but like you can get jammed up.
You have to understand the risk with Amazon.
And for those, you know, hear the horror stories and maybe don't sell on Amazon.
So say, for example, you want to sell a, I don't know, we'll do two different
examples.
So I'll do the book one first.
Uh, everybody knows textbooks.
Textbooks are the riskiest media items.
You can sell a lot of larger textbook companies, Cengage, Pearson, McRoll,
the big ones everybody knows, right?
Um, they all have lawyers on retainer.
And what happens is they go in to their new best-selling textbooks that they're
selling millions of dollars of every single year to college kids.
And if there's somebody like me or Johnny on the listing, even though it's a
used textbook, you still don't have the rights to sell that item.
They will basically ban you for one single counterfeit without a test by
they don't even have to buy your item.
It's automatically counterfeit to them because they want you to prove to them
that you have authorization from Pearson, Cengage, which you do not have.
99.9% of people do not have that.
And they hold your account hostage.
So they tell Amazon, I don't want Johnny on this listing unless Johnny comes
directly to me and speaks with me.
So what happens here?
Johnny says, well, I still want to sell on Amazon.
So he reaches out to the lawyers and they say, well, Johnny, we see you're
doing six figures a year, so we're going to need a $20,000 check from you.
And then we'll think about lifting that mark on your account so that you can sell again.
So that is the book example.
Yes, this happens.
I mean, I'm in a lot, I'm not in all of the book selling communities, but I'm here
to tell you on a weekly basis, there's somebody that loses their account.
Over one book.
And I mean, can you blame them if you're new and you send something, then you
don't have the funds to go pay off the textbook company and who's to say it
doesn't happen again, doesn't happen again.
And it's the same way when you sell new branded products.
I'm wearing a Puma track jacket, right?
Well, I'm selling Puma on Amazon and Puma all of a sudden says, well, we
don't want Joe Blows selling our Puma gear.
We don't know if it's real.
We don't know if it's counterfeit.
It affects our customer, our brand image.
So we don't want nobody selling it no more.
So they take everybody down, same type of situation, counterfeit without test by.
If you have thousands, tens of thousands of dollars invested, you're
up the creek without a paddle.
So there is a lot more nuances and it is kind of scary, but there
is ways to mitigate risk, but for some reason we don't want to, you know,
we're so greedy to make that extra money.
I mean, think about it.
One book, Johnny, one stupid book, even if the profits, three, four, $500,
you lose everything for that $500.
You got to be out of your mind.
Why not mitigate the risk?
And there, there's ways you can still make money on that.
You can sell to companies that will sell it on Amazon that
have the authority to do it.
You don't personally have to do it.
So I struggle with this idea.
Whenever I see somebody that gets jammed up for selling a textbook, because
I've been saying that now for over a year and I sound like a broken record.
Just don't do it.
Pass the risk on to somebody else.
But we can't get over that initial mindset of, well, I need to make this
$200 today and then you don't realize, oh, all of a sudden you're gone.
You wake up like Johnny said, and there's a big orange bar that says,
your account has been deactivated.
And you're like, boom, gone out of it, out of everything.
Right.
And it's not worth the singular item.
And then it's the, here's the fun thing, how that works.
Usually they want, they want a paper trail.
So you go to your distributor, either you have an invoice, you ask for an
invoice, give it to Amazon and Amazon will come back at you.
Okay, great.
Now we want your distributor distributors invoice, and that's where
you're getting kind of screwed.
Because nobody wants to give up their source really.
And even that, well, like most people that sell on Amazon, you know,
they're just going to retail stores or thrifting.
So that shit don't cut it on Amazon land.
Hey, they want actual, like Johnny said, sure.
You got your invoice.
Well, what about your suppliers invoice?
And then what about your supplier suppliers invoice?
These brands, some of these brands are ruthless and textbook
companies are way up there.
I just don't know why we take the risk.
If we can mitigate it, pass it on to somebody else, but it is, it's real dude.
Like you can, you can lose it all for one book and it's crazy to think.
Right.
You got 5,000, Johnny's got 20,000 items sent in Amazon.
He wakes up all of a sudden he's gone.
Then you know what they're going to do?
They're going to send all them books back to him and they're going to charge
him the removal fees of a dollar 50 a piece to have them all sent back all
20,000 books and listen, they're not going to put them all in boxes together.
You're going to get 20,000 separate way too big boxes showing up at your
front door over the next six months, all because we decided to take a risk.
