>>5984334Every year from around the middle of November to the middle of January, they lock out all merchant-fulfilled listings in toys and other categories unless you meet certain requirements or send your stuff to Fulfillment By Amazon (where they charge rent and co-mingle your inventory with damaged/fraudulent inventory).
The requirements are 25 sales and 0 points (no lates, no defects, no cancels) in September and October. It's really really hard for a small seller to do that. On top of Amazon taking 20% of every sale and shorting the shipping, there's also no way to differentiate other than price and, again, even the slightest stumble puts you over the points threshold.
One year I came close with 21 sales. My feedback never mattered because I never hit that arbitrary 25.
It sucks for buyers too because the reduced competition lets the chosen sellers jack prices up at Christmas. And with eBay fucking up their search engine and selectively showing listings, it's not like any sales funnel over there. Christmas has become a really awful time to sell toys.
