A Warning to All Amazon Affiliates - They Can Close Your Account With No Warning

I've been an Amazon Affiliate for over 2 years and have sent Amazon 3.5 million users and generated $2 million dollars in revenue for them. They have closed my personal and business associate accounts and are currently withholding over $13,000 in unpaid funds. They are also treating me like I stole something from them.

And there appears to be nothing I can do about it.

They are claiming that I violated their TOS. The first email I received stated the following:

"You are not in compliance with the Linking Requirements because you are posting Special Links on third party web sites in violation of the terms and conditions applicable to such web site."

However, the site that I was posting the links on did NOT have any rules in their TOS against posting links. In fact, I even contacted the owner of the site afterwards and their COO said that they did not mind my links and that they would vouch for me if Amazon would like to contact them.

Before contacting the third-party site in question to ask for permission I escalated my case with Amazon and finally someone named Chad P. called me back. He is a senior enforcement manager for the Associates program. I informed him of the situation and he rudely told me that they did not care and that they were closing my accounts and there was nothing I could do about it. I asked them why they wouldn't warn me that I was in violation and he brought up a situation that happened over a year ago in relation to an entirely different site and situation. He said that they had warned me against posting on "message boards" at that time. However, I had emailed them back asking for clarification on the rules and never received a response.

After that incident I changed how I did things and switched to an entirely different social media website and strictly to relevant products. Per Amazon's TOS social media marketing is allowed. And since they do not list allowed or disallowed sites, how are we to know which and which aren't allowed?

I had been posting links for relevant products that came up in the feeds and my comments (144 characters similar to Twitter) were very well received. In the past year I never had anyone even ask me to stop or not to do it.

After I contacted the owner of the third-party site and received permission from them I figured that would fix this situation. I contacted Chad P. again and gave him the new information. Here is his response to that:

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"As we discussed in our phone conversation you violating the terms of a third-party site was just one of many violations of the Associates Operating Agreement. We warned you a year ago that this type of linking wasn't acceptable and you continued to use the same tactics. Your violations of our Operating Agreement include but are not limited to:

- "create links formatted with your Associates tag for, or display such links on, a site that is not your site."
- "You will not use Special Links to link to the Amazon Site from references on your site that are not Products."

These are just a few of the violations. As I informed you our decision to close your account is final. You are not eligible to participate in the Associates Program going forward. All open accounts affiliated with you will be closed and any accounts opened in the future will be closed without notice. As we've discussed these issues we won't have any further comment on this matter.

Best regards,

Chad P.
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To me it just seems like they wanted to get rid of me. One of their associates said that they were just starting to change their allowed social media websites to be only Facebook and Twitter, however, the TOS on Amazon has not been updated yet to reflect that.

If that is the case, that would explain why the proactively closed my accounts. That way they don't have to pay me the $13,000+ that they owe me. I think they figured that if the bulk of my traffic was generated from social media and they stopped allowing it then I wouldn't be able to continue sending them traffic anyway.

So, now I am left holding an empty hat with the IRS breathing down my neck and the bills piling up. Over the last two years I have slowly invested more and more of my life into Amazon and unfortunately I've gotten dependent on the guaranteed money every month. I even opened a business that was relying on the money from Amazon to stay ahead. With Amazon gone now my only source of income is strictly from the business... So, it's not looking good.

This is a warning to all Amazon affiliates, do not become dependent on Amazon for your lively hood. They can close your account with no warning and there will be nothing that you can do about it. Their customer service is atrocious. You either get someone who is completely sympathetic but can't do anything or you get someone like Chad P. who is rude, arrogant, and uncaring.

And your only option to dispute the funds "legally" is to enter into "arbitration" which was added to their TOS last year. Look it up, essentially it means that Amazon can do whatever they want and the little guy is screwed. You can no longer just file in small claims court by yourself, now you have to get a high priced lawyer to fight for you in arbitration. In addition, Amazon still reserves their right to use the court system to sue you.... It's completely unfair.

My suggestion to anyone thinking about using Amazon is to stay away, they are a terrible company to put your trust in and could very well ruin your life.