And I kind of pride myself on having people be aware of the risk and doing
things because I don't ever want to say something to get somebody banned.
Right.
Like I don't want to put somebody in a situation where if they decide to do
something, there's a chance you're going to lose your account.
I'm in the opposite mindset.
Sure.
If I'm going to take some stupid risks like that, then I keep it to myself.
And be like, yeah, sure.
I'll decide to sell textbooks, but I'm not going to tell everybody to do it.
But that's the reality of it in the Amazon space.
It's not talked about enough.
Like a lot of people's business models are a lot more risky than you think,
but you're never going to hear it talked about because if I'm trying to push
content or push, you know, X, Y, and Z software, X, Y, and Z, this or that.
Then of course you're not going to say, Hey, you can lose your account over one
item because who in their right mind would start a business that one day,
one book or one, one, you know, track jacket and you're selling career.
Right.
And then, um, we have, and we have the new items on Amazon, right?
We know where we got this book from this DVD, from the CD from an eight new.
I mean, there's some questionable things of what new means.
I mean, me and Jack were looking at one listing once it was, uh,
stories of the Bible set, right?
It it's a gigantic sense from the eighties.
We are in 2024.
It ain't new.
We're seeing new on the listing.
They're like, there's no way this is new.
There's no, where was it?
Where, where was this thing?
Was this in the back storage closet of the facility at the printing press
that somebody just pulled out recently?
There's no way this thing is new.
So people and resellers is what I mean by people send these items that are old,
no way possible as new as new items in, right?
And it's like, um, no, it's the appeal.
It's the same thing.
Like you always talk about a lot of people speed, only a very few get caught.
So we live in this realm of, well, I see everybody else doing it.
Like everyone, there's still plenty of people we have over in the
group that sell textbooks, right?
I'm just like, you do you, right?
Like, Oh, well, I've been selling textbooks for 30 years and I never got jammed up.
Well, guess what?
That one time you do get jammed up.
Don't come crying to me.
Like there, there's ways in my opinion, where there's always risk.
I'm not sitting here saying you can have an Amazon business with zero
risk of ever getting banned.
Even if you own the brand you're selling, like there's still ways you can
still get jammed up on Amazon, right?
There's no 100% safe way to sell.
I mean, you're factoring your own product.
It's yours and you can still get bad.
You can still get banned, but I think there are ways we can heavily decrease
this risk and not be, don't let it scare you.
Like I think to myself, like if I never jumped into Amazon and like, I still
was the everything eBay seller, like how different my life would be.
So like, I understood the risk and as, as times pass, like Amazon, you know,
it's kind of like seasonal, right?
They'll like things change within Amazon, what, what they're cracking down on or,
you know, this new publisher, this brand is now gating all their products.
So it's an ever changing like market out there when it comes to account
safety and account health, but you can avoid a lot of this stuff, but we're
so greedy for that, for that profit, man, for that, for that Bolo that we're
willing to just bet it all, rule that wheel spinning around all my money's
on number seven, I got a one in 36 chance or whatever it is of it hitting.
And it just, it's not going to work out.
I feel like it's, if you're familiar with the Bible, it's like,
if you're familiar with the Bible, the apple, the knowledge tree,
and it's the temptation, right?
So here's the analogy of a reseller.
We're scanning all these books, $2 profit, $3, $5 profit, and bam,
here's $150 prop.
What is he flipping over?
It's a textbook.
You have it in your hand.
Do you send it in?
It's right there.
You've been scanning crap all day.
And here's this precious little gym, a hundred dollar plus profit book.
Yay.
Do I put it in the box, Mike?
Do I put it in the box?
It's evil.
You're 100% correct.
It's evil that the most profitable books usually are textbooks, but there's
the one thing that can kind of just get you shut down in a day.
So.
What's up, Amazon sellers.
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I asked myself, like, what does, how much in profit does that one textbook?
And what's the risk?
Right.
So like, if, if I run it through, like, you know, they got things now where you
can check if it's how often it is counterfeited.
So like, if it's a highly counterfeited textbook, and I'm thinking to myself,
man, I got to put this in the box and send it.
And there's like a 50 50, maybe even higher chance I lose it all.
Like how much in profit does that one textbook have to be?
It's got to be six figures for me.
It's got to be six figures, but yet here we are sending in $10 profit
textbooks that run you the risk of losing your account.
When I'm sitting here telling you, it's got to be probably two
hundred fifty thousand dollar profit textbook for me to send it in.
Yeah.
