Recently, a big seller in Shenzhen applied for arbitration in the American Arbitration Commission through a team of lawyers, and got a preliminary ruling from the American emergency arbitrator: Amazon paid all arbitration and other expenses, including emergency procedures and main procedures. It also ruled that the relevant provisions of the platform's decision to detain the seller's funds are invalid. This is a preliminary victory for platform sellers.

Amazon's title background:

Back in 221, Amazon began to give titles to sellers who violated the platform rules in April, and in May, the "title storm" became more and more fierce, affecting more than 5, China merchants, from head sales to waist, and even small and medium-sized sellers. As a result, tens of billions of funds were frozen, and hundreds of billions of inventory of title sellers could not be sold. Among them, there are about 128 million yuan of frozen shop funds for trees, and the cumulative number of blocked sites is about 4; Zebao Technology was blocked by 367 sites, and the frozen funds were about 32.24 million yuan; Tongtuo was banned from 54 stores, involving frozen funds of about 41.43 million yuan. Although after the accident, the first reaction of the big sellers was to file a complaint with Amazon, demanding that the blocked stores and frozen funds be lifted. Some big sellers in South China City even flew to Amazon headquarters to complain in person, but they did not achieve remarkable results. Amazon has a tough attitude towards this.

reasons for Amazon's title

As the world's largest e-commerce platform, Amazon has many sellers from all over the world. These sellers make money on Amazon, and at the same time enrich Amazon's product categories. In fact, the two sides are mutually beneficial and win-win. Then why did Amazon do this?

The reason is that a hacker hacked into the background of a billing company and exposed the behavior of Amazon sellers to bill and distribute small cards. This exposure caused an uproar in the United States, and all kinds of media competed to report it. The American people strongly condemned Amazon, thinking that Amazon tolerated the seller's behavior and failed the trust of the majority of buyers, because they only bought things on Amazon platform based on the authenticity of platform customer comments and the quality of products, and even applied for membership. Amazon's move broke their hearts. At that time, Amazon was also under the anti-monopoly investigation of Congress. The exposure of this incident caused great pressure on them and affected their development. Therefore, in order to prove their innocence and show their determination to rectify, this large-scale title event was held.

how do sellers save themselves after Amazon's titles

how should sellers save themselves after Amazon's titles? Negotiation? Sue? Do nothing and let it kill you?

negotiation is no longer feasible, because Amazon has a tough attitude. Most sellers have indeed made brush orders that violate the regulations. It is stipulated in the second outline of Amazon, "Payment of service fees and receipt of sales income":

As you can see in the fine print, when your behavior may violate our terms ... we can decide to withhold any payment to you at our own discretion "; "or repeatedly violate our planning policy, then we can permanently refuse to pay you at our own discretion."

sue? The seller can't even have the right to sue, because Article 18 of the Amazon Service Business Solution Agreement stipulates the binding arbitration for all disputes:

Amazon and you agree that any dispute with Amazon or its affiliated companies or any claim related to this agreement or your use of the service in any way will be settled through the binding arbitration mentioned in this paragraph, rather than in court. Part of the agreement requires the seller to agree to settle the dispute through "binding arbitration … not in court". The contract also requires the seller to "arbitrate only in an individual way", instead of collective, joint or agency litigation.

in other words, the contract excludes both prosecution and class action. You can only file arbitration alone, and the cost of filing arbitration alone is very expensive in the United States, with a minimum of hundreds of dollars. Most small and medium-sized sellers can't afford such expensive fees.

do nothing and let it kill you? In that case, no one can do it and let their hard work go to waste.

how should title sellers break the rules?

So, is there really nothing you can do? In fact, the current successful cases have pointed out the direction for us. The breakthrough lies in whether Amazon's terms and actions conform to procedural justice? Is there monopolistic behavior?

First of all, according to the judicial system in the United States, procedural justice is very important. Even if the seller swipes the bill, before the seller exercises the right of hearing and litigation, it should be considered inappropriate punishment to seal the title, freeze the funds and ask the seller to move the warehouse in a short time without any prior notice and time preparation, which is not in line with the principle of procedural justice.

Secondly, although the format clause of clicking OK when the seller enters Amazon does contain the relevant content of no class action, this clause obviously violates the principle of fairness and the unfair competition law >; , should be recognized as a monopolistic behavior.

Therefore, as far as this successful case is concerned, at least most titles sellers can learn from it, and they can protect their rights and interests from the following aspects:

1. Big sellers with economic strength and great influence should buy time and immediately conduct individual arbitration, ask Amazon to unfreeze funds and stop asking sellers to move positions. At least we can get back the frozen funds and win the time of goods transfer first.

2. Medium-sized sellers should file a class action lawsuit against Amazon by holding a group, so as to reduce the litigation cost and ask Amazon to compensate for the losses caused by the title and safeguard their rights and interests. According to the above-mentioned successful case, although the agreement between Amazon and the seller stipulates that Amazon has the right to decide to permanently refuse payment according to the actual situation. However, according to the arbitration results of American sellers' cases, this clause has been deemed invalid.

Some last thoughts

Winning this case is a great benefit for all Amazon sellers, including those in China. The common law system to which the United States belongs is "case law" and has a tradition of following precedents. In the subsequent arbitration, with the support of these successful cases, the probability of China sellers winning will be greatly increased. Sellers in China must entrust lawyers from foreign law firms or lawyers with experience in foreign-related cases from domestic law firms that cooperate with foreign law firms. Because foreign-related litigation spans two countries and two legal systems, it is very complicated in terms of procedures and execution. Don't look for inexperienced lawyers who have only handled domestic cases, which is a waste of time and money, and finally you can't get the results you want.

although the sellers in China have been blocked and their funds have been frozen because of false comments, they must pay attention to returning to compliance operation if enterprises continue to follow the road of e-commerce and continue to operate on Amazon platform. Seriously study and practice the platform rules to ensure product safety, foreign-related intellectual property rights (including patents, trademarks, designs) compliance, tax compliance, company operation compliance, etc., so that enterprises can go further and further and better.