Amazon Merchant Kicked Off Website Spent $200,000 to Get Justice
The case provides a rare look inside the arbitration process, which critics say unfairly favors the company.
Photographer: Joshua Lott/Bloomberg
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An online merchant spent 18 months and $200,000 in legal fees fighting Amazon.com Inc. after it booted him off the shopping platform and seized his inventory. In the end, he received about half the $1.4 million in restitution requested. But he did get something few of his colleagues ever do: acknowledgment that the world’s largest online retailer treated him unfairly.
Amazon suspended the seller’s account after suspecting him of hawking counterfeit electronics, according to arbitration documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Then the company seized $80,000 in his account and 50,000 products stored in its warehouses.