It's that, well, here's your salary.
For them to forgive me for my sins.
And I go sell them another platform kind of money.
Yeah, exactly right.
It's got to be big money.
But no, it's the temptation so bad because you're getting all these low
margin profit books and then all of a sudden, bam, here's the big winner of the day.
It's a textbook.
It's hard for it to leave your hands.
It is.
And you have to set it aside and decide what else you're going to do that.
You're going to send it to a textbook company.
You're going to send it to a buddy of yours who's decided to play that risk.
You're going to try to sell it on eBay where they're a little bit more forgiving
there and speaking at eBay, eBay does have barrows, which are verified rights
owner thing like, you know, I'm the owner and I do not verify this is real.
You can get a couple of those before they asked to show you the door
with security and all that.
And so, but it can still happen on eBay if you do it enough, if you get four or
five of them back to back, ooh, that's a bad time.
Sometimes it's just a cease and desist.
Like, you know, just take your listings down.
Other times it's like, Nope, you're gone.
Bye.
You see a little bit more prevalent in clothes because clothes are
counterfeit or just like books.
But I've taken a look at the Vero list.
There are book publishers on that list.
So if you're selling books, textbooks on eBay, you may want to take a look at that
list, just saying, I had to tell people to like, you know, that book's real, right?
Like you went to the local bookstore and bought it, or you even went into like the
the Cengage bookstore, if they had one and literally bought it, they don't care.
Nope.
It is not their responsibility to care about you.
They're protecting the rights.
That's what they get paid to do.
They're on retainer to do.
And guess what?
Amazon has to protect themselves as well.
So you might think Amazon's a big bad wolf.
Well, they don't want the liability of selling counterfeit goods because then
it falls onto them, right?
Like does eBay require you to get insurance at any single point in your
business like Amazon does?
Not how you think, but if you're selling high ticket items, it has to go through
that eBay vault thing, like with shoes and stuff, like I think it's like
$2,500, maybe $5,000 in value.
And eBay is wanting to verify that.
However, the verification program, they will, if it fails their verification,
bad things happen.
So you got to be careful what you're actually sending in to these people to
get verified.
It's not like they're verified.
Well, people think of it as they're going to authenticate it for you.
And no, well, yes, they are.
But they will give you a naughty warning.
Don't send us counterfeit stuff again.
But bad things can happen to your account too, if you're just sending them
like boxes of counterfeit stuff too.
So, but again, eBay is a little bit more forgiving than I think Amazon is.
Oh yeah, dude.
That doesn't even close.
Right.
At least with eBay, you have a chance to talk to a human, even if it's
through a chat program.
Amazon, I feel like it's bodied ties, like all the robots are making all the
decisions, no human beings making the decisions.
I don't think I could be wrong on that.
It's like, I think about it this way.
When, when like you're investing and like, they're like, what kind of
portfolio do you want risky, little risky, moderate risk, low risk.
So Amazon has theirs turned up all the way to low risk.
They don't want to take any chances on their brand being sued or liable for
anything.
So what I was kind of talking about earlier was when you start to see
what I was kind of talking about earlier was when you sell, once you do
10 K and sales a month on Amazon, they require you to get insurance that is
verified and uploaded into Amazon seller central.
So there's no ways around it.
You can't skirt this.
It's because if something happens, some kid chokes on the book, Johnny sent in.
You have some type of insurance to be able to settle that because Amazon is not
going to take responsibility.
So there, I think Amazon plays it super safe and I don't think they're wrong
for doing this and sure it sucks because every once in a while, somebody does
get in one of these situations where, you know, they're innocent.
I'm innocent.
Well, in Amazon land, you're guilty until proven innocent.
It's not the other way around, but it's just a part of the ecosystem because
there's so many people selling on their platform for every person that's doing
it right.
Like there's somebody selling the 1980 book set as brand new.
When you know there ain't no shot that is brand new, even if it's been sitting
in somewhere where the temperature, like a wine seller, it's a perfect temperature
and humidity for books, it is still not brand new and maybe they should do more
to kind of not allow sellers to do that.
Right.
Like, cause the argument is, well, why would they let me sell it if I
couldn't sell it?
Right.
Like that's the first thing you get from people that get one of these
situations is, well, why did they let me send it in if I couldn't do it?
Well, it's not their responsibility to hold your hand through every little
step of every little process.
And speaking of the insurance, when I first had to sign up for it, I had a
warped sense of humor when filling out the registration, I just imagined, what
is the scenario where a book kills a human and final destination just went
through my head, like throw up on the ladder.
