So it started when Amazon blocked my Seller Account.  They have restored it, but I won’t be a satisfied customer until someone from Amazon corporate responds to the letter I sent to Jeff Bezos.

Then Amazon blocked my daughter’s Seller Account.  We think its because she is on my Amazon Prime membership as my daughter, but they haven’t really told her the reason.

So she wrote back to Amazon customer service to ask exactly why her account was blocked:

I don't understand why you won't reactivate my account. The other account that was closed belongs to my father, Gregg Marshall. I am a different person, Amanda Marshall, and therefore have my own account. Is there some policy that doesn't allow for more then one member of a household to have a seller's account? I am getting very frustrated that is matter is so difficult to resolve. I would think that the different names on the credit cards and bank accounts linked to my Amazon account would be enough to verify the fact that this is not a duplicate account but the account of a separate person. Thank You.

So how does Amazon respond?  They tell her to stop asking because they aren’t going to tell her why:

Hello from Amazon.com.

Thank you for writing.  After a review of your account by an account specialist, we have decided your account will remain blocked.

I have to admit I have a reading problem.  If there were a 12 step program for book buyers, I’d have to join.  The problem with all those books is they take space.  At some point you can build any more bookshelves.  Older books are moved to storage, but eventually the collection gets out of hand.

My wife dropped some “subtle” hints the book collection was getting out of hand.  The last time that happened I ended up recycling 800 pounds of my college notes.

My solution?  Sell the books, and some CD’s I haven’t listened to in several years on Amazon Marketplace.  After listing a few books, I decided I needed a faster way, so tech support pointed me to the paid version that let me use my trusty bar code scanner to scan the book’s bar codes to list the books or CD’s.  It also let me download shipping information to feed to PayPal’s shipping system.

Things were going along smoothly, eliminating a half dozen books/CD’s every few days, until one Friday afternoon I get the following email:

From:    Amazon.com Seller Performance Team [seller-performance@amazon.com]
Sent:    Friday, May 21, 2010 2:06 PM
To:    me
Subject:    Notice: Your Amazon.com Account

Hello from Amazon.com.

This message is to inform you that we have blocked your selling
account.  You may no longer sell on our site.

It’s hard to believe it was only last June (2008) when I had multiple systems failures, two desktops and two notebooks.  One notebook never recovered (it was dropped and the extended warranty just refunded the purchase price so I didn’t replace it).  I’m typing this on the other notebook, repaired by HP under warranty.  The desktops, Desktop 3 and Desktop 4, were part of a 4 computer cluster I have in my office connected via the network and sharing a monitor et al via a KVM switch.  I ended up replacing both with a single new HP desktop, which has been Desktop 3 ever since.  It is a dual core processor with 3 GB RAM, dual 500 GB hard drives (one operational and the other as a backup using Bounce Back Professional) and Windows XP 32 bit.

A friend wanted to upgrade his system so I’ve been watching for a suitable computer.  Over Labor Day, Micro Center had a sale on a Dell 435MT that was 80% of his ultimate computer configuration at 20% of the cost.  He deferred, then agreed this week we should go ahead and get it.  Fortunately it was still on sale.  The old system had a Passmark system score of 356.  The base 435MT we got for him had a Passmark score of 1680.  I replaced the installed hard drive with a Western Digital VelociRaptor, using the "old" 640 GB drive as a back up drive.  The Passmark score is now 1970.  We’ll upgrade RAM later. Read more »