Snap’s Amazon Threat Story
While the goings on at Amazon -- the apparent lawlessness, the scam artists slipping through the cracks of an automated policy enforcement system, the incoherent death threats -- sometimes bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the world’s weirdest episode of Westworld, sellers like Snap make an effort to adhere to sustainable and legitimate business practices for the sake and safety of our customers. This effort includes laying down the law when it is required. And some sellers who are operating in a less than reputable capacity can have some unsavory reactions.
Snap Supply is constantly dealing with illegitimate accounts piggybacking off our listings. We’re all for healthy competition so long as everyone is playing by the rules. However, when someone makes an attempt to hijack our Amazon presence in a way that it both illegal and potentially hazardous to the customers that trust us, we bite back.
A couple weeks ago, we began to have trouble with a particular seller. They claimed to be selling Snap parts, so jumped on our Amazon listings and began to force the price down. Every time they dropped their price, we adjusted to stay competitive. They dropped, we dropped, they dropped, we dropped… you get the idea. We’re talking pennies at a time here.
Eventually, we ordered one of the parts they were selling. We reasoned that there was no way they could be selling the same high-quality product that Snap sells while keeping their prices so low.
When we received the item we purchased from them, we were horrified. Not only was their item clearly not a Snap Supply part, it had obviously not gone through the scrutiny we put our parts through to ensure that they are safe. The world of appliance parts can seem innocuous from the outset, but a lot of these parts have the potential to be dangerous. At Snap Supply, we put all our products through rigorous safety testing to ensure that they can operate safely after being installed by a professional.
Once we realized that this seller was providing customers with fraudulent, dangerous product under the Snap Supply name on Amazon. We reported this seller to Amazon to have them remove from our listings.
The next day, the same thing started happening but with a different seller. We were confused at first. After a little more research however, we figured out that this new seller was the same seller as the last one. We ordered this new seller’s parts and found it was the same fraudulent product as the last one. They simply had another account to use as a backup. They had anticipated that their first account might have been kicked off, so they had a backup prepared for the scenario.
We reported this account and eventually they got the idea. They started selling their fraudulent parts on their own pages. While they are still violating Amazon’s policies and selling potentially dangerous products, they are no longer selling to Snap’s customers.
However, we found out that they were stealing our images, altering them slightly and trying to pass them off as their own. So we reported this unauthorized use of our images. This was the last straw for this seller. They dug through our Amazon account and uncovered personal information. They threatened a pregnant member of our staff over the phone and threatened a portion of our team over email. When speaking to us over the phone, they threatened to use underhanded tactics to bring our Amazon seller page down.
We have posted about Amazon users being threatened by malicious sellers, and we just wanted to post our own story. As far as we can tell, all of these threats are empty and laughable, and nobody has been hurt. It is troubling that these threats are being made, however, as silly as they can sound. Death threats like these should be always be reported to the authorities.