They're trying to put it up on the top shelf.
You see the bottom screw of the bottom leg of the ladder start to slowly undo
because of the weight distribution on the ladder, then it's, and then they
slip and fall and they impale themselves in the eye with the corner of the book.
And they're dead.
This is why I need insurance.
I've decided it's, and they actually check it.
Like they actually run it through consistently.
So like you have to actually have valid insurance.
eBay does not require sellers to have business insurance.
So, um, that's, it's just a different ball game on Amazon.
And I don't want it to turn, you know, people away from selling on the
platform, right?
Cause it's changed my life.
If my, if my business existed on eBay, it would be a whole lot different.
Maybe it'd be better.
It'd probably be worse if I had to just take against it.
Probably be a lot worse just because I know the workload that goes into eBay.
I know the hours you have to put in the processes you have to build.
So for me, it was 100% worth the risk.
And for me, it's the reason I still probably mainly do social media and
YouTube is to show people that you can do this for years and years.
You can make a career out of this.
As long as you're willing to mitigate your risk as much as you possibly can.
That's all this comes down to.
I want to be, I want to have the less riskiest portfolio out there on Amazon.
So I don't get myself in one of these situations.
Sure.
If I do, there's ways you can get out of it, right?
You can hire a lawyer.
You can pay thousands of dollars to write a POA, SOPs, everything like that.
So there is a way out.
Some cases, as long as it's not like a flagrant violation of, you know,
terms of service, you can get your way out.
But most people that wind up in that situation, they don't know where to start.
They don't have the capital to kind of get themselves out of it.
And it's just, it's tough, man.
And it is, you know, Johnny said it can be scary to think every day, one day
you're here, the next day you're gone.
But I mean, that's anything in life, right?
Like you walk out and a bus comes out of nowhere, final destination style.
And that's the end of the line for you.
Right.
I mean, and it's just where you go from there.
And well, not in the death scenarios.
Like if you come in and your, your SOL platform no longer wants you, well,
you probably go out, sell on another platform.
That's what most people do.
Most of them just swing into eBay and they, they hate it.
And they try to find something else they could do.
But no, I mean, the airplay is to be made.
And it sucks.
It's like starting over essentially.
Right.
I mean, you may have the supply, you may have a pile of books or media in front of you.
You can deal with, okay.
Well, let me play the reselling row reseller roulette platform wheel.
McCarrie let's go there.
Fine.
McCarrie doesn't work out when you try.
Okay.
Do the wheel again.
Uh, Etsy.
Okay.
Let's go try Etsy.
You try all these things.
So you find something that works.
Um, if your platform or choice gives you the, uh, your less than two week notice.
Well, it gets no notice really.
You're just gone.
But, um, people realize this though, because that's normal jobs too, because most states
are at will employers.
So that means you can show up to work today and they can say, Hey, Johnny, I don't like
that hat you're wearing.
You're fired.
And so you can do you're at the door.
Yeah.
We're going to need your lanyard.
Um, you know, that company shirt you're wearing.
Oh, and that cell phone.
We're going to need that too.
Um, fun story.
We're going off the rails here.
When I, uh, left CVS, we, it was around Halloween time and we had like those standing
skeletons.
So I, uh, I put my CVS shirt on and I pinned my name tag on them.
So, uh, the skeleton had store manager Mike's name tag on them.
Um, but yeah, like we, we think, oh, we saw one day here, one day you're, you're, you
don't have a account anymore.
It's the same with any other job.
Right.
So as long as you understand the risk, understand how to play the games.
You can use this to your benefit.
You can make a lot of money.
You can prepare for the worst case scenario.
You think I'm wonder, there's gotta be somebody out there and hopefully they somehow
listen to this podcast and they reach out to me.
I want to talk to the reseller that's been banned on every single platform.
Oh man.
All of them.
I mean, I don't want to name names on the recording, but I got a short list of possible
people that have been banned on every platform.
I mean, every single platform.
And I just want to hear their, their reselling story and what got them jammed up.
I mean, when we had tech on, he talked about, you know, getting, getting his ban on
Amazon for a board game.
Dad, it's scary.
He's the most above board guy there is.
He takes zero risk.
That's what I'm saying.
Like, and he's like, yeah, I got the target receipt.
They don't care.
Right.
Like they don't care.
You can buy it from Amazon.
It's the brands that are cracking down on this type of stuff.
