For nine years, Arnold Marcus had been making a living selling spice grinders on Amazon.
His company, Golden Gate Grinders, had several colors available, repeat customers and an invitation to join the Amazon Accelerator program, a path toward becoming a supplier for Amazon's private label. Marcus, 68, would package orders and take customers' calls from his living room in San Francisco, proud that he was involved in every aspect of the business he built.
"They've always said there's no drug paraphernalia but there were lots of products that were ambiguous products that were able to sell on the platform for years and years," said Lesley Hensell, co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, which helps third-party sellers on Amazon. "We have to play the hand that we're dealt in the cannabis space," he said."It's a difficult hand, but we've got to do it."
On Google, a company can share information about cannabis but can't sell the product or a related product. So brands will market blog posts about the industry in the hopes potential customers will click through and later make a purchase. Meta allows companies to market topical CBD or hemp products but not anything that users would smoke or chew. So brands will create separate landing pages for different products, hoping again to reach new customers.
One Amazon representative suggested his product was removed because he had a mesh screen. He removed the screen, relisted the grinder and watched it get flagged again. Another representative told him the product was taken down because there were keywords related to tobacco. Marcus checked his listing and didn't find any references to tobacco. Yet another representative pinned the blame on specific semicolons and quotation marks.
In online forums for third-party sellers, concerns specific to grinders have cropped up again and again. One user posted that they"can't understand why others can sell" but they cannot. Another said it was unclear what triggered it,"but for whatever reason majority of the listings were yanked." Another said Amazon's"one size fits all policy makes sellers lose millions.
"Even if somebody woke up one morning and said 'Let's let him back on,' that would be very challenging," Marcus said."I have to start from the beginning. They seriously damaged and hurt my company." Q: Are my purchases protected? Answer: In the U.S., buy now, pay later services are not currently covered by the Truth in Lending Act, which regulates credit cards and other types of loans .
Q: What are the other risks? Answer: Because there's no centralized reporting of buy now, pay later purchases, those debts won't necessarily appear on your credit profile with major credit rating agencies. Q: Why do retailers offer buy now, pay later? Answer: Retailers accept the backend fees of buy now, pay later services because the products increase cart sizes. When shoppers are given the option to pay off purchases in installments, they're more likely to buy more goods in one go.
“If work as promised, and if people can avoid late fees and don’t have trouble managing their finances, they have a place,” said Saunders, of the National Consumer Law Center.
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