Tholt y Will Glen (above) is the closest photograph we have of a rainforest, and much too beautiful to represent Amazon.

Those of you who like Amazon should stop reading now because I fear that this is going to be a rant.

We have been selling books through Amazon for nearly twenty years, since before we set up Loaghtan Books in fact.  We didn't like dealing with Amazon because we thought they were greedy; it's completely reasonable to charge commission but they take too much.  For example, our A Brief History of the Isle of Man retails at £12.95.  Amazon charges the customer £15.75 explaining that the additional £2.80 is for postage.  Not that we get anything for postage, Amazon keeps that.  Amazon credits us with £10.75 out of which we still have to take the postage, currently £4.16.  

Briefly, the customer pays £15.75, Amazon gets £5.00, the postage is £4.16, we get £6.59.  Nevertheless we put up with getting only pennies more than half of the price of the book because Amazon enabled us to reach markets we otherwise couldn't.

Not any more.  To access a seller account on Amazon you need an email address, a password and a One Time Password (OTP) which they send you and which you enter to prove it's really you asking to log in.  This has been working, unchanged, for at least ten years.  On 16 February it stopped.  We had an order for a book which we needed to know where to send, so tried to access our seller account by entering our email address, correct password and requesting the OTP.  It didn't arrive.

Of course we did all the things they suggest including using back up phone numbers and the like, but no joy.  We obviously needed help from Amazon to be able to sort out why the OTP was not arriving.  We searched for a phone number to ring - which was very difficult because we couldn't log in - but eventually found one.

We found the number (020 7084 7911 if you're interested, but don't bother to phone it until you read the rest of this) and made at least 6 attempts to phone Amazon support over the next few days.  During the first 4 calls, one of which was cut off after about 25 minutes, we were not told that the helpers couldn't help with seller accounts.  One member of staff, indeed, told us that the account was obviously dormant because we hadn't purchased anything through it for 15 years, so they would consequently close it (we wish we'd taken them up on that).  Of course we hadn't made purchases through it - it's a seller account.

Several times we were sent a link to contact 'seller central'.  However that link required us to log in.  We were unable to log in.  Eventually, a very helpful advisor (one of the few) told us about the purchaser/seller divide and sent us a link to a form which contacted the helpdesk at seller central and circumvented the log in process.

The form gave us two options.  Either we could talk about problems with logging in, or we could ask for the account to be closed.  Hopeful that our problem was now going to be solved - remember we had a customer who had now been waiting a week or more - we chose the former, filled in all the details and sent it off.  It seemed to be accepted by the experts who were now examining our problem.  Hurray!

Un-hurray.  We were directed to the log in page.  We tried logging in, and were still unable to do so because we didn't receive the OTP.

We completed the form a second time, and were told that there was no seller account associated with our email.  This was strange as, not only was it the email Amazon had used to notify us of the sale in the first place, it was also the one Amazon used, the same day, to inform us that they were transferring money to our bank account for previous sales.

We have completed the form several more times and received a number of different replies including one that said that there was a indeed a link between our seller account and our email, one that said again that there wasn't, several suggesting that we log in to seller central even though the point is that we can't, and several more saying that the problem has been solved, which it hasn't.  And we still can't log in.

Oh yes, and Amazon cancelled the order because we hadn't responded.  If the person who ordered from us is reading this, we are very sorry, do have the book and would love to sell it to you, but don't know who you are or where to send it because Amazon won't let us find out.

Eventually, in desperation, we chose the other option of the seller central form and asked Amazon to close our account.  They asked us to log in...

So, if any of our customers wish to buy our books, please don't attempt to do so through Amazon because Amazon itself is preventing us from selling to you.  Our Amazon account is still visible but we can't access it and can't take it down.  Our apologies.

Now, where were the contact details for those nice people at eBay...?