And their Amazon is always going to side with the brands because they don't want the
liability you wouldn't either, if you had a reselling platform, you wouldn't want
random dudes like me and Johnny selling your stuff, especially in used condition.
Who knows what type of condition people are sending stuff in because I've seen
TV shows like hoarders, I've seen plenty of resellers garages on YouTube.
They ain't the cleanest people.
All right.
I'm just saying no,
I like to roll around in my books before I box them up to Amazon.
Hey, all I'm saying is some of this stuff that probably winds up in these Amazon
warehouses, that's why they don't let you sell used clothing and use whatever,
because all of a sudden customers are getting, you know, fleas and everything
else, dude, it's a, you won't want somebody selling your stuff either, especially
if you didn't know who it was and if they were legit.
Yeah.
I mean, and I think it's interesting in the, the dis media side, like new sealed
with the security label and the Y fold things, those come up pretty more than
you think, honestly.
And it's like, well, I bought this from the flea market.
I know it's new.
It's still shrink wrapped with books.
They don't, they don't shrink wrap books for those who've never sold books before.
I mean, they do occasionally, but by and large, a new book is not shrink wrapped.
Honestly. So it was like, is this new?
It looks new.
Looks never read before.
Do I send it in as new because I can get a $20 bill instead of a $10 bill.
So there's temptation there, even outside of textbooks.
It's like, I know where it got this from, but $20.
It's true, man.
It's there for the taking.
It's just how much risk do you want in your business?
You can sell it as new.
You can sell textbooks, sell every single one.
You can sell every book is new and they won't stop you from sending it in and selling it.
Right.
But the risk that comes with it, you have to ask yourself, do you want to make this a longterm play?
Do you want to continue making money or is those few new items or those few textbooks worth everything?
And for me, the answer every single time is no, a hundred percent of the time.
The answer is no.
My risk needs to be as minimal as it possibly can be because the majority of my income come from my
reselling business, which is Amazon.
I can't afford to just one day wake up and not have the account, especially for one single item, unless
I'm getting 250 G's for it, which will never happen.
Then I mean, I'm passing every single time and it's not even, I don't even debate it anymore.
Like maybe when I first decided to stop selling textbooks, I'm like, I mean, this is like a 50, $60 book,
but we have ways, right?
Like you can sell it to another company that'll pay you in PayPal within the week for that item.
Sure. You won't get the full $60, maybe only get 20 or 30, but you're still making money and they take the risk.
You're not taking it at all.
Yeah, exactly.
Why, why, why risk everything?
And then, um, what was I going to say?
The, uh, so, so the difference between new and used, I mean, we see the premiums, the new guys get, right?
I, I know those people that are on the new listing.
I see it a lot.
They're not new.
They're taking the risk.
And you know what?
I do think they are ultimately going to get burned in the end.
Because every year we see them get more and more strict.
And I think this year we've seen more, at least publicly stated section threes that that that's the, you need to prove what you're selling is legit violations that Amazon sends out.
I think we see more section threes this year, at least publicly verbalized the community than we've ever seen before.
So they're cracking down and I think that can only compound as the years go on.
Honestly, there's only so many warehouses.
They want legitimate things in their warehouses.
Honestly.
Yeah, they're moving, we're moving towards a world where, um, the brands are more protective than they've ever been.
They don't want, uh, you know, stolen merchandise being sold, fake merchandise being sold, and you really can't blame them at the end of the day.
Right.
If they called me out for an invoice right here tomorrow, I'd be like, well, I don't got it.
I buy from here and there and everywhere.
Right.
Um, so probably as my career goes on in Amazon, I need to protect myself a bit more in that at all honesty, because I do think they're cranking up the violations and my number will get called one day.
It's not if it's when I think everybody's going to have a win moment as time goes on.
Yeah, for sure.
All right. We're going to wrap it up here.
Can you get banned for one stupid item on Amazon?
Yes.
Are there ways you can kind of mitigate that risk?
100% will you ever be 100% safe?
No, but this is a part of it.
I mean, John even said on eBay, it's the same thing.
You understand what your risk tolerance is, regardless of what other people are doing.
I can't say that enough, just because you see Joe blow selling Nike, selling textbooks doesn't mean it's a okay for you to do it.
You don't know what kind of supplier they have.
You don't know what kind of invoices they have, what kind of bankroll they have if they do have to hire a lawyer.
So just keep that in the back of your mind.
We're going to do it for this week's episode.
We'll talk to you all next week.